Conventional wisdom among RINOs is that conservatives should not govern as conservatives, lest the same thing "be done to them" by Democrats when they get a majority. The Democrats themselves often echo this, not so much as a threat or a warning, but rather a way to appeal to the risk-averse, the soft underbelly of RINO world.
Until President Trump’s return to the White House earlier this year, this exercise has mostly been a rhetorical one, because it’s been a given that Republicans would do nothing with power once they get it. No one can snatch defeat from victory like a Capitol Hill Republican.
But something changed earlier this year. Credit goes to Trump for deeply wanting to return to the White House, having learned the ways of Washington in his first term. He spent four years in exile and had to overcome more barriers in his path than any president in history, including two assassination attempts. Things like that have a tendency to either scare you off or steel your resolve.
We all know what it did to Trump. As part of his four years of regrouping, he assembled a movement comprised of many other very strong people who themselves were battle-tested and still have the political scars to show for it. So in January, they hit the ground running and haven’t let up since. Their style of governing is to attack, attack, attack. But not aimlessly.
They know who the problem children are in the opposition. They know the infrastructure that’s been used to destroy conservatives and the conservative movement. They know how the left has systematically worked to destroy their opposition and the country itself.
The Trump White House is attacking problems that have existed for far too long, and which many conservatives never imagined would become a priority. The administration is dismantling the Democrats’ destructive shadowy infrastructure.
“This is what I voted for,” is the common refrain on the X platform from tens of thousand of users any time Trump attacks another sacred cow of the left. Whether it be the defunding of NPR and PBS, or when the head of the FCC floats the idea that he might hold ABC accountable under FCC regulations for something Jimmy Kimmel did.
But not everyone who has shifted rightward is on board. Bari Weiss, the founder of the now not-so-independent The Free Press (TFP), is one such person. For context, Weiss is the former New York Times editor who left the newspaper over a kerfuffle where she committed the crime of affording a Republican some space on the Times’ op-ed page. In this sense, due to her sense of principles and tenacity, she was thrust into a situation where her revenge was success. She started TFP on Substack, and it’s become a respected place for good journalism.
From Jan. 2021 until recently, TFP was an independent site. It’s not much of a secret that Weiss has reportedly been offered $200 million for TFP, in exchange for Weiss and her publication to become integral parts of CBS News. It’s possible she could end up at the helm of the network. Given all of this, it would be a mistake to simply label her a conservative. There’s no record she was ever a Republican in the first place.
Still, it is a bit perplexing to see that in spite of all her experience and intelligence, she and TFP would fall into the same trap RINOs have been falling into for many decades.
Here’s what happened. After ABC decided to suspend Jimmy Kimmel this past week, there was some confusion over what caused it. While Kimmel’s defenders are accusing the Trump administration of pressuring ABC to punish Kimmel via the FCC, the Hollywood Reporter’s thorough investigation indicates that it was most likely a business decision, where Kimmel was given a chance to correct the record after his claim during a monologue last week that Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin was part of MAGA.
After that, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said on “The Benny Show” podcast that it was possible the FCC could explore a way to address the Kimmel situation. He then left the door open to some sort of official FCC action if necessary. That was enough to stir the left and some on the right to accuse the Trump administration of overreach.
At this point, there are two issues at play. One is the Kimmel situation, and the other is whether the FCC should insert itself in the process. In conservative circles, it’s universal that Kimmel was out of line. But a healthy debate can be had as to where the line is and should be for the FCC in this specific situation.
But there is a third and more nagging issue, and it’s the one that Bari Weiss’s TFP raised when it argued that if Republicans leverage their regulatory power now to enact consequences on their political foes, the Democrats can do the same thing later.
This is a pedestrian case for doing nothing. It’s a RINO saw. It’s toothless, and it ignores what the current Trump administration has already proven to be wrong. Not to mention what conservatives and Weiss herself have had to live through during the dark years of the Biden administration.
The left is cruel and merciless by nature. Leftists don’t need a new reason to destroy conservatives. It’s something they do simply because you are conservative. The Democrats take a scorched-earth approach to every single issue. The Republicans could make AOC, Jasmine Crockett and Chuck Schumer breakfast in bed for the next two years, and it wouldn’t stop them from smearing, lying, attacking, and jailing Republicans for not folding the napkins.
Using the language of the left, the accusation is that Trump is trying to weaponize federal agencies. The response is, when federal agencies perform their oversight responsibilities for the American people, that’s not weaponization, and it’s not something you refrain from doing out of fear of political backlash at some point down the road.
In an article from the editors of TFP, the publication framed Carr’s comments as a form of “jawboning,” where government officials make overt or implied threats to trigger regulatory compliance even when an official enforcement action hasn’t been instituted.
TFP specifically quoted Carr when he told Benny Johnson, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way…These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Whether or not Carr’s comments constitute “jawboning” is hard to tell, even if you are a lawyer. There have been many cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided, and the pattern is that “it’s complicated.”
In the end, the consensus is that it’s best for all when media organizations police their own. Do the right thing for the right reasons without putting yourself in the position to have to be told to comply by the government. Short of that, always protect free speech, but be clear on whether the issue is one of free speech or something else. Like the potential for causing public harm or incitement by intentionally spreading false information over the public airwaves. If it’s the latter, you’re asking to be penalized.
On the issue of whether Republicans should stand down and not enforce the law because it could come back to bite them, that’s purely a political calculation. It’s not a legal one, and not a free speech issue. The Trump administration is proving every day that such a political calculation is a mistake and not why Republicans won the White House, the Senate and the Congress by a popular vote majority in 2024. The people want common-sense government, and the first step in this process is to actually govern, fearlessly and without compromise when doing so in the public interest. We should expect no less from either party.
Instead, what we have in Washington is not a debate over what’ right or wrong, legal or illegal, but whether a regulatory agency should even have the right to regulate. On our side we have a tired, old debate over whether Republicans should act or not for fear the Democrats will do the same later. Sadly, we already know, and we can’t worry about that.
