OPINION: Free Speech Is on Life-Support
The question is, will we allow Trump to carry on and silence any view that he dislikes.
By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST
The Trump Administration’s chokehold on the media and free speech tightened last week when Jimmy Kimmel Live was jerked off the air by ABC-TV following threats from the Federal Communications Commission, which is headed by a hand-picked Trump puppet.
Brendan Carr warned that if ABC and Disney, its parent company, didn’t discipline Kimmel for remarks he made regarding the Charlie Kirk assassination, the FCC might pull the license of the network and stations that aired the show.
ABC raised the white flag and complied.
Let me state upfront that I am not a fan of Jimmy Kimmel Live and don’t watch the late-night show. But I am a fan of free speech, one of the founding precepts of this country, and respect the comedian’s right to make jokes, political or otherwise.
I don’t have to agree with what he and other TV personalities say, and I don’t have to watch their shows, but I respect their right to free speech.
Senseless killings are nothing to joke about, but if you have seen the clip of the Kimmel show that led to his removal, you will understand that it is not a hit on Charlie Kirk, but rather on President Trump and the way he handled a reporter’s question on the assassination.
What the segment did was make the president look bad and you don’t make a joke about the president without retaliation. He’s one of those people who loves to dish it out, but he can’t take it.
And Trump did dish it out, saying Kimmel had no talent and that he had a bad show. That’s his modus operandi. Anyone he doesn’t like is a bad person with no talent.
Earlier Trump had trashed Steven Colbert, whose show CBS recently pulled from their late-night lineup. Further, the president intimated that two other late-night network hosts might also be on the chopping block. It is as if he, not the networks, has charge of the hiring and firing. If these guys don’t say what the president wants them to say, they become history.
It should also be noted that the networks that employ Colbert and Kimmel are both involved in business dealings that require FCC approval. You want your merger; you get rid of the guys we don’t like. Can you say government intimidation?
There is precedent for the Kimmel removal. In early 1939, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels destroyed five German comedians for ridiculing Hitler’s policies (New York Times, “Goebbels Ends Careers of Five ‘Aryan’ Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime” on February 4 of that year). Looks like we are heading down the same path.
If Trump has his way (Friday he said that all reporters who criticize him are breaking the law), pretty soon government censors may be rewriting the evening news. After all, many countries ruled by tyrants have only one news source – one that originates with and is approved by its fearless leader.
If you control the media, you control the people. Every dictator knows that. You feed them your version of the truth and obscure all others. And if some other version of the news gets out, you condemn it as a lie.
Trump, who early on began his attempt at taking control of the arts, has now set his sights on the media. Shows, whether live in a theater or on TV, must meet with his approval. And he is getting away with it.
Perhaps the greatest villain in this attempt at dictatorship is the Republican majority in Congress. Trump’s following has given the GOP more power than it has ever had and the party does not want to give it up, even if it means destroying the Constitution.
“The party! It is all about the party and the power we have with Trump in the White House! We’ll do anything to keep the power we now have. Trump can help us make this a one-party country and we’ll do nothing to stop him!”
The Charlie Kirk assassination was a terrible thing. Nobody deserves to be murdered. I didn’t agree with some of the things the man preached, but I respected his right to preach them.
The big question is, where do we go from here? If any incident ever magnified the division in this country, this assassination was it. And Kirk’s death only enhanced the width of the chasm between Republicans and Democrats.
Trump has already used the incident to further crackdown on the media and promote his own agenda, as evidenced by his remarks at Kirk’s memorial service.
We are headed down a very dangerous road where our Constitution is eroding like a stream bank in a flood.
Are we about to let one man take away what our forefathers fought for?
We shall see.
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Some days, it's easy to feel like Teyve in Fiddler on the Roof.
On the one hand, it's admitted progress that Mr. Johnston now sees and freely both acknowledges and denounces the culpability of Trump's administrative officials and especially Republican members of Congress who have either sat idly by or cheered loudly as these outrageous and systemic assaults have occurred.
On our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the self-evident rights so eloquently declaimed by Virginian Thomas Jefferson to the world in the most amazing of American documents, the Declaration of Independence.
That all are created equal. And are endowed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The fact Mr Johnston recognizes so clearly that this current action is an outrage against those principles, and that he stands against them, as should any American who believes that it is those rights which make us who we are, is certainly progress.
For that, I am truly thankful.
On the OTHER hand,
even though he recognizes all of that - he limits the blame far too greatly, and in the end - still ends up where he always seems to land.
In a belief that this is merely the actions of an addled, angry old man in his senescence, and nothing more.
How grateful we should all be, if that were the case.
The reality however, is much more grim. We do ourselves no good service to pretend otherwise.
This now no longer the latest outrage, merely the one from last week - is not the actions of one miserable hateful old man.
Nor isolated in its presence, or merely the words of sycophants aiming to be noticed.
If only it were.
Rather, it should be seen for what it is.
One in a sea of such outrages and attacks which have been systematically made upon our nation over the last 9 months which continue to wax greater every time they succeed.
As those attacking us, rather than be sated by their gains, instead - act like Captain Barbossa's crew upon finding the treasure for which they'd lusted:
"There be the chest.
Inside be the gold.
And we took them all!
We spent them, and traded them, and frittered them away on drink and food and pleasurable company.
The more we gave them away, the more we came to realize...
the drink would not satisfy. The food turned to ash in our mouths... and all of the pleasurable company in the world could not slake our lust.
We are cursed men, Miss Turner.
Compelled by greed we were, but now... we are consumed by it."
credit: Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl
Every outrage merely drives them to the need for more. And one can go much further back in history and find similar actions. In the purges of Gaius Marius during his 7th Consulship. Caligula, Nero. This wouldn't be the 1st Republic to die in such a manner.
And unfortunately, you can find much more recent outrages. One could say it's in the totalitarian playbook. A Russian critic recently explained how Putin punished comics who were using puppets to make fun of him. Philippines Journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa makes it soberiy clear in her interview with Jon Steward on the Daily Show how similar actions of threat and coercion happened there as a playbook for the rich and corrupt to do it here.
And now we see it happening, as she predicted 7 months ago.
Also, we see it is not merely the suppression of journalists. Rather it is a pattern of suppression.
Inspector Generals fired without a peep from Congress. Partisan Supreme Court shadow docket rulings supporting these outrages without so much as a word of justification. Rulings that would put the Star Chamber to shame. It's not okay for private entities to use race as a factor in a hope of helping people, but it is perfectly okay to use it as a factor for the state to question, arrest, or detain them.
Partisan shakedowns of legal firms, businesses wanting to do business, or universities for millions and billions of dollars. Firings of employees for claimed cause, without giving cause, notice, or due process. Taxes levied, changed, or rescinded upon whims, and now it looks like Trump supporters are buying up illegal tariff claims for pennies on the dollar, with the expectation that they will profit from taxpayers when the government finally settles the claims. Bessent negotiating with China over soybean prices, when he owns soybean farms. And the expectation that if he is unsuccessful in them buying what he is selling, that Republicans will insist that we provide taxpayer welfare once again to millionaire and billionaire farmers in return for their support.
At the same time that Witkoff and Trump's sons are into some shady dealings with UAE over bitcoins versus Nvidia AI chips being provided despite the risk that doing so will give China access. But no need to worry about Nvidia complaining, as Republicans just forced that private company to take on the US Government as a partner in a classic shakedown scheme.
All while we are also seeing suppression of other information through actions of delaying BLS reports of unemployment, discontinuing studies of child hunger, environmental harms to our air, water, land - or dismissing CDC officials who refuse to participate in unethical or unsafe behavior.
That's not even counting the Trump cronies who are seeing their unethical or possibly criminal behavior swept under the rug like Adams or Homan, at the same time District Attorneys are fired if they don't bring charges against personal or political "enemies" of Trump or the GOP.
The sad thing being, I know I'm missing a wealth of items just as outrageous. The claims of this duly elected choice of the Republican party that half of the people of this country are his opponents and he does not wish us well. The open declarations that he dreams of unleashing war upon American cities whom he does not see properly devout to the cult. Or dreams of invading or stealing from allies. The arrests and detainment of Americans or legal aliens without due process by secret police. The extra-judicial killing of non-Americans on the high seas without due process, proof, or review.
These are not the actions of one man. But rather of a group of people who sees themselves as entitled, above the law, and wish all the rest of us ill if we do not comply.
As we are all declared to be Antifa.
This is not merely some abstract exercise in anti-fascism. But rather the systemic hatreds and justifications seen used by totalitarians from around the world and next door.
All of that hatred, don't just be thinking Hitler in Germany. Think Putin in Russia, Netanyahu in Gaza, Hutus killing Tutsis. This is how it happens. Its only our hubris and inertia which makes us believe/wish otherwise. It not only can happen here, its happening here.
It might be comforting to say that the problem is that Ben Cline or Robb Wittman are not doing their job. And you'd be right.
But the problem is much, much deeper. They are not doing their job, or providing those needed checks and balances because that everyday Republican that lives next door to you is perfectly fine with it. Or if they aren't, they don't have the guts or inclination to say so.
No one is forcing them to belong to that party or to accept these actions. They are doing so by choice.
And their silence remains deafening.
"If I were a rich man...."
Now I'll have that song in my head for the rest of the day.
At least it helps drown out the worry and fear.
Apparently closing one's wallet to the media supporting Donald's tirades and speaking out works. Voting is so important as well. We cannot let him wear us down or give up!