The TOI correspondent from Washington: American public discourse is in ferment over the country’s cherished free speech rights after the Disney-owned ABC on Tuesday spiked the late-night show by Jimmy Kimmel under pressure from the Trump administration. The crackdown followed MAGA backlash against Kimmel’s take on the assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk that included gibes at President Trump. The Disney decision came hours after Federal Communications Commission warned of action against ABC over Kimmel’s comedic presentation on Monday night that showed President Trump’s bizarre reaction to Kirk’s death, part of a now routine mockery of the MAGA supremo’s public utterances by late-night comics that has angered him. In the segment, Kimmel showed President Trump’s response when a journalist asked him during a White House press encounter how he was holding up after the Kirk assassination. “I think very good. And by the way, right there you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they’ve been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years, and it’s gonna be a beauty,” Trump says.The US President’s abrupt pivot to a non-sequitur became cannon-fodder, comedic gold dust, for late-night jokes. “He’s at the fourth stage of grief, construction,” Kimmel joked, adding, “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”In the monologue prefacing this, Kimmel ribbed about the “MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” This enraged the right-wing eco-system that has been arguing that the alleged assassin was influenced by left-liberal values, although he came from a gun-loving Trump-supporting family in Utah. Trump who has been raging for months against late-night comics — most of whom are on the liberal spectrum of politics — exulted over Kimmel’s sacking on X, saying, “Great News for America: The ratings-challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”“Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!,” he added, taking aim at Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, two other late-night hosts on the liberal spectrum who are also at the receiving end of right-wing fury because they routinely eviscerate Trump and MAGA.But more than courage, free speech advocates said, ABC appears to have caved to fear as the US President has gone on a warpath against critics in recent months. He has sued CBS, ABC, the Wall Street Journal, and earlier this week, the New York Times, with the first two settling out of court. Even First Amendment defenders on the right are unnerved by the Trump crackdown. On his show Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson warned that civil disobedience could erupt should the Trump administration and other “bad actors” use Charlie Kirk’s death as a means to attack free speech. The US President, who has been the butt of jokes and scalding scrutiny from the left from the time he entered the political arena, has long sought to delegitimize the liberal media by repeatedly calling them “fake news.” In public engagements, he has become increasingly snappy at the media, including foreign press.In one recent encounter, an Australian journalist who asked him whether it was appropriate for a sitting President to be engaged in such extensive business activity, was questioned about his affiliation, and told he is setting a “very bad tone” and “hurting Australia very much” with his questions. “Your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I am going to tell him about you…” Trump told him. Another time, he told a Polish journalist who asked him a challenging question to go get a new job.
