What did Donald Trump do today?

He used the power of the state to keep people from laughing at him.

Responding to threats made by Trump's handpicked FCC commissioner, ABC pulled its late-night program Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Trump had been threatening to make this happen since another cancellation of a late-night show that criticized him, CBS's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. 

 

Brendan Carr promised today to suspend ABC affiliates' broadcast licenses if Kimmel weren't fired, and to fine the network for anything it deemed to be "not in the public interest." This marks something of a change in Carr's stated position on the matter.

 

Trump doesn't really have any legal authority to do any of that, at least as of the last time the Supreme Court addressed the issue. Being able to criticize the government is the core of the First Amendment, whether Trump likes it or not. But he does have the ability to abuse his power to punish or reward companies subject to federal regulation, and that is what happened here: two station groups that carry ABC are seeking to merge, which requires White House approval, and they are the ones who pulled Kimmel's show first.

The official justification from ABC had to do with Kimmel's commentary on the murder of right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk. It's important to point out that Kimmel didn't mock Kirk directly, or the fact of his killing—at all, whatsoever. In fact, his reaction was just the opposite:

 

But Kimmel did point out that Trump himself—who was, contrary to recent claims, not close with Kirk—was visibly bored with the attempts to turn Kirk into a martyr figure. He showed a clip in which Trump, asked to share his feelings about Kirk's death, immediately changed the subject to the ballroom he wants to build on the White House grounds. 

Kimmel also mocked Trump's false claims that politically-motivated violence comes from the left wing. In reality, the overwhelming majority of political killings in the last few decades have been carried out by right-wingers. Earlier this week, the Trump administration pulled down a government study proving exactly that point, although it remains available on mirror sites. Its summary begins:

Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives. A recent threat assessment by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concluded that domestic violent extremists are an acute threat and highlighted a probability that COVID-19 pandemic-related stressors, long-standing ideological grievances related to immigration, and narratives surrounding electoral fraud will continue to serve as a justification for violent actions.

Earlier this week, Trump—who has been defying a law requiring him to shut down TikTok in the absence of a sale—announced that he had brokered a deal where the Chinese social media app will be sold to a group headed by Trump ally Larry Ellison. 

Why does this matter?

• If you can't criticize the leader of the country without the state taking action against you, you don't live in a democracy.  

• Only dictators try to control the media because only dictators need to. 

• There's nothing more pathetic than someone throwing a tantrum because people laughed at him.