Cruz Calls Carr's ABC Comments 'Dangerous as Hell'; Trump Disagrees

President Donald Trump subsequently defended Carr and said he disagreed with Cruz's assessment. Carr continued to deny that his comments influenced Disney and ABC, even as he voiced interest in probing whether the network’s The View and other programs still qualify for the FCC rules’ bona fide news exemption.

Meanwhile, congressional Democrats persisted with their angry criticism of Carr’s role in instigating ABC's suspension of Kimmel (see 2509180055), including their party's House Commerce Committee members’ new push for FCC Inspector General Fara Damelin to probe the matter.

Cruz said on his podcast that ABC made a “smart business decision” in suspending Kimmel because the show “was losing [the network] even more money than” Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show did for CBS before its cancellation (see 2507180058). He argued that Kimmel “flat-out lied” on air but added that Carr’s response to the controversy “is dangerous as hell.” In his comments, Carr “threatens explicitly, ‘We're going to cancel ABC's license. We're going to take them off the air,’” Cruz said. “That’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.’”

Cruz hates what Kimmel “said, [and] I am thrilled that” ABC suspended him. But “if the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said; we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives,” Cruz warned. It “might feel good right now to threaten [Kimmel, but] there will come a time when a Democrat wins [another presidential election, and] they will silence us. They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly.”

Kimmel said in his Monday monologue that “the MAGA gang [is] 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.”

Trump told reporters Friday night that he thinks Carr “is a great American patriot, so I disagree with [Cruz] on that.” Carr “is a courageous person [and] doesn’t like to see the airwaves be used illegally and incorrectly.” Trump argued that when “97% of the stories are bad about a person, it’s no longer free speech.”

Cruz’s comments represent a notable break with Carr, who the Senate Commerce chairman has otherwise publicly supported since both took their respective gavels in January. The two officials previously swept under the rug insider chatter that they disagreed over now-NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth’s potential nomination to an FCC seat (see 2501100043), which eventually went to now-Commissioner Olivia Trusty.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., also questioned Carr’s actions during a Thursday Punchbowl News event, but he didn’t name the FCC chairman. “Just because I don’t agree with what someone says, we need to be very careful,” Guthrie said. “We have to be extremely cautious [about using the] government to influence what people say.” Other Republicans have downplayed Carr’s actions or attempted to deflect attention from the controversy. The House Oversight Committee on Thursday voted 24-21, along party lines, against a bid by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., to subpoena Carr.

Democrats Pile On

Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told us Friday that it “would be great” if Cruz’s comments meant he “is willing to hold a hearing” to press Carr on his ABC statements and the commission’s investigations of other media outlets. Cruz later told reporters Senate Commerce “will do our job and engage in oversight.”

Cantwell said Senate Commerce “should look into” those issues, as she, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and other Democrats made clear in a Thursday letter to Carr. Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., separately asked Cruz on Friday to hold an FCC oversight hearing because “recent events suggest that [Carr] has largely abandoned regulatory humility and faithful execution of the law to turn the agency into [Trump’s] personal speech police.”

“We are outraged by your comments [suggesting that the FCC] would take action against ABC, its parent company Disney, and its affiliates, over” Kimmel’s monologue, said Schumer, Cantwell and nine other Senate Commerce Democrats in their letter to Carr. They in part used some of Carr's own words against him. “The FCC’s role in overseeing the public airwaves does not give it the power to act as a roving press censor, targeting broadcasters based on their political commentary,” the Democrats said. “But under your leadership, the FCC is being weaponized to do precisely that.”

The Senate Democrats asked Carr to respond by Thursday with information on what communications he or other FCC officials had with ABC, Disney or its affiliates about Kimmel. The Democrats also want Carr to define “the ‘public interest’ standard to which broadcasters must adhere” and explain whether the FCC “has adopted some new ideological or political neutrality test.”

House Commerce Committee Democrats continued to lambaste Carr on Friday as well, urging Damelin to investigate the incident. Carr’s “recent abuse of authority constituted his most transparent act of illegal and unconstitutional censorship to date,” said panel ranking member Frank Pallone of New Jersey, Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui of California and Oversight Subcommittee ranking member Yvette Clarke of New York in a letter to Damelin. His “use of his office and any official resources in furtherance of an illegal and unconstitutional campaign of censorship constitutes a clear abuse of authority and demonstrates a lack of appropriate policies and procedures at the agency.”

Carr Denies 'Coercion'

During TV and online interviews Thursday, Carr denied a connection between his remarks and Kimmel’s suspension. “There's no untoward coercion happening here,” Carr said on The Scott Jennings Radio Show podcast Thursday. “Everyone wants to paint some grand conspiracy and say, you know, this wouldn't have happened without this person or that person saying anything.”

Critics are “barking up the wrong tree,” Carr said. He argued that Kimmel’s show had falling ratings and that local broadcast affiliates hadn’t previously felt empowered to push back against networks. “The market was intended to function this way, where local TV stations get to push back.”

The Center for American Rights also defended Carr, saying Thursday that his comments didn’t violate legal precedents against jawboning. Carr “asking whether a public-interest violation occurred [is] nothing like the pattern of pressure on third parties” that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled constitutes jawboning, the group said.

The FCC has enormous leverage over broadcasters seeking merger approval like Nexstar, said Duke Law School professor Stuart Benjamin in a blog post Thursday for Reason. “The obvious incentive is for the private party to do what the government wants. That is why Trump had leverage over ABC, leading it to settle a very weak lawsuit. That's how things work in lots of countries we don't want to emulate.”

Carr’s attempts to distance himself from ABC’s decision amount to “not very sophisticated gaslighting,” Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood said in an interview.

Bona Fide Precedent?

Carr said Thursday that the FCC could examine whether The View and other programs still qualify for the bona fide news exemption. The rules say that when a candidate for office appears on a station’s airwaves, opposing candidates for that office must have the opportunity for similar access within seven days. “I would assume you can make the argument that The View is a bona fide news show, but I'm not so sure about that,” Carr said. He previously raised the matter of equal opportunity violations by NBCUniversal over then-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ appearance on Saturday Night Live shortly before the 2024 election. Carr reinstated a dismissed complaint from the Center for American Rights over that matter shortly after becoming chairman (see 2501220059).

News and interview shows are exempt from the rule, and the agency has defined “bona fide news interview programs” very broadly ever since a 2003 declaratory ruling from the Media Bureau that The Howard Stern Show qualified for the exemption, said Pillsbury broadcast attorney Scott Flick in an interview. The Media Bureau has issued such declaratory rulings for other shows, including Politically Incorrect, Donahue and others, but most programs haven’t sought such rulings because the rules have historically been seen as broadly applying to interview shows.

An online search of FCC records didn’t turn up such a ruling for The View, and the Media Bureau didn’t respond to a query about the matter.

It’s unclear whether an FCC enforcement action against The View and other programs over equal opportunity rules would lead to a forfeiture order or survive a court challenge, attorneys told us. The FCC’s previous handling of the rules would provide a strong precedent in the opposition’s favor, and equal opportunity complaints have historically been required to come from the candidates themselves, they said.

It’s more likely that Carr would intend an equal opportunity investigation of The View as an intimidation tactic, Wood told us. New Street analyst Blair Levin said in an email to subscribers Thursday that Carr likely raises the prospect of possible enforcement actions against entities “to hang a Damocles Sword” over them to encourage them to do what he wants, rather than to result in a forfeiture order.

Since the petitions of declaratory ruling on news exemptions were bureau-level matters, it's likely that any investigation or action against The View would be as well, attorneys told us. Bureau-level actions aren’t seen as final FCC orders and so must be appealed to the full commission rather than the courts. FCC chairs have historically blocked many such appeals by not bringing them to the full commission, effectively shelving them indefinitely.