In a country as polarized as ours, there are few, if any, issues of public debate that garner any sense of political cohesion. Perhaps the lone point of widespread agreement among Americans is our collective commitment to free speech — the ability, within reason, to say whatever, whenever, without government interference or coercion.
That’s why when President Donald Trump and Brendan Carr, head of the Federal Communications Commission, pressured ABC to pull late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air, following comments — accurate comments, we would argue — on the administration’s politicization of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the public fiercely pushed back in outrage.
Even Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — a long-time ally of Trump who rarely criticizes the president — took issue, albeit from a place of political self-interest, with the administration’s threat to ABC over Kimmel’s comments.
“It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel,” the senator said on his podcast, “but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.”
Amid the backlash, it barely took a week for ABC to bring Kimmel’s show back on air. “This show is not important,” the comedian said in the opening monologue of his return episode, which drew the most viewers of Kimmel’s show in over a decade. “What’s important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”