The Podcast Presidency

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, September 18, 2025

 

Contrary to dozens of major media outlets this morning, we have ample evidence to support the conclusion that Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was placed on “indefinite” hiatus for cause.

 

“The MAGA Gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them,” Kimmel said on Monday night’s broadcast, “and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” It was that remark, not the banal (and amusing) joke at Donald Trump’s expense, that raised the host’s employer’s eyebrows. And according to Variety, “Kimmel was prepared to address the backlash” last night by explaining “what he said and demonstrate how it was taken out of context.” In addition, “Kimmel was not planning on apologizing” because “what he said did not require an apology.”

 

It’s not beyond the realm of comprehension that Jimmy Kimmel Live!’s network and affiliates were genuinely put off by the host’s initial comments and his refusal to correct the record. Their respective statements convey that impression. We can at least hold out the possibility that a private firm with a fiduciary responsibility to investors and shareholders would take a dim view of such conduct in any employee, much less a highly visible one. And as we might remember from the cancelation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — not the dismissal of the host but the scuttling of that legacy property entirely — the late-night business model is no longer a profitable enterprise.

 

This is all perfectly plausible, and we should maintain enough curiosity to at least conceive of outcomes that comport with Occam’s Razor. And yet, the curious are also compelled by virtue of the Trump administration’s performative illiberalism to explore the possibility that the administration’s gratuitous, constitutionally contemptuous bullying also played a role in last night’s events.

 

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr told podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

 

Carr has been talking like that for a while — wielding his regulatory authority to muscle broadcast media outlets from platforms like Johnson’s, taking aim at the content these broadcasters air that comports with public decency standards but nevertheless irritates Republicans in Washington. ABC’s properties have been a frequent target, too, and its hosts, like The View’s Joy Behar, have been explicitly threatened by the president and his appointees because of the views she expresses on camera. You shouldn’t need to take an oath to uphold the Constitution to see the glaring impropriety in that.

 

We do not know what actions, if any, Carr or his subordinates took in the interim between Kimmel’s Monday broadcast and his threats on Wednesday to gin up irritation with Kimmel among ABC’s broadcast affiliates. We cannot know if Carr’s implicit threats simply had their intended effect on his targets. After all, that’s how jawboning works, and it is not like this administration is shy about aggressively imposing itself on private entities in the pursuit of political outcomes. Taking the unnecessary risk of irritating regulators in Washington is a fiduciary liability, too.

 

Sadly, this ambiguity isn’t going to be cleared up anytime soon. Congress is a supine institution with no present interest in performing its oversight functions. Mainstream media outlets have already reached the conclusion they want. And even if the Trump administration took no untoward actions (other than running this show like it’s, well, a show) in this case, its officials probably wouldn’t admit it. Its principals seem to revel in the fear they’ve cultivated in their political opponents.

 

So, we’re left with a perverse condition in which Republicans and Democrats alike are happy to conclude that the administration meted out vengeance to Kimmel. The left is certain the White House is attacking satire, as any budding despot would. The Marxian left has reduced the episode to a contest of capital, as all events are in their minds, assuming that ABC parent Nexstar genuflected before the FCC to only grease the skids for its acquisition of rival broadcaster Tegna. “I [will] not vote for any Democratic presidential candidate who does not promise to respond in kind,” Democratic attorney and regular CNN guest Julie Roginsky declared. “We will rebuild from the rubble. But first, accountability.” This sort of self-radicalizing talk is common today, will become more so, and runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

The American right will be tempted to respond with a few pointed reminders about the Biden administration’s efforts to intervene in the affairs of private entities, and only to chill conservative speech. Those reminders are necessary. But they should also trigger a dim recollection that, at the time, the right believed the Biden administration’s actions represented an attack on the American social covenant; a heedless indulgence aimed at satisfying their most paranoid and vengeful constituents.

 

There would be no controversy at all if Carr, among many other members of this administration, did not believe their roles compelled them to act as though they are pundits — preening and mugging their way through their Senate appointments, and appealing to the president’s most transgressive impulses. This is not a podcast. It’s real life, and actions beget unforeseeable consequences.

 

If Carr had exercised just a little bit of discretion, there would be no ambiguity at all around the sequence of events that unfolded last night. But all the players in this drama seem to like the heightened state of national apprehension they’ve encouraged. It sure is entertaining. But this is not a television show.