Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr denies ever threatening to revoke anyone’s broadcasting licenses if they didn’t deal with Jimmy Kimmel.
Carr was widely accused of pressuring ABC, Disney and the companies that control local television stations into firing Kimmel for comments the comedian made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, but while speaking at Concordia Summit 2025 in New York on Monday, the regulator maintained he had not used intimidation tactics “in any way, shape or form.”
“The reality is, there’s a lot of Democrats out there that are engaged in a campaign of projection and distortion,” he said. “And distortion is they’re completely misrepresenting the work of the FCC and what we’ve been doing.”
It’s true that Carr did not explicitly threaten to pull any broadcasting licenses while appearing on conservative commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast last week. He did, however, say that companies had to “take action” on Kimmel or there would be “additional work for the FCC ahead.”
As he told Johnson that networks could do things “the easy way or the hard way,” many assumed he was reminding networks about the FCC’s authority to regulate who has access to the airwaves through broadcast licensing.
