USA, Trump threatens to revoke TV licences: '97% are against me'

Abc, like Cbs, is also bowing to Donald Trump. The broadcaster, controlled by Disney, announced the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the hugely popular late-night show hosted for 23 years by the celebrated comedian, who became Italian this year 'to get away from Donald Trump'. The decision received immediate applause from the tycoon, who has now asked Nbc to cancel the broadcasts of two other comedians hostile to him: Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. Costing Kimmel the programme were his words on the Kirk affair, after the Trump administration launched a campaign to purge the authors of controversial comments on the affair and prosecute radical left-wing organisations, such as Antifa, which the president has designated as a terrorist organisation. The bans on Kimmel outraged Hollywood and the opposition, which evoked censorship and repression of dissent, raising more generalised fears for free speech. For Barack Obama, the Trump administration "is taking 'cancel culture' to a new and dangerous level", while for ultra-right-wing anchor Tucker Carlson it is using Kirk's killing to trample on the First Amendment.

Donald Trump threatens to revoke the licences of TV networks that are 'against me'. "I read somewhere that the networks are 97% against me... yet I won easily, all 7 swing states" in 2024. "They just give me bad press. Yet they have a licence," he added. 'I think maybe their licence should be revoked,' he added, pointing out that the decision 'will be up to Brendan Carr', the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, his close ally.

On Monday night's episode, the comedian had said that "we hit new lows last weekend, with the Maga gang desperately trying to portray this guy who killed Charlie Kirk as something other than one of their own and is doing everything they can to gain political advantage from the incident." Kimmel had also mocked the way Trump had mourned Kirk: "This is not the way an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend, it's the way a four-year-old mourns a goldfish," he had mocked by showing a clip of the tycoon talking about building a ballroom in the White House immediately after the shooting.

The Trumpian chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (Fcc), Brendan Carr, whose resignation the Dems are now calling for, had criticised Kimmel's intervention and threatened to revoke TV licences. An intimidation that prompted some owners of Abc-affiliated broadcasters, including the large Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair, to announce that they would stop broadcasting the show, prompting the network to freeze the programme. "Offensive and unacceptable statements," explained Nexstar, which also needs the approval of the FCC for its $6.2 billion acquisition of broadcaster Tegna. Some suspect that the halt to the programme is a 'tariffs' paid for the green light to the deal, similar to previous moves by Cbs in the run-up to its parent company Paramount's merger with Skydance: the 16 million paid to settle a lawsuit with Trump over a 60 Minutes interview with former vice-president Kamala Harris and the discontinuation from 2026 (officially for economic reasons) of Stephen Colbert's Late Show, another famous anti-Trump comedian.

The decision to suspend Kimmel's show - where 200 people work - was taken by the heads of Disney and Abc, a broadcaster that had already agreed last December to pay Trump $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos. The tycoon congratulated Abc on Truth 'for finally having the courage to do what needed to be done. Kimmel has no talent and has worse ratings than even Colbert'. Accusations repeated in the press conference with Keir Starmer, where he accused him of saying 'horrible things about a gentleman like Charlie Kirk', one who 'could have been president one day'.