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Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump’s FCC wants to keep a Democratic Senate candidate off the air.
What’s happening? On Wednesday, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel announced that his upcoming interview with James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, would not air on TV. Instead, he said, “due to circumstances beyond our comprehension,” it would be posted only on YouTube.
According to Kimmel, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission “has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations, based on simple, traditional editorial decisions — guest bookings it would seem they don’t like.”
Can Trump do that? It’s unclear — but he can at least make it painful enough for companies that they decide it’s not worth the headache. Kimmel said on Wednesday that his show’s decision was made “out of consideration for our local stations…who would have to deal with this nonsense” if they aired the interview.
Late-night shows like Kimmel’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! have long been considered exempt from something called the equal-time rule, which requires broadcasters to give equal air time for candidates contending for the same office.
In January, however, the Trump administration said that late-night shows needed to comply with the rule; the next month, CBS declined to air an interview with Talarico on its late-night show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. (That interview was also posted to YouTube, where it’s since garnered about 9.5 million views.)
Last month, ABC and its parent company, Disney, sued the FCC over its attempt to force a review of ABC’s broadcast licenses.
What’s the big picture? This kind of attack on the media is a familiar tactic from competitive authoritarian systems like Hungary, as my colleague Zack Beauchamp explained last year. Trump’s efforts to do the same in the US have often been clumsy or unsuccessful — but in this case, it seems to be working.
And with that, it’s time to log off…
Here’s a fun, strange story from Chicago: The city found a very big, very old boulder in the process of excavating to expand O’Hare Airport, and now it’s holding a contest to name the rock. You can read all about it (and find the link to suggest a name) here.
Have a great evening, and we’ll see you tomorrow!
