Ted Cruz is speaking out against the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to launch an early review of Disney‘s broadcast TV licenses amid backlash Jimmy Kimmel has faced for his “expectant widow” joke.
“It is not government’s job to censor speech, and I do not believe the FCC should operate as the speech police,” the Republican senator from Texas told Punchbowl News. He wasn’t the only one to criticize the FCC’s decision, as the National Association of Broadcasters also issued a statement on Wednesday.
“The FCC’s broadcast license renewal process must be grounded in predictability, fairness and transparency, principles reflected in the license terms Congress established and later extended. The Media Bureau’s nearly unprecedented request for one company to quickly reapply for all of its licenses — rather than utilize its traditional enforcement process — runs contrary to these principles and creates significant uncertainty for all broadcasters,” NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt said. “Broadcast stations already face intense challenges as they work to deliver trusted journalism, lifesaving emergency services, community programming and election coverage. The FCC must be careful to avoid actions that create further instability for the local stations viewers and listeners depend on.”
On Thursday, before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Kimmel poked fun at the event on his late night show, sharing faux remarks for his own dinner. He addressed the First Lady by noting, “Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”
After the shooting at Saturday’s WHCD, Donald and Melania Trump both called for the late night host to be fired from Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the joke. However, during the Monday episode of his show, Kimmel did not apologize for what he called a “light roast” remark and pushed back on Melania and the president’s request: “You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and the first lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job? We’ve all been there, right?”
The FCC then launched an early review of Disney‘s broadcast TV licenses on Tuesday. However, a Disney spokesperson told THR they were “confident that record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under the Communications Act and the First Amendment and are prepared to show that through the appropriate legal channels. Our focus remains, as always, on serving viewers in the local communities where our stations operate.”
Kimmel fired back at Trump on Tuesday’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, slamming the president for a joke he made at an event tied to the state visit by England’s King Charles.
In the president’s speech, he recalled how his parents were married for 63 years, and told his wife, “That’s a record we won’t be able to match, darling. It’s just not gonna work out that way.”
“Wait a minute. Did he just make a joke about his death?” Kimmel joked during his monologue on Tuesday. “My God, you should be fired for that.”
Cruz is not the only right-leaning figure to criticize the FCC’s move, as comedian Adam Carolla also came to Kimmel’s defense. On his podcast, Carolla said that the late night host’s remark was “a pretty typical roast joke.” He added, “It is also a trope: Any younger, beautiful woman who’s married to an older guy, especially if the guy’s rumored to be sort of a douchey, you would make that joke at any roast.”
“When you make a joke and then nothing happens, like there was no shooting, no one made a thing about it before the shooting. So then it’s kind of a thing where you go, like, ‘Oh, that Elisha Krauss, I hate that bitch, I hope she dies!’ And then two days later, you get in a car crash, and you die, then everyone looks at me and goes, ‘Now I’m angry at you,’” Carolla said. “But I’m like, if she never got in a car crash, you never said anything.”
He continued, “Like, this thing happened, then the joke happened before. So, A) it’s unrelated. B) I mean, to be fair, now people do this one too, they go, ‘It’s not like he wrote that joke, but he said that joke, but he didn’t write that joke. Somebody wrote that joke, and he said it.’”
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