Fox News host Kennedy warned her colleagues that FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s threats to ABC and Disney over comments that got Jimmy Kimmel suspended could be used against Fox in the future.
“I do have an issue with statements made by Brendan Carr because if there were an FCC commissioner on the other side—from someone maybe on this network and they did not like their speech, would they put pressure on some of the advertisers?“ the self-described libertarian host said on Fox News’ Outnumbered Thursday afternoon.
On Wednesday, Carr intimated threats to Kimmel, ABC, and Disney in a conversation with right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson.
“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” he said. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
By Wednesday night, Kimmel was “suspended indefinitely.” Rolling Stone reporting says Carr’s threats were heard by ABC execs who “feared Trump” though they personally felt Kimmel had not said anything “over the line.”
Carr and Johnson took issue with a sentence Kimmel delivered during his Monday monologue that reads, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
They characterized the comments as “misleading the public” on the motives of Kirk’s alleged killer Tyler Robinson, which were unknown at the time as conflicting reports about Robinson’s motives and political alignment swirled.
Others have argued Kimmel’s comments accurately expressed the conservative response to Kirk’s murder the weekend following the shooting. There was widespread speculation on Robinson’s political alignment in the wake of the shooting, as both left and right-wing commentators tried to interpret details about his life and the memes etched onto the bullet casings as evidence Robinson belonged to the opposite tribe.
On Tuesday, the indictment against Robinson suggested he had moved leftward away from his family. It also included alleged texts between Robinson and his trans partner in which Robinson stated he had “enough of Kirk’s hate.”
Kennedy’s anxiety has been expressed at a time when many suggest that Fox News does not “operate in the public interest,” to use Carr’s phrase about ABC.
Social media commenters have pointed to instances in which Fox News has lied about current events, such as the results of the 2020 election, and made incendiary comments, such as host Brian Kilmeade’s suggestion last week that America “kill” the homeless.
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