Republican Senator Ted Cruz has blasted Donald Trump’s handpicked communications regulator, Brendan Carr, for demanding ABC suspend Jimmy Kimmel, describing his actions as “dangerous as hell” and “right out of Goodfellas.”
In the strongest rebuke yet from a GOP figure, the Texas Senator also warned that allowing the government to police political content set a dangerous precedent that would come back to haunt Republicans if the Democratic Party returned to power.
“They will silence us,” Cruz said. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly.”
Cruz’s comments come days after Kimmel was fired from his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, after making comments about the recent killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The late-night host criticized some in the MAGA movement for trying to distance themselves from the shooter, suggesting they were politicizing the murder.
In response, several large ABC affiliate groups—including Nexstar and Sinclair—said they would stop airing his show on their stations.
And Carr, a Project 2025 architect, who Trump picked to chair the Federal Communications Commission, threatened to revoke ABC’s broadcast license.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said.
But speaking on his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz, the outspoken Republican Senator said that while Kimmel had become “profoundly unfunny” over the years, Carr’s move was akin to mafia tactics and “what he said there is dangerous as hell.”
Putting on a mobster’s accent, Cruz declared: “That’s right out of a mafioso going into a bar, and going: ‘nice bar you have here, it would be a shame if something happened to it!’”
“Look, I understand,” he said, noting that Jimmy Kimmel, whose show he had been on previously, had mocked him so many times he’d lost count.
“But let me tell you: if the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said; we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like’—that will end up bad for conservatives,” Cruz warned.
Cruz joins several other Republicans who have warned this week on Capitol Hill about how the FCC wields its power, such as Jerry Moran from Kansas and Brett Guthrie from Kentucky.
But his comments are particularly notable because he is both a Trump ally and chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has oversight authority over the FCC.
He also described himself in the podcast as a “friend” of Carr’s, but strongly disagreed with what happened.
Speaking alongside co-host Ben Ferguson, Cruz argued that Kimmel was suspended not just because of controversial remarks about Kirk’s assassination, but because of poor ratings, ABC’s declining revenue, and a refusal to apologize.
He also disputed the notion that it was “cancel culture,” instead framing the ABC’s decision as a business one, coupled with consequences for Kimmel spreading “misinformation” about Kirk’s shooting.
The GOP Senator also gave his hot-take on the state of the industry more broadly, saying that “when Donald Trump got elected, it broke late-night comedy.”
“The host of late-night comedy, they used to be able to make fun of both sides. And by the way, good comedy, it ought to make fun of Republicans and Democrats,” he said.
“But Jimmy Kimmel, just like Stephen Colbert, his brain melted when Donald Trump came into the White House, and it is now unwatchable.”
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