Now that Disney and ABC have bucked President Trump’s authoritarian censorship regime and reinstated comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show, MAGA personalities are in a seething fury. They’re claiming the move insults Charlie Kirk’s memory—Kimmel’s original sin concerned a poorly timed quote about Kirk’s murder—and that this shows Disney hates MAGA’s rank and file. As one influential MAGA figure put it to her followers: “DISNEY LOATHES YOU.”
But another message is also emanating from MAGA-world that’s gone mostly unnoticed. It shows that Trump and MAGA have hidden political weaknesses in this battle that those taking on Trump should keep in mind: These authoritarian assaults on the First Amendment are triggering a major cultural backlash, and it appears substantially stronger than the impulse that spurred the assaults in the first place.
To wit: Even as they rage against Disney’s decision, Trumpworld and MAGA figures are also seizing this moment to claim that Kimmel’s reinstatement shows that his original ouster was not the result of authoritarian pressure from Trump. It was a mere business decision by Disney.
“He’s back tomorrow,” chortled Fox News’s Kayleigh McEnany. “So quite clearly the government didn’t force this.” Sean Hannity scoffed of his ouster: “This was a decision by ABC-Disney—not the government.” Jesse Watters insisted: “This was a show-biz decision.” And pro-Trump commentator Scott Jennings tweeted: “So basically his employer suspended him for being an insensitive prick, and we don’t live in an authoritarian regime? Got it.”
The new MAGA line, you see, is that Kimmel’s original ouster was merely Disney making an independent choice to punish an employee for offending its customers. As Politico put it, the claim is that Trump’s “authoritarian” power is “perhaps not quite what many on the left had made it out to be.”
But this reading suffers from an elementary logical flaw. The mere fact that Trump has not succeeded in permanently ousting Kimmel doesn’t mean he didn’t bring highly corrupt authoritarian pressure on Disney and ABC toward that end. Yes, it’s true that Trump’s authoritarian powers are not limitless. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t extensively employing autocratic tactics that are profoundly worrying and nonetheless do require serious vigilance. Media figures shouldn’t let MAGA gaslight them with this silly scam.
Let’s quickly review. Just before ABC pulled Kimmel’s show, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr went on a right-wing podcast and threatened ABC with government retaliation, should it fail to suspend Kimmel. Carr accused Kimmel of spreading “misinformation” about Kirk’s alleged assassin—a reference to Kimmel’s earlier claim that the alleged shooter was himself MAGA.
That may have been ill-advised or possibly false, but it’s still speech—and Carr added that if Disney and ABC don’t “take action on Kimmel,” they may see “suspension” of broadcast licenses.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said, clearly addressing Disney. He also said that “individual licensed stations” must “step up,” whereupon Nexstar and Sinclair—which together own a lot of stations that carry ABC content—both pulled Kimmel, piling pressure on ABC. Nexstar is currently vying for FCC approval of its multi-billion-dollar merger with Tenga. Carr knew this would weigh on Nexstar.
In short, Carr made the threat of government retribution for disfavored speech explicit, without leaving any space for plausible deniability. Trump even said the following:
Trump: They give only me bad publicity or press—they’re getting a license, I think maybe their license should be taken away. That will be up to Carr… pic.twitter.com/tYOpYfx9iE
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 18, 2025
MAGA figures might argue that even so, all this didn’t play any direct role in Disney’s suspension of Kimmel. But Oliver Darcy reports that Carr’s threats spurred “emergency meetings” among ABC executives about Kimmel. Of course the FCC chair and the president himself threatening direct government retaliation weighed on these executives and helped spur Kimmel’s original ouster. Carr personally celebrated this outcome!
But now the reinstatement of Kimmel has MAGA figures in a rage. Mega-influencer Robby Starbuck accused Disney and ABC of surrendering. So did a spokesman Kirk’s Turning Point USA. Fox’s Megyn Kelly fumed that Kimmel’s suspension lasted only five nights, and lamented that he’s “right back under klieg lights.” MAGA personality Mollie Hemingway fumed that Disney “loathes” conservatives.
It’s telling that some MAGA propagandists are now rewriting this whole story to erase any role that Trump’s corrupt pressure played in Kimmel’s original suspension. As Matt Gertz details, this is only one of many egregious MAGA media whitewashings of Trump’s authoritarianism, yet it’s also one of the worst yet.
Perhaps most buffoonish is Carr himself, who is now claiming no role in that suspension. He now says: “Kimmel is in the situation that he’s in because of his ratings, not because of anything that’s happened at the federal government level.” This, after he directly threatened to wield agency power and did an end-zone dance when it temporarily worked.
The truth about this sleazy little game is that MAGA wants the best of both worlds. They wanted Trump and Carr to wield authoritarian pressure to bully networks into silencing someone whose speech about Kirk—but also about Trump—they hate. And when that actually worked, they tried to recast it as a sign of the cultural times, as an indication that the culture is moving inexorably in Trump’s direction.
Hannity insisted last week, for instance, that Kimmel had been removed because audiences were tired of “nonstop, never-ending hate-Donald-Trump.” In other words, the culture is registering a massive backlash to anti-Trump humor. The markets have spoken! But if that were the case, then Trump and Carr wouldn’t need to wield the pressure of the authoritarian state to oust him.
Paradoxically enough, it was that use of authoritarian state power that provoked a massive cultural backlash—but in the opposite direction. Unions representing nearly half a million workers condemned Disney for caving to Trump’s autocratic pressure. An astonishing range of figures with large followings drawn from across the culture spoke out, including the occasional conservative Republican. Data analyst G. Elliott Morris demonstrates that the backlash reached from the small-investor class to ordinary consumers. As The New York Times reports, Disney faced “pressure from its customers, some of whom canceled Disney+ subscriptions and Disney World vacations in protest.”
We don’t know how this situation will play out. Trump and Carr may level new threats against Disney that could still work. Meanwhile, Nexstar and Sinclar are, for now, refusing to air Kimmel going forward. Could that hurt Kimmel? Maybe. But as the Reliable Sources newsletter points out, many Nexstar and Sinclair stations “are in small or mid-sized markets with more conservative political leanings,” while Kimmel’s “ratings and ad value comes from larger, liberal-leaning markets.”
So how big is anti-Kimmel America, and how deep into the culture does it really run, when it comes down to it?
Here’s the bottom line: While Kirk’s death was an appalling tragedy and he was unquestionably beloved by millions, the Trumpist right has baited the media into inflating Kirk’s cultural and societal importance far beyond that, into deifying him as akin to a world historical martyr—and into exaggerating the hold that Trumpism has on the culture writ large.
The reality MAGA will not acknowledge is this: Trump’s authoritarian tactics in suppression of disfavored speech are themselves triggering a massive cultural outcry. And by all indications, it’s larger than the one driving the push to censor imperfect speech about Kirk. Trump-MAGA have basically been bluffing: Their overbearing threats and bluster are meant to snooker us into believing that the culture is lost, that Trump’s grip on it is unshakable, that mobilization is futile. For now, this episode has demonstrated precisely the opposite, and we shouldn’t let ourselves forget it.
The post MAGA Rages over Jimmy Kimmel’s Return—and Reveals a Big Trump Weakness appeared first on New Republic.
