President Trump received thunderous applause during his second inaugural address in January when he vowed to “immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.”
It was in keeping with the popular free-speech refrain of his long march out of the political wilderness and his first-term broadsides against “cancel culture,” which he had called “the very definition of totalitarianism.” His message had particular resonance with his supporters. After all, major social media companies banished him and others from their services in the days and weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, riots.
Yet he is now conducting the most punishing government crackdown against major American media institutions in modern times, using what seems like every tool at his disposal to eradicate reporting and commentary with which he disagrees.
ABC’s decision on Wednesday to “indefinitely” suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show, for comments the host made about the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, illuminates the administration’s efficacy so far. Far from decrying the silencing of a comedian, Mr. Trump celebrated what he termed a “cancellation” by declaring it “Great News for America” on Truth Social.
The decision comes after multimillion-dollar legal settlements from CBS and ABC in lawsuits filed by Mr. Trump that legal experts had viewed as long shots; after CBS News’s agreement to change the way it presents political interviews under administration pressure; and after an agreement by CBS’s newly merged parent company, Paramount Skydance, to appoint an “ombudsman” to hear complaints about its coverage. (The company named for the job a conservative policy veteran.)
“Taken together, the attacks on all of our media institutions is certainly unprecedented in modern American history,’’ said Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “I can’t think of any parallel.”
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