Obama scolds media companies: Get a spine
Barack Obama has waded into the national spotlight for a second time this week, scolding media companies for caving to Trump administration complaints by suspending Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show and adopting the cancel culture they once denounced.
Obama said Thursday that the Kimmel decision is part of an alarming attack on the First Amendment in the aftermath of the killing of Republican activist Charlie Kirk.
“After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” Obama wrote on X.
Obama doesn’t routinely comment on the news of the day. His social media post came just days after he delivered a pointed message about Kirk at a forum in Erie, Pennsylvania, saying that the killing of the Turning Point USA founder should be condemned but Americans should be free to criticize his views.
His social media post came hours after Disney announced it was suspending Kimmel.
“This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent — and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it,” Obama wrote, linking to a New York Times report that detailed the Washington Post’s firing of Karen Attiah, a columnist who said she was let go for her social media activity following Kirk’s killing.
Kimmel came under fire from White House officials for comments he made during a Monday broadcast of his show that appeared to align Kirk’s suspected killer with the MAGA movement.
Democrats have panned the comedian’s suspension, which came after Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr threatened consequences if the network failed to take action against the comedian in a Wednesday podcast with conservative commentator Benny Johnson.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told Johnson, threatening “additional work for the FCC.”
Key Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, are now calling for the FCC chair’s resignation.
The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Obama’s comments. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told POLITICO that the notion of government encroaching on free speech had no involvement in Kimmel’s suspension, but was the result of a decision by a private company.
“Low-ratings loser Jimmy Kimmel is free to spew whatever bad jokes he wants, but a private company is under no obligation to provide him a platform to do so,” she said in a statement.
At the event in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Obama himself mourned the loss of the Turning Point USA founder while making it clear that he disagrees with much of what Kirk stood for. And he faulted the current administration for the bleak state of American political discourse.
“When I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents vermin, enemies who need to be targeted, that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now,” Obama said.
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