Speaking to a crowd in North Carolina, Vice President JD Vance threw out a new explanation for Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr pressuring ABC to yank Jimmy Kimmel from the air: It was all just a “joke.”
“What people will say is, ‘Well, you know, didn’t the FCC commissioner put a tweet out that said something bad?’” Vance said, referring to the Donald Trump appointee’s remarks as “a joke on social media.”
Vance was replying to a reporter who’d asked how he was reconciling his past praise of free speech protections with Carr’s hinting that the FCC would take regulatory action if Disney-owned ABC didn’t punish Kimmel for criticizing conservatives’ response to the deadly shooting of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
The comments Vance appears to be referring to weren’t ones Carr made as a “joke on social media,” but rather during an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson last Wednesday.
“Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” Carr said.
“And again, you know, the FCC is gonna have remedies that we could look at,” he continued.
Carr had a completely straight face when he made those remarks. Neither man laughed. When Kimmel’s show was suspended hours later, Johnson proudly claimed it was because of what Carr said on his podcast.
“This is what got Kimmel fired. Right here. Watch,” he wrote on X alongside a video of their exchange. “It’s called soft power. The Left uses it all the time. Thanks to President Trump, the Right has learned how to wield power as well.”
Vance, meanwhile, insisted Wednesday that the administration really had nothing to do with Kimmel’s suspension.
“What is the government action that the Trump administration has engaged in to kick Jimmy Kimmel or anybody else off the air? Zero,” he said. “What government pressure have we brought to bear to tell people that they’re not allowed to speak their mind? Zero.”
But none of what’s transpiring appears to be a joke to Trump. In a Truth Social post raging about Disney bringing Kimmel back on the air on Tuesday, the president effectively told ABC to watch its back.
“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers!” he wrote, referencing a lawsuit the network settled with him late last year.
As Carr has come under fire for his remarks, he’s downplayed having anything to do with Kimmel’s suspension.
“Jimmy Kimmel is in the situation that he is in because of his ratings, not because of anything that’s happened at the federal government level,” Carr said at a forum in New York on Monday.
On social media, Carr has repeatedly said Kimmel’s suspension was simply a result of Disney and “local TV stations” objecting to his remarks.
“Those businesses decided that, in their view, a suspension made sense,” he wrote Tuesday. In another post that day, he said Democrats “simply can’t stand that local TV stations—for the first time in years—stood up to a national programmer & chose to exercise their lawful right to preempt programming.”
In reality, the decisions to preempt Kimmel’s show on local stations were made by the massive media broadcasters that own them: Sinclair and Nexstar, the latter of which is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6 billion merger with Tegna.
Vance offered another explanation for Kimmel’s suspension: “He’s not funny and has terrible ratings.”
But Kimmel may be getting the last laugh. Hours after Vance spoke, preliminary figures from Nielsen revealed that his Tuesday return averaged a whopping 6.2 million viewers, nearly four times bigger than his usual audience despite more than 20% of ABC affiliates still boycotting the show.