Ted Cruz spoke out against the FCC’s decision to conduct an early review of Disney’s television licenses amid backlash Jimmy Kimmel faced over his “pregnant widow” joke.
“It’s not the government’s job to censor speech, and I don’t think the FCC should act as the free speech police,” the Republican senator from Texas told Punchbowl News. He wasn’t the only one to criticize the FCC’s decision, as the National Association of Broadcasters also issued a statement on Wednesday.
“The FCC’s broadcast license renewal process should be grounded in predictability, fairness, and transparency, principles reflected in the license terms created and subsequently extended by Congress. The Media Bureau’s nearly unprecedented request for one company to quickly reapply for all of its licenses — rather than using the traditional enforcement process — runs counter to these principles and creates significant uncertainty for all broadcasters,” said NAB President and CEO Curtis Leggett. “Broadcast stations already face severe challenges as they work to provide reliable journalism, life-saving emergency services, community programming, and election coverage. The FCC must be careful to avoid actions that create further instability for viewers and listeners at the local stations they depend on.”
On Thursday, before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Kimmel mocked the event on his late-night show, sharing phony remarks at his own dinner. He addressed the First Lady, saying: “Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have the glow of a pregnant widow.”
Following the WHCD firing on Saturday, both Donald and Melania Trump called for the late-night host to be fired Jimmy Kimmel Live! For a joke. However, during Monday’s episode of his show, Kimmel did not apologize for what he called a “mildly grilled” remark, taking issue with Melania and the president’s request: “You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and the First Lady puts out a statement demanding that you be fired from your job? We’ve all been there, right?”
The FCC then launched an early review of Disney’s television licenses on Tuesday. However, a Disney spokesperson said THR They were “confident that the record demonstrates our continued qualifications as licensees under communications law and the First Amendment and are prepared to demonstrate that through the appropriate legal channels. Our focus remains, as always, on serving viewers in the local communities where our stations operate.”
Kimmel responded to Trump on Tuesday’s episode of the show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The president was criticized for a joke he made at an event linked to the state visit of England’s King Charles.
In the president’s speech, he recalled how his parents had been married for 63 years, and told his wife: “That’s a record we’ll never be able to match, honey. It won’t work that way.”
“Wait a minute. Did he make a joke about his death?” Kimmel joked during his monologue on Tuesday. “Oh my God, you should get fired for this.”
Cruz isn’t the only right-wing figure to criticize the FCC’s move, with comedian Adam Carolla also defending Kimmel. Carolla said on his podcast that the late-night host’s remark was a “pretty typical barbecue joke.” He added: “It’s also a metaphor: any young, beautiful woman married to an older man, especially if the man is rumored to be an idiot, you’re going to make that joke at any roast.”
“When you tell a joke and then nothing happens, it’s like there was no shooting, and no one did anything about it before the shooting. So it’s like this thing where you go, like, ‘Oh, Elisha Krauss, I hate that bitch, I hope she dies!'” And then two days later, she gets in a car accident, dies, and then everyone looks at me and says, “Now I’m mad at.” You“But if you had never been in a car accident, you would never have said anything,” Carolla said.
He continued: “Like, this thing happened, and then the joke happened before. So, A) it’s irrelevant. B) I mean, to be fair, now people do this joke too, they say, ‘It’s not like he wrote that joke, but he said that joke, but he didn’t write that joke.’ “Someone wrote that joke and told it.”
