Some learn the hard way that no matter how big a bribe you pay to buy “peace” from someone whose feelings are so fragile, so easily hurt, and so shamelessly dishonorable, capitulation is not going to work. ABC did not learn that lesson easily.
First, there was the $16 million payoff to Trump for George Stephanopoulos saying that Trump had been found liable for raping E. Jean Carroll, a position approved by Judge Lewis Kaplan, noting that while New York criminal law limited rape to the insertion of a penis into a vagina, most legal definitions were broader and included the insertion of any body part, or other physical item. Stephanopoulos’ statement was not just defensible, but accurate. Still, ABC paid Trump off, believing it would buy Trump’s mercy.
The came the Jimmy Kimmel kerfuffle, where Trump’s feelings, yet again, were hurt by a late-night comedian’s joke. Trump whined and threatened, and ABC pulled Kimmel off the airwaves for three days, until the opposing pressure became overwhelming. Another Kimmel kerfuffle followed, where Kimmel called Melania an “expectant widow,” but by then, ABC was starting to grasp that Trump was not the sort of honest politician who, once bought, stayed bought.
Then Trump’s FCC Chairman and lapdog, Brendan Carr, pulled the trigger to pull ABC’s broadcast license because it failed, according to Carr, to serve the “public interest” by airing news and jokes that displeased Trump. ABC’s initial reaction was to launch a public relations campaign, asking its viewers to “comment” to the FCC about how much they loved ABC. It was a surprising tactic, given that the FCC required extensive personal information from commenters, which many were unwilling to provide, and because the FCC didn’t actually give a damn about the comments anyway, merely going through the motions of statutory compliance before doing what they planned to do regardless.
Finally, ABC got the message.
ABC sued the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, accusing the agency of violating the First Amendment in its efforts to possibly strip the network’s local broadcasting licenses.
The company asked a federal court to stop the F.C.C. from pursuing the regulatory moves, which the network said posed an “existential threat” to its operations.
Can ABC do this, particularly given that the FCC has yet to take any action and, theoretically at least, could determine that everything with ABC is hunky dory and renew its license, leaving no case and controversy to be resolved? Who knows, because no television network has ever been in this position before, since no FCC commissioner has ever sublimated himself to a president’s delicate sensibilities like this before.
But the allegations of the complaint, that the action by the FCC is pure and unadulterated retaliation for its broadcasting things that made Trump sad, are overwhelming.
Government censorship is deeply un-American. That fundamental principle predates the Republic, with our Founders recognizing that “the freedom of the press is one of the great[est] bulwarks of liberty.” And it is no less true today, as the Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed only two years ago: the government may not “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.” NRA v. Vullo (2024).
This case concerns the Administration’s sustained effort to do just that. Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts.
That campaign began in this Administration’s earliest days and has only intensified since. Again and again, the Administration has attacked ABC’s speech—the stories its journalists report and the viewpoints its network programs air. Over time, those attacks have escalated into express demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast licenses because of its speech.
In prosecuting the Administration’s campaign against free speech on network television, the Commission fights on several fronts using its expansive regulatory powers. What has unfolded, in the words of sitting FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, is “a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control, carried out through the weaponization of the FCC’s authority as a federal regulator and aimed at pressuring a free and independent press and all media into submission.”
The stench of censorship isn’t just wafting through the halls of Disney, but every other network with the possible exception of Paramount because David Ellison says he’s there to serve as Trump’s broadcast organ, along with Fox and OAN. The message is clear: Serve Trump or die.
While it may be heartwarming to see ABC finally get off its knees and stand up for the First Amendment, not to mention its own existence, it should not be forgotten that ABC was very much part of the reason why Trump feels enabled to exert such outrageously improper and unconstitutional control over broadcast networks.
Like the sniveling law firms that caved to Trump, ABC leaped at the opportunity to capitulate by paying off Trump to the tune of $16 million rather than stand up for itself and the Constitution. What did they expect to happen the next time Trump’s feelz got tweaked? Did they have no grasp whatsoever of who they were dealing with, a person who only cared about what he could suck out of them at the next earliest opportunity?
If this is a viable action, which remains an open question, it is certainly in the best interest of a nation that ABC prevails. Either way, this should serve as an abject lesson at how not to deal with Trump if you want to survive. Capitulation only emboldens him to demand more. Better to fight and lose than capitulate in total humiliation and lose anyway.