{"id":156629,"date":"2025-09-20T07:52:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T07:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156629\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T07:52:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T07:52:11","slug":"abcs-suspension-of-jimmy-kimmel-is-corporate-cowardice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156629\/","title":{"rendered":"ABC\u2019s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel is corporate cowardice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 18 <\/a>episode of \u201cDeadline: White House.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, ABC announced that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s late-night show <\/a>off the air \u201cindefinitely\u201d over comments the comedian made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The announcement came shortly after Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr<\/a>, <\/a>threatened to \u201ctake action\u201d against the network over Kimmel\u2019s remarks, floating the possibility of revoking ABC affiliates\u2019 licenses as punishment.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s decision shows there\u2019s definitely at least one thing Trump and these corporate executives have in common: cowardice.<\/p>\n

The president wouldn\u2019t be attacking the media if he were as confident or as popular as he tries to pretend he is. Just like he wouldn\u2019t be redrawing the lines of congressional districts<\/a> if he confidently thought his party could win the next election. This is just another desperate move from a desperate man trying to cling to power and quiet any possible criticism or dissent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It took ABC executives only a few hours to bend the knee to the administration. They did not have to capitulate. When Trump has tried to threaten others over bogus facts and bogus laws, they\u2019ve taken him to court \u2014 and in most cases, they\u2019ve won<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The idea that these executives are trying to rationalize giving up freedom of speech in this country as a \u201cbusiness decision\u201d because they don\u2019t want to fight Trump in court is just corporate cowardice. That\u2019s all it is.<\/p>\n

Frankly, it\u2019s like these executives aren\u2019t reading the same polls <\/a>that the rest of America is reading. Most Americans see what Trump is doing, and they don\u2019t want to follow him off a cliff. They don\u2019t want to lose the very essence of American democracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Do these corporate executives not see that? And do they not realize they\u2019re losing more customers than they\u2019re gaining by surrendering to Trump?<\/p>\n

This country craves two things: honesty and bravery. And right now, there\u2019s not a lot of either of those on display.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Claire McCaskill<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri.\u00a0She is currently an MSNBC and NBC News political analyst.<\/p>\n

Allison Detzel contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 18 episode of \u201cDeadline: White House.\u201d On Wednesday, ABC announced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-156629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}