Capture the Media, Control the Culture?

https://prospect.org/power/2025-09-22-capture-media-control-culture-trump-kimmel/



Two developments have raised to a new level the long conservative drive to control American culture. President Trump and his aides have declared that they will use all the tools federal power gives them to silence criticism in the media, and MAGA-aligned billionaires have bought major media outlets and begun moving them to the right.

The most stunning development is the decision by ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel in the wake of threats by Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr to revoke the broadcast licenses of ABC stations because of Kimmel’s comments about the suspect in the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

President Trump then made clear this was no one-off case. He said that the major TV networks had been overwhelmingly “negative” about him and suggested that “maybe their license should be taken away.” The administration has also threatened to prosecute what it calls “hate speech” from the left and to revoke the tax-exempt status of foundations loosely connected to media that have criticized Trump.

Defenders of free speech should be grateful for these open and flagrant threats. Trump might have tried to silence critics by indirect means with plausible deniability. But by his own words and deeds, he has brought home to millions of Americans three things that his critics would have otherwise had more trouble establishing.

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