Rand Paul and Ted Cruz: The FCC's phony right-wing critics

Rand Paul and Ted Cruz: The FCC’s phony right-wing critics
Jimmy Kimmel returned to the air Tuesday, but no thanks to the FCC's conservative "critics" like Sen. Rand Paul

By Charles R. Davis
News Editor
Published September 24, 2025 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) It’s not easy playing both a libertarian and a supporter of President Donald Trump. Here you have an administration that, more than any other in American history, rests and wriggles on the whims of one man who would be king — who, indeed, asserts a unique and unchallenged right to insert himself into every aspect of American life.

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To be a libertarian and MAGA requires a good deal of pretending not to see what the American state is up to. It also, from time to time, demands a good, principled denunciation, lest the man of principle (these are libertarians: it’s almost always a man) be accused of condoning some glaring contradictions.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., decided over the weekend that it was time for one of those periodic displays of not standing for it.

“Absolutely inappropriate,” Paul said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked about the Trump administration pressuring another late-night comedian off the air. “Brendan Carr has got no business weighing in on this,” he said, referring to the MAGA FCC chairman who had told ABC that it could remove Jimmy Kimmel from its evening lineup itself, billed as “the easy way,” or big government would have to step in and do it “the hard way.”

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And that’s the Trump administration’s principled, right-wing critics in a nutshell: As freedom of speech is under assault, the actually-existing powers that be are critiqued only in the context of potentially, in the future, empowering the real enemies of liberty on the other side. Cruz, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, could demand real answers from the FCC and push back on what his Democratic colleagues describe as an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment.” So far, though, he hasn’t announced a hearing or even sent a sternly-worded letter; since commenting on the FCC-Kimmel brouhaha, he has, instead, released two more episodes of his podcast. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/09/24/rand-paul-and-ted-cruz-the-fccs-phony-right-wing-critics/