'Made the threat': CNN brings the receipts as GOP spox tries to muddy 'timeline of events'
CNN “News Central” Host John Berman corrected Republican columnist and former White House spokesman Pete Seat on the timeline of ABC shutting down late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show.
Seat argued that Kimmell was acting in his own undoing by being too controversial, independent of the Trump administration’s crackdown on political humor.
“The second point, very quickly, is this timeline of events,” Seat told Berman. “Even CNN’s own reporting states that ABC had a conversation during this uproar with Jimmy Kimmel, and they came to the conclusion that he was too hot. He was ready to go on the show Wednesday night and give a monologue that would do even more damage to him. And they made this decision, I think, to protect Jimmy Kimmel from himself again.”
Berman reminded Seat, however, that Trump’s FCC Chair Brenden Carr was already using his allegedly unbiased role at the FCC to target comedy aimed at Trump.
“But if we're talking the timeline, it was still after Brendan Carr made the threat of pulling licenses from affiliates and Disney with Nexstar, and with ESPN needing football rights. So, again, the timeline here and the government action is what we have the editorials talking about here.”
Prior to correcting Seat, Berman spoke with Lift Our Voices Co-founder Julie Roginsky, who warned that a future Democratic president was itching to follow Trump’s lead and shut down Fox News.
“… I'll just caution my friends on the right, who are gloating over this,” said Roginsky. “It's a round world, my friends. And … one day, there's going to be a Democrat who's going put somebody in charge of the FCC and that person is going to make a call to Lachlan Murdoch, and say ‘ hey, if you want your station groups to have any kind of access to Fox broadcast you’ve gotta get rid of Greg Gutfeld’s [comedy show] over on Fox News.”
“That’s not a road anybody wants to go down,” Roginsky added. “I feel that Greg Gutfeld has the right to say the stupid stuff he says … and this is a Pandora’s Box of retribution after retribution after retribution.”
