'There’s always a tweet': FCC chair’s anti-censorship posts come back to haunt him

In the wake of ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel's firing over comments made about President Donald Trump's lackluster reaction to the slaying of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is getting slammed on social media by his own posts previously condemning censorship.

Carr has served on the FCC since 2017, having been nominated and unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times under both the Trump and Biden administrations.

Kimmel was fired by ABC/Disney following Carr's appearance on conservative podcaster Benny Johnson's podcast, during which he said, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

But social media sleuths immediately dug up Carr's own posts in which he blatantly contradicts his latest position.

Resurfacing from May 2022 are two posts, one in which Carr quotes President Joe Biden at the White House Correspondents' dinner, where he said, "good satire about our leaders — about our society — is [sic] quintesstially an American thing,” with a picture of satirical far-right website The Babylon Bee joking that it was suspended from X, formerly known as Twitter.

The other, however, was more definitive on his own position, saying, "President Biden is right. Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people in to the discussion. That’s why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship."

A Carr post from December, 2023 doubled down on his views then, saying, “Free speech is the counterweight — it is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream."

Social media users had a field day over these, with former NBC News host Chuck Todd asking on X, “What happened to this regulator?” and journalist David Sirota saying, "There's always a tweet."

Political scientist Ian Bremmer said, “worth reconsideration," and polling expert Adam Carlson laughed, saying, “Big, if true."

And while Carr doubled down on the Kimmel firing Wednesday on "Hannity," saying, "Over the years, the FCC walked away from enforcing that public interest obligation. I don’t think we’re better off as a country for it," not everyone was buying it.

His tweets "aged like fine whine," X user Darren Haber replied.