President posts 'CONGRATULATIONS to ABC' after the network suspends a late-night show; the FCC chair had threatened the network's affiliates.

Pay attention. This one is the one. FCC. Federal Communications Commission. The agency that decides whether your local TV station gets to renew its license every eight years. The agency, in other words, that has the kill switch on the physical broadcast of every ABC affiliate in America.

The chair of the FCC, a man named Brendan Carr, went on a YouTube show this week. YouTube, not a hearing. YouTube. and said, on camera, that ABC needs to do something about Jimmy Kimmel for the monologue Kimmel did about the Charlie Kirk shooting. Carr said we can do this the easy way or the hard way. He said it on camera. The video is up. The hard way.

Twenty-four hours later, ABC and Disney suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live. Indefinitely. Pulled the show. Sent everybody home. The producers, the writers, the band. Hard way? Easy way? Easy way.

The President, who runs the executive branch the FCC sits inside of, posted on Truth Social: Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Caps. Exclamation. Congratulations.

Buddy. Three problems. Three.

Problem one. The FCC, by statute and by tradition, does not regulate the content of programming. The First Amendment is sitting right there. You can fight about what counts as obscenity at midnight, you can fight about kids’ programming on Saturday morning, but a late-night talk show monologue is core protected speech. Carr knows that. Carr went to law school. Carr knows.

Problem two. The threat worked. Disney, which is a thirty-billion-dollar-a-year company that owns ABC, looked at a YouTube clip from the FCC chair and folded. By the next day. Without going to court. Without filing anything. Folded. And the President publicly thanked them for folding.

Problem three. The public thanks tells the next network what to do. CBS sees the post. NBC sees the post. The local Sinclair affiliate, which already does not like Kimmel, sees the post. Every newsroom in America, whose lawyers are now on the phone Monday morning, sees the post.

By Monday evening Disney reversed and put Kimmel back on the air. Sinclair and Nexstar, which together control most of the country’s physical ABC affiliates, refused to air the show on their stations anyway. So now Kimmel is on the air on some ABC stations and not others. In the same country.

I have been arguing with televisions for thirty years. This one I will argue with at full volume, on the porch, with the screen door open, until the neighbors come over to agree.