Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) slammed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr for policing speech after the FCC chair pressured ABC into suspending Jimmy Kimmel.
Carr's statement that ABC must take action against Kimmel was "absolutely inappropriate," Paul said on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday. "Brendan Carr has got no business weighing in on this."
Paul went on to say that employees can be fired for "despicable comments" and that broadcast station owners like Sinclair have the right to object to content distributed by networks. But he said "the FCC should have nothing to do with it... you can be fired for not being popular, this is television for goodness sakes. You have to sell sponsorships, you have to sell commercials, and if you're losing money, you can be fired. But the government's got no business in it and the FCC was wrong to weigh in, and I'll fight any attempt by the government to get involved with speech."
Meet the Press host Kristin Welker then asked Paul about two clips of President Trump talking about free speech. In one clip from the campaign, Trump said he would sign an executive order to end government censorship and bring back free speech. In the other, much newer clip, Trump said that when "97 percent of the stories are bad about a person, that's no longer free speech, that's just cheating."
Paul: “I can’t control” what Trump says
Paul avoided making any direct criticism of Trump at this point in the interview. He said he applauds Trump for ending what Paul called the Biden administration's "official censorship," which involved pressuring social media companies to remove posts. Paul said he objects to the FCC threatening broadcast licenses, which is a frequent demand made by Trump when he's unhappy about news coverage.
"I can't control everything the president says and I don't think that having the FCC weigh in on licenses is right, I will fight that, but I can tell you that throughout government the censorship apparatus that Biden put in place is gone," Paul said.