Brendan Carr doesn’t regret his threats to broadcasters
Brendan Carr, a rebel, testified Wednesday before the Senate Commerce Committee in his first public appearance before lawmakers since threatening broadcasters who aired comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show.
For nearly three hours, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission oscillated between heated exchanges with Democrats and largely silent questions from Republicans. But at least some members of both parties have expressed concern that regulators are skirting the First Amendment — even if there is little sign it will have much impact on Carr.
Comments Carr made in September following the public assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk took center stage. After Kimmel made a joke on his late-night show about the killer’s political ideology, Carr told interviewer Benny Johnson that it was “some of the sickest behavior possible” and could be a problem for the broadcasters who air the show. “We can do it the easy way or the hard way,” he said.
The remarks went too far even for a handful of Republican lawmakers, including Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX), who likened them to mob talk. But during the hearing, Carr denied the comment posed a threat, calling the idea “projection and distortion by Democrats.” He has repeatedly reiterated his insistence that the FCC ensure that broadcast licenses are used in the public interest, including combating alleged distortions of information. He declined to express regret for the comments. “My job is to enforce the law passed by Congress, which includes a public interest standard, and broadcast television is fundamentally different from any other medium,” Carr told the panel.
“My job is to enforce the law as passed by Congress, which includes a public policy standard.”
For the most part, it was Democrats who criticized Carr for his comments about Kimmel, but Cruz reiterated his criticism at the start of the hearing. However, he also accused his fellow Democrats of hypocrisy due to their silence on the jawbones allegations under the Biden administration. Cruz called on his Democratic peers to join him in passing reforms.
Several groups have warned that the public interest duty and information distortion standard for broadcast licensees are too ambiguous and imperfect, and Democrats may be willing to refine them. Carr appeared at the hearing alongside the two other FCC commissioners, Democrat Anna Gomez and Republican Olivia Trusty. Speaking to reporters afterward, Gomez said she “would welcome Congress legislating the public interest standard, because what we’ve seen under this administration is the weaponization of the FCC and the abuse of our regulatory authority in order to silence speech.” Gomez accused the Republican majority of “using the phrase ‘operating in the public interest’ as an excuse to attack content that this administration doesn’t like. And that’s not valid. It’s against the First Amendment.”
Most Republicans, except Cruz, either did not respond to Carr’s threats or attacked Democrats for alleged hypocrisy, without taking a stand themselves. Several Republicans asked questions on much less controversial topics, like broadband maps and combating robocall scams.
In contrast, Carr and the Democrats on the panel often ended up talking over each other in difficult exchanges. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asked whether Carr would have threatened broadcasters to take Kimmel off the air if he had made the kind of remarks Trump made recently on Truth Social, baselessly claiming that progressive filmmaker Rob Reiner was killed because he made people angry with “TRUMP DISRANGEMENT SYNDROME.” “The Democrats on this platform are accusing me of practicing censorship,” Carr responded, “and now you’re trying to encourage me to police speech on the Internet. I’m just not going to do it.” Schatz asked if there were any conservative commentators or comedians who say something offensive that he would consider investigating. “I don’t watch things that are offensive or horrible, to use your words,” Carr said. “I look at things that are consistent with our public policy rules and regulations.”
When Carr tried to turn Klobuchar’s questions about the Trump administration’s alleged censorship on the Biden administration, Klobuchar fired back. “Joe Biden is no longer president. You’re the head of the FCC and Donald Trump is president and I’m trying to deal with that right now,” she said.
Other Democratic senators addressed an obvious pattern within the FCC: The agency no longer considers itself independent. Carr declined to give a yes or no answer to Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) on whether the FCC is an independent agency. Lujan showed a printout from the FCC website that said that was the case. “It’s not a trick question,” Lujan said. When Carr admitted that the FCC was not independent, Lujan asked, “Is your website wrong? Is your website lying?”
“Maybe,” Carr said.
The FCC website appears to have recently been updated to remove the word independent. Alisa Valentin, director of broadband policy at Public Knowledge, said on Bluesky that the FCC website still appeared to characterize the agency as independent as of 11:54 a.m. Wednesday. The Internet Archive last captured the page on October 1, when the word “independent” was still there.
Carr did not respond to a question from Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) about whether he had conversations with the president or his top officials “about using the FCC to pursue criticism,” saying he would not discuss specific conversations with the president. When Kim rephrased the question of whether it would be appropriate for the administration to provide such direction to pressure media companies, Carr refused to “jump into hypotheticals.”
“Trump is not your boss. The American people are your boss”
“The simple answer is no,” Kim said. “It’s not an assumption, it’s just trying to determine whether or not you understand that your job belongs to the American people. Trump is not your boss. The American people are your boss.” Kim also pointed out that Trump said in August that he would favor having the FCC revoke the broadcast licenses of ABC and NBC because he believed they were engaging in biased coverage of him.
Cruz and Kim debated past examples of lawmakers pressuring the FCC to review media mergers based on what each perceived to be partisan interests. But Kim argued that such letters constitute Congress’s “appropriate oversight role” and are very different from Chairman Carr’s “threats against the companies he directly regulates.”
Towards the end of the exchanges, the two lawmakers expressed common ground. “The First Amendment is not simply a one-way license for one team to abuse power and the other not to,” Cruz said. “Instead, we should respect the freedom of speech of all Americans, regardless of party.” Kim said he agreed and said he hoped to work together “to show that we’re doing this regardless of who violated, that we’re trying to show that integrity in the process.”
Carr has already rejected a Democratic senator’s call for resignation, and it seems unlikely that Congress would otherwise make serious attempts to impeach him. Cruz appears eager to use this moment to enact legal changes that he thinks conservatives will appreciate once the shoe is on the other foot. The question now is whether he can put together a coalition strong enough to achieve this.
