Trump's latest bullying frenzy has set him up for a mortifying defeat

If Donald Trump’s skin gets any thinner, the US will have its first translucent president.

Trump, who relishes belittling people with unpresidential insults, like calling Democrats “scum” and “the enemy within,” can’t take it when his slurs boomerang back at him.

Instead of accepting that jokes, jabs and insults come with the territory — satirizing presidents is an American tradition — Trump reacts like an enraged teenager when anyone insults him.

Whenever the media fail to fawn, or worse, accurately report Trump’s unprecedented corruption or ineptitude, Trump’s first instinct is to use federal resources to seek retribution against them. He’s like a schoolyard bully who punches and punches and punches down. When his victim finally hits back, he runs away terrified.

Strongmen can’t handle ridicule

While Trump works to silence media outlets that cover him truthfully, comedic ridicule seems to sting him most acutely.

As authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat points out, “humor has long been one of the most effective weapons of anti-authoritarian politics. Behind the facade of their omnipotence, most strongmen are brittle and insecure personalities. They don’t mind being called evil, but being ridiculed is a different matter.”

Trump personifies that observation:

• He remains obsessed with comedian Rosie O’Donnell, and recently threatened to strip her of her US citizenship, which he can’t do.
• Comedian Stephen Colbert’s show was cancelled in July after Colbert criticized CBS's parent company, Paramount Global, for paying $16 million to settle Trump’s bogus lawsuit claiming the network interfered in the 2024 election because they edited a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
• The White House issued a formal response attacking the comedy South Park for jokes about Trump’s penis size; look for Trump to seek the show’s cancellation in the future.
• And yesterday, ABC indefinitely suspended long-time Trump critic Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Kimmel’s crime? A political joke about Charlie Kirk’s shooter.

Kimmel on the block

Kimmel’s show was suspended after Kimmel talked about the horrific Charlie Kirk murder during his comedic monologue.

Kimmel said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Whether Kimmel’s remarks were funny or not, anyone who spent five minutes online after Kirk was shot knows that statement to be largely true: right-wing commentators, Trump, and Trump supporters were salivating over the prospect that Kirk’s shooter was from the left, even before his identity was known.

Then, after the shooter was identified as coming from a pro-Trump MAGA family, the right rejected that narrative and insisted the crime was attributable to Democrats, using it to foment and harness political hatred.

Nice network you got there…

Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Brendan Carr, decided to escalate matters, threatening ABC over Kimmel’s joke, apparently not understanding that what he was delivering was an admission of liability.

Flexing legal muscle he doesn’t have, Carr doesn’t seem to understand that neither he, nor Trump, nor the Attorney General can use federal resources to silence Trump’s critics, because political speech is strictly protected under the First Amendment.

Since the famous New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), political speech has enjoyed strong protection from the courts, arguably the most rigorous legal protection of any category of speech.

In a statement that should go directly into Kimmel’s First Amendment complaint, Carr said Kimmel’s joke that Kirk’s shooter “was somehow a MAGA or a Republican-motivated person” — clear political speech — would be punished.

Expressly threatening ABC’s broadcast license over the statement, Carr stated, “I've been very clear from the moment that I have become chairman of the FCC … what people don't understand is that the broadcasters … are entirely different than people that use other forms of communication. They have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest.”

Reflecting Trump’s mob-boss mentality, Carr then threatened ABC and its parent company, Disney, over Kimmel’s joke, stating, “Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

How the First Amendment works

Just after Trump AG Pam Bondi was widely panned by legal critics on both sides of the political aisle for her threat of a government “crackdown” on hate speech, Trump’s FCC chair demonstrated similar ignorance of the First Amendment.

Carr and Bondi, like their boss, seem to enjoy threatening coercive government action to silence voices they don’t like. They could all use competent counsel to explain the limits of their own authority.

At first blush, it looks as if Kimmel has no First A claim because Kimmel is a private party working for a private company, and the First Amendment does not protect private speech.

However, his employer, ABC is subject to regulation by the FCC. It has been the law for decades that under the First Amendment, government agencies cannot coerce a private employer to restrict, censure or control someone's speech by threatening legal action. When an FCC official like Chairman Carr threatens a broadcast network for political speech he doesn’t like, he is using government resources to coerce silence, a clear violation of the First Amendment.

The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring or threatening private media outlets for political speech, because threats of government sanction, retribution or punishment have a direct chilling effect on that speech. Just last year, the Supreme Court ruled in National Rifle Association v. Vullo that government officials cannot use coercive tactics to suppress disfavored speech, stressing that government officials cannot achieve indirect censorship by threatening private companies (like ABC) to punish certain viewpoints (like Kimmel’s).

The FCC cannot punish broadcasters that disparage Trump, or use its authority to pressure private employers to suppress objectionable opinions. The Supreme Court has ruled consistently that using coercive tactics to suppress disfavored views is unconstitutional censorship, even if the government doesn't directly target the speaker, but, as here, targets his employer by threatening their FCC license.

Here's hoping Kimmel sues. If Carr is going to run the Federal Communications Commission, he ought to take a minute to study some First Amendment basics.

• Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.