Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr joked that Stephen Colbert had been prevented from airing an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, because "these are MAGA airwaves now."
During a Thursday interview on the Charlie Kirk Show, co-host Andrew Kolvet asked Carr why CBS had prevented Colbert from airing the Talarico interview.
"Well, look, as soon as I found out that Talarico going to be on, I went down to the bowels of the FCC, the Media Bureau, I found the dump button, I pushed it, and I said, these are MAGA airwaves now," Carr joked.
The FCC chair later revealed that CBS lawyers had prevented the interview from airing because Carr had previously threatened to change FCC rules that traditionally exempted talk shows from equal-time restrictions.
"So this is Dem-on-Dem violence that they're just trying to merchandise as having something to do with Trump or the FCC," Carr claimed, noting that his interpretation of the rules would have required Colbert to also promote Talarico's Democratic primary opponents, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX).
Co-host Blake Neff wondered if Carr's interpretation of the law hindered free speech.
"Do you think there's a case to be made [that] this is sort of an obsolete standard that it infringes a little bit on freedom of speech, and there's so many ways to get your message out there now?" Neff asked.
"There's a lot of reasonable people that say there's such a diversity of mechanisms to get your perspectives out there that we don't need those types of regulations," Carr agreed. "If people want to do that then they can go to Congress and they can change the law but you know my job at this point is to enforce in a fair and balanced way the laws passed by Congress and that's what we're going to be doing."
