CNN's Harry Enten flagged a pair of similar polling numbers that underlined Republican attitudes to President Donald Trump's crackdown on his media antagonists.
The president's Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, threatened to revoke broadcast licenses for stations that continued airing Jimmy Kimmel's late-night talk show, which prompted ABC parent company Disney to dump the host hours later on Tuesday. Enten told "CNN News Central" that polls show Republicans are thrilled.
"There are rare points in which I see a piece of data and it just sort of jumps off the screen at me, and this is one," Enten said, "because I really just think it tells the entire story, and this is among Republicans. [Pollsters asked in December whether] the media is biased and should be punished. Look at this: 71 percent of Republicans agree with the idea that the media is biased and should be punished. They absolutely, Republicans are absolutely loving what is happening right now to Jimmy Kimmel, absolutely love the words that are coming out of Brendan Carr's mouth."
"The bottom line is that they believe that the media is biased and should be punished," he added. "So taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air, if there's government influence there, they're absolutely enjoying it."
ABC's corporate parent indefinitely suspended Kimmel after two major local TV operators, Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair, which each have mergers awaiting FCC approval, pressured the network to drop him, and Enten presented findings that show a similar number of Republicans believe the government already has a role in media programming.
"It's one thing if the idea is, okay, Jimmy Kimmel is being punished by his own company, right, Being punished by ABC, being punished by Disney," Enten said.
"But the idea that the government is influencing it, I don't think Republicans are going to have much of a problem with it because take a look here. Republicans already think that the the U.S. media and U.S. news organizations are, in fact, influenced by government interests. Look at this, again amongst Republicans, look at this: 64 percent – this is, again, even before the Kimmel news broke, 64 percent of Republicans believe the U.S. media is influenced by government interests. A great deal, we're talking two-thirds of Republicans, and then you get another 26 percent who say it's somewhat influenced by government interests. That totals up to nearly 90 percent."
"Republicans like the idea that Jimmy Kimmel is being punished," he added, "and they're not at all going to be against the idea that the government might be influencing it because they already think, two-thirds already think that the government is already influencing the U.S. media a great deal."
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