Cruz appeared satisfied with the response and shifted the discussion to the FCC’s handling of spectrum. Much of the remainder of the hearing involved Democrats pointing to Carr’s earlier remarks in support of free expression and accusing him of using the FCC to silence broadcasters.
Senate Democrats criticize Carr over Kimmel threats
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked Carr whether it “is appropriate to use your position to threaten companies that broadcast political satire.” Carr replied, “I think any licensee that operates on the public airwaves has a responsibility to comply with the public interest standard, and that’s been the case for decades.”
Klobuchar responded, “I asked if you think it’s appropriate for you to use your position to threaten companies, and this incident with Kimmel wasn’t an isolated event. You launched investigations into every major broadcast network except Fox. Is that correct?”
Carr pointed out that “we have a number of investigations ongoing.” He later added, “If you want to step back and talk about weaponization, we saw that for four years in the Biden administration.”
“Joe Biden is no longer president,” Klobuchar said. “You are head of the FCC, and Donald Trump is president, and I am trying to deal with this right now.”
As he has before, Carr maintained today that he never threatened ABC station licenses. “Democrats at the time were saying that we explicitly threatened to pull a license if Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t fired,” Carr said. “That never happened; that was nothing more than projection and distortion by Democrats. What I am saying is any broadcaster that uses the airwaves, whether radio or TV, has to comply with the public interest standard.”
In contrast, Carr said on a September podcast that stations should tell ABC and its parent Disney that “we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we, the licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocations from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.”
