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Why Trump's Censorship Campaign Will Come Back to Haunt Him

The American people did not vote for a President to exact revenge on comedians he doesn't like

Dan Pfeiffer

Sep 20

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We are living in dangerously absurd times, and it can be easy to lose perspective. The full breadth of Trump’s assault on democracy over the last nine months is hard to process because we all believed for so long that such things could never happen here. There’s a poverty of imagination about the real dangers, and therefore a tendency to normalize the abnormal — to cover this as just more “Trumpian politics.”

But the Trump Administration pressuring a major media company to suspend a comedian because they disliked his commentary is far from normal. As Jim Rutenberg wrote in the New York Times:

“[Trump] is now conducting the most punishing government crackdown against major American media institutions in modern times, using what seems like every tool at his disposal to eradicate reporting and commentary with which he disagrees.”

Kimmel is the beginning, not the end, of this censorship campaign. Brendan Carr, the FCC Director, suggested on Thursday that he wanted to go after The View, and Trump threatened late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. All of this comes on top of a larger effort to punish anyone critical of Charlie Kirk in the wake of his murder. Pete Hegseth has people combing through the social media of troops, and JD Vance urged the public to turn in anyone who is insufficiently mournful of Charlie Kirk to their employers.

Trump has, of course, done innumerable bad things since taking office. Some have no political purchase with the public. Others have broken through and hurt his political standing. I believe Trump could pay a steep price for this hyper-aggressive government censorship campaign. If — and when — Democrats win back the House next year, the GOP will look back at their weaponization of Charlie Kirk’s murder with great regret.

Here’s why.

1. Kimmel + Kirk Is a Major Story

The best way to understand politics in our fractured media ecosystem is that each side has a group of hyper-engaged partisans who aggressively follow every twist and turn, while the rest of the country has largely opted out of political news. Most of the things you and I obsess over never cross the transom of the less engaged, so they don’t move the poll numbers. There are, however, a handful of moments so significant or viral that they break out of the political news bubble. Thus far, the tariffs, the illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the Epstein files have all truly broken through to the larger public. You can almost match declines in Trump’s approval to those moments.

The Kirk assassination and Kimmel’s suspension are huge stories. According to data from What's Resonating, content about Kimmel, Kirk, and freedom of speechis receiving by far the most engagement...