President says broadcasters should lose licenses for criticizing him

What happened to the party of Free Speech absolutism?

Edit: for those claiming this isn't a free speech issue the President is using the FCC to go after people he doesn't like. He must be a special snowflake.

Their speech was never in jeopardy, they just didn’t like its consequences. And now that they have the upper hand they will try to actively impose the same restrictions which they accused others of placing on them.

Victimhood distorts reality and leads to outsized reprisals.

> Their speech was never in jeopardy, they just didn’t like its consequences.

Can't you say the same about the Jimmy Kimmel situation? He's not in jail, he's free to speak, his employer just didn't want to back him up on it.

All of the arguments used to excuse cancel culture ("right to speech not to a platform", "it's a company censoring you, not the government", "freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences") are now being leveraged by the right. Why did anyone think it would go any other way? Was the assumption that the left would own the cultural zeitgeist forever? This whole approach to politics was folly.

Have you not read the news that abc was pressured by the fcc wrt a pending merger?

Isn’t that the federal govt “abridging the freedom of the press” ?

To play devil's advocate, ABC doesn't have a right to execute a corporate merger and this is what was threatened by the FCC. I don't know what the courts would think of this kind of argument and unfortunately we will probably not find out.

Regardless of that, it certainly seems like some kind of corruption.