Rand Paul: FCC chair had "no business" intervening in ABC/Kimmel controversy

But they didn’t intervene. He made a statement indicating they’d look into it. Action from FCC would require the commissioners to vote. Not just a unilateral choice by the chair.

There is also some allowance for the FCC to regulate content under some circumstances, and it has been upheld as constitutional previously. Brendan Carr, the FCC chair, rejected doing anything about online content because it would be unconstitutional.

In spirit I don’t think government or large companies should be moderating or censoring speech. But Rand Paul should be focusing on the precedence of FCC being able to regulate things like “obscenity”.

Did the FCC intervene in any sort of regulatory sense? No, that would be the "hard way", which didn't happen.

Did FCC chair Carr use the threat of regulatory power to intervene in internal business at ABC? Getting ABC to obey in advance sure seems like the implied "easy way."

Both fit the first definition of "intervene" at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intervene - "To become involved in a situation, so as to alter or prevent an action"

On these reported facts, this looks like unconstitutional government-induced censorship. A court applying Vullo, Backpage, and Bantam Books would likely view the official’s statements as coercive retaliation for protected speech.

He didn't intervene in the say way that a mobster doesn't make threats when he states "nice place you got here, be a shame if something were to happen to it."

So presumably Rand Paul supports impeachment and conviction, right? The Supreme Council has Decreed that the only possible check on this naked corruption is impeachment by Congress, so you either support impeachment or you're just grandstanding.

The problem isn't limited to the FCC in this case. The FCC doesn't actually have to act - it could be someone in the SEC, it could be the DOJ, or (as we have learned) it can literally be about bags of cash.

The FCC chair's statement was a bit of an indirect threat ("Pity if someone looked into your affiliates licenses"). But the timing makes it clear they were at least aware of and complicit in the backroom dealings that led to the show being taken off the air.

Did you have a sibling growing up? Did you ever have that sibling beat the crap out of you and tell you it'd be worse if you told mom about it?

The chair of the FCC literally threatened them in public. It doesn't matter if "ABC admitted they didn't get pressure" in some attempt to appease Trump. We all got to watch and hear it for ourselves.

The chair of the FCC said:

>What people don’t understand is that the broadcasters … have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest. When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

Do you really want to pretend that he is no applying pressure by threatening businesses who broadcast speech he doesn't like?

He could have said, "No comment'.

But a Project 2025 co-author felt he wanted to illegally use his position in government to silence those who he disagreed with.

There's a different between making a threat and posing a threat. The reason we're having this discussion at all is because we've vested too much power in bureaucracies that have too much discretion in how they use it.

If the FCC chair was the one engaged in wrong-doing (as Paul seems to believe), they would be the prime candidate for impeachment. In any case, it seems like Paul thinks that the previous administration was also engaging in censorship, and there were no impeachments in that case either, so perhaps he does not believe that censorship is a 'high crime or misdemeanor'.

No, the reason we're having this discussion is because the current Supreme Court doesn't seem to actually be interested in precedence or existing law, just saying yes to whatever whim Trump has this week.

Under any normally functioning government, the head of the FCC would never threaten a television station because it's both an obvious violation of the first amendment, and under literally any other administration would have resulted in immediate dismissal.

When you’re in a position of power, every word you utter has meaning and the weight of your authority behind it.

The House has the sole power of bringing impeachment, Rand is in the Senate.

If he did the thing you ask, he would just be 'grandstanding' on something he has no vote to bring forward, which your statement would appear to damn him for.

The FCC exists (in part) to enforce a certain morality on public broadcasters. Whatever we think about that today, that was a core responsibility of the FCC when it started and that still exists today.

There's actually a word for it - jawboning

Kimmel will be back on the air next week.[1]

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2025/09/22/j...

In a free market, the spectrum would be private property.

Tomorrow, September 23.

> Following a suspension of the show for host Jimmy Kimmel's comments about the death of Charlie Kirk, Disney says "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" will return to air on Tuesday, Sept 23.

I'd be all for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.

ETA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine

The Supreme Court decision in NRA v. Vullo (2024) states that a government actor can't threaten legal action unless content is removed by a social media platform (or a TV network in this case).

> The FCC is barred by law from trying to prevent the broadcast of any point of view. The Communications Act prohibits the FCC from censoring broadcast material, in most cases, and from making any regulation that would interfere with freedom of speech. Expressions of views that do not involve a “clear and present danger of serious, substantive evil” come under the protection of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press and prevents suppression of these expressions by the FCC. According to an FCC opinion on this subject, “the public interest is best served by permitting free expression of views.” This principle ensures that the most diverse and opposing opinions will be expressed, even though some may be highly offensive.

Source: https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/the_fcc_and_freedom_...

"Last Reviewed: 12/30/19" (Trump's first term)

Yes please

You mean like FCC fining people over Janet Jackson's boob?

You have freedom of the press, when you own a press. But the spectrum is not owned by the licensees. There are rules. Limits.

I am not for government owning the spectrum. But that's the current situation.

Just in time for the Rapture - COINCIDENCE??!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Edit: apparently HN readers are unaware that there's a viral belief going around that the Rapture is happening between Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.

This splits hairs. He can still support it, or not. And the message says "supports impeachment and conviction"

"Nice broadcast license you have there. Shame if anything happened to it"

Nice HN account. Be a shame if it were to be shadowbanned.

And the Food and Drug Administration exists in part to supervise food safety but it can't use its power to shut down Olive Garden over a culture war. What are we doing here?

How is Jimmy's speech immoral?

A list of words you can't say is about morality; it's a drag but at least it's objective. You either said the word or you didn't.

This is far more subjective.

“He gave an answer” is comically dishonest framing, so it doesn’t matter what that answer is at all? Nice deflection at the end there, almost convinced me.

Broadcast indecency rules (like those for a wardrobe malfunction) are a narrow exception and don’t authorize the government to punish political viewpoints; even on publicly licensed spectrum, officials can’t wield licensing power as a cudgel against disfavored speech, because the 1st Amendment forbids it.

So you’re telling me that, in the past 10 years, this was the only speech on network TV that the Trump crowd didn’t like?

Kimmel got caught spreading blatant falsehood about who the shooter was. That has always been against the rules for public airwaves.

Why does this need to be a federal concern? Other than the need to manage spectrum assignments at state borders, why can’t the states do all of this?

Why do California and Mississippi have to follow the same standards?

I find it odd to blame the impeachment situation on Rand when the ball is in the court of the House. You can have an opinion on something that other people have the control over, but it's not particularly damning if you don't spend your time doing so, given many constituents would probably prefer their senators spend their time on issues they can actually tackle in the senate.

>"supports impeachment and conviction"

As it stands now, Rand has no vote on any impeachment conviction and no ability to bring one, so I don't see the point in asterisking on the "and conviction" as it doesn't change the situation beyond shoehorning a connived reason in to blame Rand for not making a public statement on the non-existent impeachment.

Highly cherry-picked. The next paragraph says that FCC limits broadcast of indecent and profane material.

As I said, the FCC is allowed to enforce a certain morality. It seems clear that the morality being enforced would fall in line with the ruling power of the day.

Tautology.

not a valid analogy

Every other year or so, Rand Paul pretends to actually be a libertarian.

Look at you straight-up parroting Trump's comments.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

What part of that sentence qualifies as either indecent or profane?

Okay, then the person he lied about can file a defamation suit. That still doesn't fall within the FCC's regulatory authority, so far as I can tell. They're not the arbiters of what is and isn't a lie; a judge or jury during the defamation trial is.

I assure you Trump did not invent "jimmy Kimmel isn't funny"

problem is who gets to decide that both sides are bing presented fairly? do you think that Fox Newsmax and OAN are going to be under the same pressure to give the liberal viewpoint as MSNBC and CNN will to show a righting viewpoint?

The fairness doctrine was a good thing, but it existed in a different time. Bringing it back today wouldn't address the main issue which is the internet.

When everyone is given a loudspeaker, and the power to create an audience of millions; when "journalism" is equivalent to any random opinion; when anyone with the will and a negligible amount of resources can promote their agenda... No amount of oversight can bring back balanced discussion about actual facts. Reversing a post-truth society cannot happen without radical disruptions to the system that got us here in the first place.

I think wherever you stand on the left vs. right spectrum, it's clear now that "High crimes and misdemeanors" is now de facto defined only as "stuff we don't like that the other party's guy did." Trump could openly commit treason and probably not even be impeached ny his party, let alone removed.

But I don't for a second believe that the Democratic Party would cooperate with "their" person being impeached now either, except if it was politically advantageous for them (for instance, to remove an unpopular Democrat for an embarrassing misstep when there was a popular VP ready to go). No way would they impeach for crimes of overstepping presidential authority to do something the President from The West Wing would be proud of, for instance.

> Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) slammed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr for policing speech

I don't understand what you're taking from this, and I'm guessing you didn't read it.

I said that the FCC is allowed to enforce morality. The morality in question here is lying about someone being assassinated for their political views. The right sees Charlie Kirk as a political martyr (e.g. their MLK) and they don't want that taken away.

The Fairness Doctrine has become an urban legend among the left with a regrettable amount of built-up legends of its power.

Whatever you think it did, it almost certainly did not do that. In practice it meant that J. Random Crazypants would be allowed to give an editorial -- sometimes in the middle of the night, and sometimes as 60 second after the news. Additionally the Doctrine never applied to Cable TV for obvious First Amendment reasons.

Done

There are plenty of locales where broadcasts cross state lines. I grew up in an area where we got Boston (Massachusetts) and Providence (Rhode Island) stations. NYC stations cover three states. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples (probably involving even more than three states).

So the justification for federal intervention (interstate commerce) is there.

Of course, that doesn't prevent the feds from letting the states handle it, but it does create an incentive for some states to want the feds to handle it.

> The morality in question here is lying about someone being assassinated for their political views.

Please quote Jimmy to clear up what you think the lie was.

*Please note, I'm not in favor of censorship, it's just that this analogy is inaccurate

Olive Garden isn't given access to something it requires to operate at the pleasure of the government. Broadcast TV on the other hand...

All of broadcast TV is allowed because the government says it is. ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX don't own the radio spectrum they are operating on, the government does and they grant the right to use it to those companies. There's a long list of things that the government requires them to do in order to keep this pleasure. One of them used to be the Saturday morning cartoons. I miss those.

Streisand effect in full force. I had never heard of Kimmel nor Kirk until psychopaths tried to silence them.

GP was agreeing with Rand Paul. Paul was not a Project 2025 co-author, Brendan Carr was

Beautiful motte you've got there.

You'd never heard of Jimmy Kimmel?

The problem is that Trump made it clear the issue was criticism of him. For democracy to function, saying negative things about politicians has to be possible. If criticizing a sitting president isn't safe, you couldn't even safely air a presidential debate.

> problem is who gets to decide that both sides are bing presented fairly?

There’s also more than two sides to an issue.

The supposed fairness doctrine was utter nonsense for many many reasons.

Outside the US - I'd not heard of either of them too.

I'm outside the US too. Kirk makes sense, he was fairly niche. But Kimmel I'm surprised about. Have you heard of Jimmy Fallon and Conan O'Brien?

Yes, but the FCC has existing procedures for communicating concerns and warnings to broadcasters about possible regulatory enforcement and an entire rule-making framework beyond that. The new FCC chair so directly addressing a specific incident off-the-cuff on a podcast and making threatening statements about FCC action against a specific broadcaster over a specific incident was extremely unusual and a troubling precedent. And, to be clear, I'd say the same thing if it were the Biden admin's FCC chair issuing semi-veiled threats against Fox News. We don't want federal agency chairs from either party using podcasts to conduct official business or as a conduit for plausibly deniable (but nonetheless real) specific threats.

As a separate matter, it's long been clear the FCC was created to serve a very time, context and needs - most of which either no longer exist or have changed substantially. Most media no longer travels through the limited shared resource of "airwaves". The agency's whole charter is in need of a major rethink.

New England and a few big metros that straddle the boarder are issues, but even there the states involved could manage it together.

I think the New England states could manage this together fine.

I agree, the constitution grants the authority to the federal government to. But more and more, I think we should just let the states deal with as much as possible. It seems pretty clear we are far from a national consensus on many basic issues, and the constant winner take all grab for power is making things worse.

Yes, sell the spectrum and get rid of the fairness doctrine. Few understand it.

Heard of one of them, not the other. Couldn't tell you what they are or do though.

If that were true, then Trump would be banned from the airwaves, and Fox News and News Nation would have been shuttered years ago.

I thought the Rapture was happening last night when I was shaken from a peaceful slumber by a 4.3 earthquake.

RaptureTok, that was not a term I ever thought I'd read. I'll be playing D&D right in the middle of their predicted Rapture-window, guess I'll still be here on Thursday.

Charlie Kirk was assassinated for his political views. Stated differently: someone with an opposing political viewpoint killed Charlie in order to stop Charlie from promoting Charlie's politics.

Jimmy Kimmel said that Charlie Kirk was killed by someone with the same political views as Charlie.

That is the lie.

I don't think that's what did it. It was the showing of Trump being asked about his "friend" Charlie Kirk being killed, for which his response was "They're building my ballroom. It's gonna be the best ballroom.

Trump has been trying to get Kimmel removed for a while for making fun of him. This was just an opportunity.

Very well said.

Obscenity, indecency, and profanity are narrowly defined by the FCC:

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-pr...

Kimmel's performance was clearly not obscene or indecent - it did not depict or describe sexual conduct or excretory organs - and it aired after 10 PM, so whether it was profane is irrelevant.

The FCC is well enabled to make judgment calls. Yes a network can bring that judgement call in front of an actual judge in a court of law. That doesn't mean the FCC lacks the authority for such calls, only that the judge likely has higher authority.

I agree with you but a broadcasting license isn't the same as "everyone given a loudspeaker". The FCC couldn't have done anything to a "Jimmy Kimmel Youtube".

bad reading comprehension. here is what I said:

>As I said, the FCC is allowed to enforce a certain morality. It seems clear that the morality being enforced would fall in line with the ruling power of the day.

Information moves too fast and government moves too slow for me to buy into this "existing procedures and rule-making" line.

Your next point about the FCC needing a major rethink is interesting. What are you thinking here? FCC also regulates internet-based communications (e.g. Youtube or podcasts)?

It's his worst trait

And what you said was incorrect. Under 1A, the only content which the FCC can ban outright is obscenity, defined as per the document I linked; see FCC v. Pacifica for context.

> We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it

There's Mr. Kimmel's quote. Where did he lie? He never said what Mr. Robinson's political affiliations are or where.

There are a number of problems with the Fairness Doctrine in principle. The intent of it is that nobody monopolizes the then-scarce licensed broadcast stations. This is not a problem today, as TV and radio broadcast stations are abundant and also compete with the Internet and thousands of cable channels. A more reasonable attempt at such a law today might provide oversight on the licensure of individual TV and radio stations to ensure that new stations can be started up easily. I'm not convinced it is a real problem today except on PBS and NPR, which are taxpayer-funded and seemingly biased.

No, it wouldn't. The idea of spectrum allocation depends on government intervention. In a free market, transmitting radio waves would be a free for all.

Is there a quote from jimmy you can share and that I can reference?

I forgot he was host of the man show back in the 2000’s - that is way more memorable for me than any talk show, even as a teenager with cable TV in Australia back then.

> having terrible ratings.

Not true. His ratings have him right in the middle of the pack: https://latenighter.com/news/ratings/late-night-tv-ratings-q...

It's called building a consensus. Paul has a hell of a lot more input into the impeachment process than most everyone else in the country.

Kimmel did not say that. You need to get the quote right.

Do you have an example of the FCC enforcing action against a television broadcaster or personality for saying something materially similar to what Kimmel said, at the same time slot and same genre of programming, on the basis that it was false and/or defamatory, without any sort of pre-existing court case related to the same?

Look up "border blasters" to see how that plays out internationally. We'd have the same problem in the states, I'd bet.

Even if he did lie, that's absolutely protected speech and the FCC is out of line. Every Constitution-respecting American knows this and would be against the FCC saying anything no matter what party was in charge.

insane standard. how would you ever govern with that as your standard?

I can not start to understand your position without a quote. It has to be something Jimmy said that lead to your beliefs, I know of no better place to start.

You're lying about what Kimmel said, and you want to claim others are arguing in bad faith?

What was the blatant falsehood that he said? Exact words, please.

Don't worry, they're free for the taking. Burn one, start another, rinse and repeat. It is the only way to stay afloat if you paddle against the stream here.

The speech itself may be protected, but it endangers ABC's broadcast license. If ABC knowingly broadcasts a lie the broadcast of that lie causes harms, then it is in violation of FCC's section 73.1217, which specifically exists to thwart against "Broadcast Hoaxes"

In fairness to the provision, I think it's outdated, and I've argued against its relevance and that it seems unlikely to me to stand up in any court that interprets 1A jurisprudence to a modern standard, but the law exists and exists specifically to prevent against broadcast lies.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/73.1217

JFK and LBJ systematically leveraged the FCC's obligation to uphold the Fairness Doctrine to weaponize mass-produced complaints against right-leaning radio shows to legally harass them

In 1963 the FCC passed the Cullman Doctrine, which was an attempt to double-down on those efforts by bankrupting those who literally couldn't afford to cover equal time

Nixon used the FCC to threaten the Washington Post with licensure revocation in an attempt to get them to squash coverage of Watergate

Presidents on both sides of recent history have used the might of the government to demand abject censorship on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

The prior sitting president attempted to establish a ministry of truth, slated as a new entity intended to reside within the department of homeland security so as to supercharge those efforts, and appointed Nina "I believe I should be allowed to edit other people's tweets" Jankowicz to executive director

None of these are healthy, but the idea that Carr's actions are somehow the result of the modern Supreme Court's actions requires us to ignore all of American history before Trump's second election

> Nixon used the FCC to threaten the Washington Post with licensure revocation in an attempt to get them to squash coverage of Watergate

Wait, what? The Washington Post is a newspaper. Are they licensed by the FCC in any way?

It's just looking for precedent for what you're saying.

The Washington Post is a newspaper that at the time was owned by The Washington Post Company. The Washington Post Company owned the paper and also some television stations that required FCC licensure

One of the stations (WPLG) still operates in Florida, and is (IIRC) an ABC affiliate

The FCC is allowed to enforce a certain morality. You actually agree with me here, since we both cited obscenity as a clear example.

I also assert that the morality being enforced by the FCC [in a given time period] will fall in line with the morality of the rulers of [that time period]. That is a descriptive statement.

Which part am I wrong about?

No one needs davorak to understand their position. A large swath of the US is angry at Jimmy Kimmel profaning their martyr through a gross lie.

Those angry people have power right now and used their power to punish Jimmy Kimmel.

If you don't understand that, it doesn't affect those people at all.

Let's review the Cullman Doctrine:

>Later in 1963, Henry issued a new legal requirement, the Cullman Doctrine, which stipulated that radio stations that aired paid personal attacks had to give the targets free response airtime.

So to be clear - you think the head of the FCC publicly threatening to revoke a stations license if they don't fire a COMEDIAN they don't like, is the same as the fairness doctrine requiring a station to give free airtime for politicans to respond to baseless political attacks if they are paid for those attacks?

>Nixon used the FCC to threaten the Washington Post with licensure revocation in an attempt to get them to squash coverage of Watergate

And Nixon was impeached...

>Presidents on both sides of recent history have used the might of the government to demand abject censorship on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

Facebook and Twitter were caught taking money from nation states to spread lies to cause political strife while hiding the source of both who was spreading the message and who was paying for it. Excuse me if I'm not concerned the government is telling them to stop. While our laws are not directly written to address the issue, they are toeing the line of treason and trying to use Free Speech as an excuse for doing so. Let me guess: you also think it's wrong RT was labeled a foreign actor?

>The prior sitting president attempted to establish a ministry of truth, slated as a new entity intended to reside within the department of homeland security so as to supercharge those efforts, and appointed Nina "I believe I should be allowed to edit other people's tweets" Jankowicz to executive director

Ahh, there we have it. Russian influence on US politics isn't an issue as long as they're supporting your side. The "ministry of truth" is a department appointed with policing and attempting to prevent China and Russia from meddling in our elections. Let me guess: the government is suppressing China and Russia's constitutionally protected first amendment rights?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_Governance_Boar...

>None of these are healthy, but the idea that Carr's actions are somehow the result of the modern Supreme Court's actions requires us to ignore all of American history before Trump's second election

It really doesn't, nothing you cited resulted in a lawsuit that landed at the Supreme Court who promptly ignored all precedent to side with the President. Which is exactly what this one has done, and there are people discussing whether or not they think the current Supreme Court would actually side with the constitution or decide there's some reason it's OK for the President to ignore the constitution entirely. The fact you're bending in circles to try to act like the current situation is just more of the same is baffling.

^ no idea why this was downvoted. I'm sympathetic to the idea that most real estate boundaries, even though currently enforced by government, are Schelling points that could mostly persist with private enforcement. But that seems like a tall argument for RF frequencies. Sure, if you were right next to the equivalent of an AM/FM station broadcast antenna, you wouldn't want to bother with trying to reuse that frequency. But if you were hundreds of miles away (where its signal is quite low), you could easily reuse the frequency with relatively small power transmitter.

So the current exclusive use of radio frequencies is very much an artifact of government intervention.

> So to be clear - you think the head of the FCC publicly threatening to revoke a stations license if they don't fire a COMEDIAN they don't like, is the same as the fairness doctrine requiring a station to give free airtime for politicans to respond to baseless political attacks if they are paid for those attacks

I think that a government representative abusing their perceived power to coerce private entities to quell free speech is equivalent to another government representative abusing their perceived power to coerce private entities to quelling free speech, yes.

> Let me guess: you also think it's wrong RT was labeled a foreign actor?

I think it has nothing to do with my argument

> Russian influence on US politics isn't an issue as long as they're supporting your side

Russian influence on US politics is a wide non-sequitur from the subject

> nothing you cited resulted in a lawsuit that landed at the Supreme Court who promptly ignored all precedent to side with the President

Neither has anything you cited. Neither is Carr the President. /shrug

> Edit: apparently HN readers are unaware that there's a viral belief going around that the Rapture is happening between Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.

While it's certainly being talked about a lot on TikTok, but I'm not sure how many people are posting there about how they really think it's going to happen. Last I looked a couple of days ago it looked like a few dozen accounts at most were posting original content about it, but there were tons of people making content satirizing it.

In general I think "trends" on TikTok get treated as though they're far more widespread than similar phenomena on other platforms, like Twitter.

What was the opportunity in that segment? Surely airing things the POTUS said is not a limitation of Freedom of the Press?

The thing about the FCC threatening Kimmel for this speech, is that someone needs to identify what was problematic about the speech other than "I didn't like that he said it." I would love for someone to explain to me what the problematic part of the statement was, because I think then we could have a more substantive discussion. As is, this is pretty clearly a 1st amendment violation by the FCC chair as his statements demonstrably chilled speech (it's hard to get much clearer an example than this legally).

Given that this is such an easy ask, I think you should consider not about convincing davorak, but about convincing random lurkers who read your comments.

I might've been swayed had you provided the actual quote, but I think davorak kinda won this argument without doing anything other than asking you for receipts. If your position was so certain you would've just provided the quote.

It seems the joke went over your head. The point was that vague probabilistic statements equivalent to Carr's 'we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way' are easily understood as thinly veiled threats even if they're not delivered on official FCC notepaper and written in verbose bureaucratic language leveraging established procedural rules.

It might be confusing for a non English speaker:

The important part is: “characterize … as anything other than one of them.”

This structure means:

“to describe (someone) not as belonging to a certain group, but as belonging to some other group instead.”

“Them” here points back to the MAGA gang (mentioned earlier in the sentence).

So, “one of them” = “a member of the MAGA gang.”

Other than” in English means “except” or “different from.”

“Anything other than one of them” = “any possible identity, except being part of MAGA.”

In English, this formula has a special pragmatic force:

Literal meaning: “Describe as any category that is not X.”

Implied meaning: “The truth is probably X, but the speaker is trying to deny it.”

This works because if there weren’t evidence for “X,” there would be no need to deny or redirect away from it.

The quote is literally in this thread. Read upwards from your own comment. "Random lurkers" (including yourself) would have read it if they followed the thread to this point.

That's why I don't think davorak is here in good faith. Look how close he was to the quote.

What are you doing here? How did you get here without reading the quote?

Yeah ... it seems some english speakers, are really struggling to tell the difference between what was literally said, and what they wanted to hear.

It would be wise to learn the difference between reality and projection.

I just made a statement of fact in response to your 'joke'. If you doubt the veracity of my statement it would be interesting to know why.

You are wrong about this part:

> The FCC is allowed to enforce a certain morality.

As I said previously, the FCC is bound by the First Amendment. They do not have the power to restrict speech, whether on grounds of "morality" or otherwise.

Obscenity is not considered speech as far as 1A is concerned, so the FCC is able to ban it. I disagree with this categorization, but it is what it is.

Sorry, which part of that quote is the lie?

Also, why didn't you say that it was this quote instead of leading us on this wild goose chase? Or was it just that your comment got flagged?

Can't imagine why that might've been.

Whoa pardner, you've got your niche-personalities mixed up. Internationally Charlie Kirk was way better known (in nearly all ways) than Kimmel who is, after all, just a narrative amplifier on US cable television. We foreigners do not watch US cable television so Kimmel, who's that? Kirk on the other hand has started something of a revolution among younger people - and some older - with his attempts to engage them in politics. Kirk's organisation - TPUSA - is way bigger on the 'net - which we do share with those of you in the USA - than any cable TV propagandist.

To be honest I don't understand how you can miss that. People like Kimmel and O'Brien and Hannity and Maher and all the others are really of no interest outside of the US borders while people like Kirk and Shapiro and Friedman and Lindsay (just to name a few) have worldwide reach.

   We don't need no cable TV
   We don't need no thought control
   No propaganda on the TV (or PC or mobile, they all fit, take your pick)
   Media leave your shit at home
   Hey, media, leave your shit at home
   All in all you're just another brick that will fall
   All in all you're just another brick that will fall

Sing this to the tune of Pink Floyd's well-known anthem.

A big part of modern discourse is people tactically pretending to not know stuff

If that's the case, then Fox News would be in a heap of trouble.