Although he has been a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump’s MAGA agenda, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) doesn’t approve of everything the Trump administration has been doing lately.
During a recent episode of his “Verdict” podcast, Cruz addressed FCC chairman Brendan Carr’s recent remarks about ramping up the agency’s enforcement of “public interest” standards for broadcasters under its authority.
While many on the right celebrate government oversight aimed at cracking down on dangerous and fabricated information being spewed by leftist sources on American airwaves, Cruz sees the potential for a dangerous precedent.
As Fox News reported:
Cruz argued that if a station commits slander related to Kirk or his family, there is already a remedy.
He suggested suing stations for defamation and “let[ting] the process play out.”
“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for [the] government to put itself in the position of saying, ‘We’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off-air if we don’t like what you’re saying,” Cruz said. “It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.
“So again, I like Brendan Carr, but we should not be in this business. We should denounce it. It’s fine to say what Jimmy Kimmel said was deplorable. It was disgraceful, and he should be off-air, but we shouldn’t be threatening government power to force him off-air. That’s a real mistake.”
He’s not the only one on the right with such misgivings:
Unpopular opinion: The FCC should have stayed out of it and let Jimmy Kimmel’s awfully unfunny show die on its own. The precedent will be turned back on conservatives ten fold by a future Democrat.
— Matt Kibbe (@mkibbe) September 18, 2025
Ben Shapiro: “The FCC should not be threatening action against ABC or its affiliates or Disney based on Jimmy Kimmel being a jacka**. He’s been a jackla** his entire career. Social censure is perfectly appropriate. The blowback from the public is totally natural and good because… pic.twitter.com/8VVh0zTWSg
— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) September 19, 2025
But others find it perfectly appropriate, if not crucial, for the FCC to take such action:
The FCC provides licenses, and those licenses have conditions. What is it doing as an organization if it's not enforcing its own licensing regs?
Democrats created the FCC and have been wanting to expand its regulations. Don't complain that conservatives are merely enforcing it. pic.twitter.com/uc4mLJHx3w
— Luke Hanson (@LukeFHan) September 18, 2025
Noted entrepreneur David Marcus took a more charitable view of the FCC’s actions in a recent op-ed, per AOL:
There will be purists, many on the right, who pull their chins into scowls and say that they just don’t like the whole idea of the government jawboning private companies, or appearing to interfere in editorial decisions.
But that position leaves the people powerless in a situation in which every time Democrats have power they seek to censor conservatives, usually secretly, and every time Republicans do, they say, “Sorry, can’t help.”
Brendan Carr is changing that. His FCC has a mission to ensure that the very networks who enjoy the public airwaves are not discriminating against half of the country by banning their viewpoints from programming.
Conservatives have too long accepted that on our major on air, publicly subsidized networks, they don’t even get a seat at the kiddie table, because they aren’t even in the room.
The public airwaves are not a liberal fiefdom, nor are they to be solely controlled by those in bright blue coastal cities. The rest of America wants some say in all this back, and that is exactly what the FCC is giving them.
And here’s what Carr had to say in his own words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ved5hVb4yfM/
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