The Day America Stepped Over the Edge

The reason we’re at a pivotal moment in America is because most people don’t know how to answer this question: “How do you know when you’re really no longer living in a democracy?”

This is a threshold moment, this stifling of Jimmy Kimmel. It’s the last laugh before the silence.

The attack on him is something everyone can understand.

People didn’t know what it meant that Trump was getting billions for his bitcoin company or a jet airplane in exchange for essentially giving favors to other countries. They didn’t understand how inappropriate, illegal, and unconstitutional that is unless they understand the word “emoluments,” and few do; they didn’t get it.

His hustling Teslas from the White House in violation of the Hatch act (that would put a normal person in jail for two years) didn’t seem a big deal to most Americans because they’d never seen it before.

They had no idea how bad it was. Only former presidents and people who’d read the Constitution and the law knew.

And that’s a very small percentage of people. Meaningless.

So along comes Jimmy Kimmel, who everybody knows. He’s even more popular than Stephen Colbert, or at least at that level. Everybody knows who he is. And Trump takes aim at him for things he said — his First Amendment-protected free speech — and is explicit and public about it.

Then comes his toady FCC Chairman Brendan Carr — the guy who wrote the part of Project 2025 about how the FCC should be run — threatening to go after the licenses of stations that are trying to merge with Nextstar for what may well be a billion dollar payout for everybody involved.

They’re referencing a comment Kimmel made about Kirk‘s killer as an excuse for censoring him, but that doesn’t make any sense. It’s apparently really because Donald Trump is offended by comedians making fun of him. You can’t make fun of the Dear Leader in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, or any other country where the men Trump admires rule.

And Kimmel was relentless in making fun of Trump.

Here’s what Carr — a government regulator — said, doing his best imitation of a mafia bone-breaker:

“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. … These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

The station owners freaked out, because some may get even richer through mergers/acquisitions between Nextstar and Tegna (both own multiple ABC stations), and threatened to take Kimmel off their stations. Sinclair, which also has business before the FCC did the same. The merger could’ve been profitable for the people at Disney (ABC), as well.

And that merger requires Carr’s approval because it requires breaking or changing the anti-monopoly rules that forbid any company to own stations that reach more than 39% of Americans.

So, here’s how it looks to the average person: Trump and Carr threatened the Nextstar/Tegna (ABC) deal if they didn’t shut up Kimmel, and Disney (which owns ABC) said, “OK,” and took him off the air “indefinitely.”

And everybody gets it. It’s not anywhere near as complicated as shady cryptocurrency deals or golf courses or Trump Towers in foreign lands.

This is a classic example of how mob-like corruption works; we’ve all seen it in movies like The Godfather or shows like The Sopranos. We don’t need law or business degrees. We have TVs.

The average person totally gets where Trump’s leverage is and why he’s using it to shut up people who irritate him; this is relatable to the life of anybody who’s ever been bullied or shaken down.

“Nice little TV network you’ve got there, we’d hate to see something happen to it.”

They get how bad the crime is. And it’s all happening to a guy — Jimmy Kimmel — who everybody knows and most people like!

Remember when Mark Twain said, “Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel”? This is the same thing: “Never pick a fight with a popular figure who can created a press conference with a quip.” It’s why Putin outlawed comedians (and puppets) who ridiculed him.

The reason we’re only now realizing that we’re at a pivotal moment in America is because most people didn’t know how to answer this question:

“How do you know when you’re really and truly no longer living in a democracy?”

How do you know when you’re definitely no longer living in a free nation?

Most people think it’s when the tanks are rolling down the streets, and, while people in Washington DC are seeing that right now, it’s not most people‘s lived experience. They haven’t confronted a tank, been asked for their papers, or been locked up in an ICE detention center.

But everybody knows Jimmy Kimmel. So the new understanding is:

“You know you don’t live in a free country any more when comedians can no longer criticize the president.”

That’s a criteria for the end of freedom that everybody understands.

Up until the last few days, most Americans didn’t think we’d lost our freedoms or are about to. Didn’t think that we’d become a tyranny or are on the verge, where the King will come against you no matter who you are, no matter what political party you vote for (just ask registered Republicans Comey, Milley, or Miller), or how obscure you may be (just ask the Columbia students).

Don’t get me wrong: many Americans, perhaps a majority, thought things were bad. They hated inflation and the joblessness going up and all that stuff from the tariffs and Trump’s erratic foreign policy and his constant sucking up to or deferring to Putin.

They didn’t like all their hard-earned tax dollars going into the pockets of the morbidly rich like Trump and his friends and the 13 billionaires in his cabinet. People in America generally realize that pretty much everything Trump has done is either for himself, the billionaire class, or to punish people of color and queer people. They’re generally unhappy about it and pretty much every metric of every study shows it.

But they didn’t realize that we had lost what makes this country great: our personal freedom of speech. Our ability to speak our minds. Our freedom to have multiple viewpoints, and multiple voices and news sources to listen to or watch.

But when this happened to Jimmy Kimmel, everybody suddenly understood. That’s why this is an earthquake moment for the United States.

If the Democrats fail to seize on this opportunity, they are completely incompetent. This has to be the number one issue going forward. Every American understands what it means to be told to, “Shut up!“

And no Americans like it. We didn’t like it as kids; we don’t like it as adults.

In fact, Trump‘s suppression of free speech is already starting, in a small way, to “hit the regular people.” Folks are getting fired, doxed, and even having their lives and homes threatened with violence for things they said online about Charlie Kirk and his shooter. We’re starting to bleed into that “civil war” bottom of the pyramid that I wrote about yesterday.

So, the moment is urgent.

Let your elected representatives know your thoughts on this. That Brendan Carr must go. That the president must stop talking like this. That Pam Bondi must stop talking like this. That they should take the masks off the monsters in the streets so they’re once again human.

To stop making America unfree.

It’s time to stand up and speak out. Because if we don’t now, like Jimmy Kimmel, we may not be able to speak out at all in the near future.

Louise’s Daily Song: “The Last Laugh Before the Silence”

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My newest book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink comes out soon and is now available for pre-order.
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