‘Right Out of Goodfellas’: Cruz Slams Carr over Kimmel

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19, 2025 – A top Republican lawmaker has joined many Congressional Democrats in criticizing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr over his role in the suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, strongly criticized Carr for his comments about Kimmel's show, likening them to a mafia shakedown.

On conservative podcaster Benny Johnson’s show Wednesday, Carr said Kimmel was intentionally lying about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s alleged shooter being a Republican, and that there would be “additional work for the FCC ahead” if “companies” did not “find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel.”

Hours after the interview, Nexstar and Sinclair, which own local broadcast stations dependent on FCC licenses, said they wouldn’t show Kimmel’s program. ABC soon after pulled the show “indefinitely.”

Cruz recited some of Carr’s words from the interview, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” while doing an impression of a Hollywood mob boss on his podcast Friday.

“I got to say, that’s right out of Goodfellas,” he said. “That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar and going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”

Cruz, a vocal Trump administration booster and typical ally of Carr’s, is the most high-profile Republican to criticize the FCC chairman over the remarks. Democratic lawmakers widely condemned the statements and called for Carr to resign over the incident Thursday.

Politico reported Thursday some Republicans had expressed concern about threats to free speech, without naming Carr specifically, and that James Comer, R-Ky., head of the House Oversight Committee was working with the Democratic minority to secure Carr’s testimony before the committee.

“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for 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 Friday. “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.”

Nexstar has a pending $6.2 billion merger with fellow broadcaster TEGNA that would require FCC approval. The deal, which has not been submitted to the agency, would create the largest station owner in the country, and would require the FCC to issue a waiver or alter its broadcast ownership rules.

Practically speaking, it would be difficult for the FCC to actually revoke any broadcast licenses over Kimmel’s remarks, according to Blair Levin, policy advisor for New Street Research and a former FCC chief of staff.

“The legal standard for license revocation is so high that the only time that the FCC tries to revoke a license is when a station goes dark, with revocation being used to free up spectrum to allow someone else to use it,” he wrote in a research note. “We think it is close to impossible for the FCC to put together a legal justification for revoking a license that a court would uphold.”

Still, the prospect of costly and time-consuming legal action is apparently just as effective, Levin said.

“There is a pattern in which the FCC threatens a government action likely to be held illegal by the courts but that, in an effort to resolve a matter expeditiously, causes the accused enterprise to provide something of value to Trump and/or Carr,” he wrote.

Paramount-owned CBS settled a lawsuit with President Donald Trump before Paramount’s merger with Skydance was approved by the agency – Carr has said there was no relation – and an ombudsman was appointed to oversee CBS’s news coverage as part of the deal. The agency also probed EchoStar’s compliance with FCC license requirements, dropping the investigations after the company inked two deals to sell much of its spectrum for $40 billion.

Carr and Republican FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty have maintained Nexstar and Sinclair made a business decision to drop Kimmel’s show.

“Broadcasters have long retained the right to not air national programs that they believe are inconsistent with the public interest, including their local communities’ values,” Carr said in an X post Thursday. “I am glad to see that many broadcasters are responding to their viewers as intended.”