S05E03 – Trump vs Kimmel: Is free speech dead in America?

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds we tackle free speech under Donald Trump. We start with Trump’s quote that he wants major broadcasters to lose their licenses for criticizing him. We then turn to a discussion of Brendan Carr, the head of the FCC, threatening Jimmy Kimmel over a comment he made about the person who has been arrested in the killing of Charlie Kirk and the resulting removal of Jimmy Kimmel from the air (though we recorded the podcast the night Kimmel returned to the air). We all agree that Trump (and Pam Bondi) seem to very clearly want to end free speech in America. We note that politicians on both sides of the political spectrum called these actions terrifying. Ryan then compared Trump’s desire to stop the media from criticizing him to what the Nazi’s did after they took over, as detailed in this Holocaust Encyclopedia article; it became illegal to criticize Hitler at all. We all agree that Trump wants to be like Hitler in this one specific respect.