FCC Chairman Says His “Easy Way Or The Hard Way” Comment About Jimmy Kimmel Wasn’t Meant As A Threat To Pull Licenses If ABC Didn’t Fire Him

Before ABC announced that Jimmy Kimmel would return to his show on Tuesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr sought to explain what he meant last week when he warned ABC and its stations that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” in addressing the late-night host’s remarks about the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

At the Concordia Summit in New York on Monday morning, Carr denied that he had threatened to pull licenses of ABC stations if they did not fire Kimmel. He said that “did not happen in any way, shape or form.”

Carr said that “what I spoke about last week is that when concerns are raised about news distortion … there’s an easy way for parties to address that and work that out. In the main, that takes place between local television stations that are licensed by the FCC and what we call national programmers like Disney.