OTTAWA—The decision by United States Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr to threaten ABC following late-night comments by comedian Jimmy Kimmel was even derided by Senator Ted Cruz.  

Cruz is a well-known supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, but he characterized the Carr threat as a page straight out of a Goodfellas book and called the comments “dangerous as hell.”

Even as Kimmel’s suspension by ABC’s parent company Disney Entertainment was lifted due to public outcry, Trump was moving to muzzle more critics. 

In a harsh rebuke to a question from an ABC reporter at the White House, Trump attacked the journalist, ABC, and media in general, bragging that he was now suing The New York Times and would win.  

The lawsuits should come as no surprise, since, even during his time in the private sector, Trump delayed paying many creditors by simply dragging out the court process when sued for payment. 

But the fact that the FCC, which is supposed to be an impartial licensing body, would threaten retribution because of a late-night comedic attack mirrors life in a dictatorship. 

Trump doubled down when the Kimmel suspension was short-lived. “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this one. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16-million. …This one sounds even more lucrative.”

Then he and the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services went off on another tangent, claiming that women who take Tylenol during childbirth could be responsible for causing autism in the fetus. 

Robert F. Kennedy. Jr. bears a family name known globally, but the vast majority of his own family does not support him. 

Only one cousin endorsed him in the last presidential campaign, and 50 other family members, including all his siblings, lined up with then-U.S. president Joe Biden to oppose Kennedy’s independent bid for election. 

Along with being a well-known anti-vaxxer, Kennedy has stated that COVID was “ethnically targeted” to spare Jewish and Chinese people. According to a Vanity Fair article, Kennedy has also stated that anti-vaxxers suffered worse persecution than German Holocaust victim Anne Frank. He also believes that an alternate shooter killed his own father, and after interviewing the convicted perpetrator, Sirhan Sirhan in prison, proclaimed Sirhan’s innocence. 

One of Kennedy’s first actions was to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, and deny the current measles epidemic, despite medical evidence showing the greatest hike in outbreaks since the virus was officially declared eliminated in 2000.

Now Kennedy’s focus, and that of the president, is on Tylenol. Despite zero evidence to back up the pair, both men held the press conference to decry the use of the pain-killing acetaminophen.

To many, the move was simply viewed as another channel changer. To overshadow the Kimmel return to the airwaves, the Tylenol move was designed to get people talking about something else. 

It has also thrown Johnson and Johnson, one of America’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, into a public-relations frenzy. 

How can you convince Americans that Tylenol is safe when the president says it isn’t? 

Again, the world is left wondering whether America is ruled by a madman who doesn’t believe in science, and who would easily shut down all free and fair reporting if he could.

The tongue lashings regularly administered by the president to those who oppose him have been replicated by multiple of his appointees. 

U.S. ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra recently had the nerve to claim at a Halifax Chamber of Commerce event that he was “disappointed … that it is very, very difficult to find Canadians who are passionate about the American-Canadian relationship.”

What planet has the ambassador been living on? The only person responsible for the meltdown in Canada-U.S. relations is his boss. It was Trump who belittled our former prime minister, constantly referring to Justin Trudeau as “governor,” and it is Trump who has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada by using economic levers rather than military ones. 

Trump has followed up with the threat via a constantly-moving target of tariffs that is costing both his country and Canada dearly. 

As ambassador, Hoekstra’s job is to try and smooth over differences between the two countries. He should be acting as a quiet go-between working to solve problems. Instead, Hoekstra is burning his Canadian bridges. 

Like many Trump appointees, the ambassador has made it very obvious that his job to kiss the president’s buttocks. 

King Charles discreetly smirked when the president went off-script at the recent royal banquet in London. The world is smirking, too. 

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister.

The Hill Times

 

See all stories BY SHEILA COPPS