Conservatives rushed to exonerate the president from the charge of censorship. He swiftly contradicted them.
Minutes after news broke that ABC had bowed to the Trump administration’s threats and indefinitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel, Ari Fleischer, the former Bush-administration press secretary, tried to explain why the thing that just happened was not actually what happened. “Liberals want to make this firing about ‘free speech,’” he wrote on X, “Did it ever occur to them the issue might be accuracy? Kimmel told his viewers that Charlie Kirk was murdered by MAGA.”
Nothing to see here, just a network imposing a zero-tolerance standard for factual accuracy upon its comedians and implementing it without warning. (Despite his fanatical belief in the importance of factual accuracy, Fleischer’s own tweet substantially misconstrues the facts: Kimmel’s joke implied that it was possible Kirk’s murderer was a MAGA supporter, but did not say so outright. Fleischer’s self-punishment for this error will no doubt be merciless.)
These are glorious, heady days for the Republican Party’s unselfconsciously authoritarian wing. Every day President Donald Trump tramples on the rights of their enemies, and the natcons rejoice, This is what I voted for.
But we should spare a thought for the party’s more conflicted wing, the anti-anti-Trump conservatives such as Fleischer. They profess support for free speech, democracy, and the rule of law while attempting to remain Republicans in good standing. They resolve this tension by focusing on the hypocrisy and foibles of their old liberal foes and ignoring the actions of the world’s most powerful person.
It is a survival strategy, and not a pleasant way to spend four years.
