Trump v. Kimmel

The Libertarian

The Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin

History, News, Politics

4.7 • 994 Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Richard Epstein dives into the controversy surrounding Jimmy Kimmel, the FCC, and free speech. Using the recent dust-up as a starting point, Epstein traces the history of the Federal Communications Commission from its origins in the 1930s through landmark cases like Red Lion. He explains how government licensing of the broadcast spectrum opened the door to censorship, distortion, and inefficiency—and why libertarians like Ronald Coase pushed for a market-based approach instead. Professor Epstein also contrasts Hayek’s vision of free entry with Felix Frankfurter’s regulatory mindset, explores the limits of “public interest” obligations, and shows how today’s fragmented media landscape makes FCC power increasingly obsolete.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Libertarian. I'm Charles C.W. Cook. I'm here, of course, with the Libertarian himself, Richard Epstein.
0:19.8	This is a production of the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.
0:26.2	Richard, welcome to your own show.
0:28.0	Oh, it's always a pleasure to be here.
0:30.1	All right, let's talk about the FCC.
0:33.2	The proximate cause of this topic, of course, is the controtent from last week over Jimmy Kimmel,
0:41.7	who has a late night show.
0:43.2	He went on television.
0:44.9	He said something that wasn't true about the politics of the man who murdered Charlie
0:51.4	Kirk.
0:51.9	And then Disney, which owns ABC, announced that it was going to be preempting his show
0:59.7	indefinitely.
1:00.9	Now, at the same time, Brendan Carr, who is at the FCC, is ahead of the FCC, a Trump
1:08.4	appointee, said out loud that we can do this the easy way or the hard way,
1:15.3	and that was interpreted, I think, fairly as a threat to use the FCC's powers to remove Jimmy Kimmel.
1:22.3	But Jimmy Kimmel is now back.
1:24.3	So no one's quite sure what happens, but many people who are critical of
1:28.0	government intervention have said, irrespective of the details here, the FCC should not be
1:35.3	making that sort of threat. I think what is interesting about this is that the FCC does have
1:41.2	some power, but not necessarily that power. And the FCC might have
1:47.2	powers that it in a free country shouldn't use. So let's go all the way back to the beginning,
1:52.5	Richard. And perhaps you can explain to me what's the FCC, when was it created, and why does
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