Trump’s anti-media blitz that led to Kimmel’s suspension is straight from a European strongman’s playbook

That’s how Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán consolidated control of the media in his country, according to scholars who witnessed Hungary’s democratic backsliding firsthand.

President Trump and his allies appear to be running the same playbook against media outlets in the US.

Using legal maneuvers, financial incentives and public pressure campaigns, Trump is persuading companies to make changes that benefit his party and bolster his own power. Wednesday’s decision by Disney’s ABC to sideline Jimmy Kimmel is the latest example.

Free speech groups like the ACLU warned that the Kimmel suspension is part of a broad Trump-led effort to silence his critics.

“This is beyond McCarthyism. Trump officials are repeatedly abusing their power to stop ideas they don’t like, deciding who can speak, write, and even joke,” the ACLU said. “The Trump administration’s actions, paired with ABC’s capitulation, represent a grave threat to our First Amendment freedoms.”

‘This story is very familiar’

Gábor Scheiring, who experienced Orbán’s autocratic power plays firsthand as a member of the Hungarian parliament, told CNN that “this story is very familiar.”

Scheiring said that both ABC’s decision-making about Kimmel and last July’s move by CBS to cancel “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” reek of what is sometimes called “Orbanism.”

Scheiring, now an assistant professor at Georgetown University Qatar, said Orbán weakened public broadcasting, muzzled independent media through “autocratic carrots and sticks,” and incentivized owners to fall in line.

“A key underlying story is that media owners, both foreign and domestic, largely capitulated individually rather than mounting collective resistance, which enabled Orbán’s systematic capture strategy,” he said.

Media critics in the US have similarly chastised American companies like Disney for caving to Trump’s desires, most pointedly through legal settlements.

Disney settled Trump’s defamation lawsuit against ABC last December rather than defending itself in court, and Paramount settled Trump’s suit against CBS last July, even though legal experts said Paramount had a very strong case.

The president is now suing both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. His legal warfare has been combined with an unprecedented application of the government’s regulatory powers. Brendan Carr, his hand-picked chair of the FCC, has opened probes of several TV station owners that Trump dislikes and inserted himself politically in ways that past FCC officials never have.

 

When Orban came to power in 2010 and turned Hungary in a more authoritarian direction, he used “financial and legal means” to muzzle critical media outlets, Scheiring said.

“Using the power of the media authority to push outlets toward self-censorship is a classic Orbán tactic,” and Carr’s public threat to ABC about Kimmel “feels very similar,” he added.

‘There’s always a price’

At least two major TV station owners that need FCC approval for pending deals decided to yank Kimmel’s show from their stations before ABC sidelined the late-night host altogether on Wednesday.

Those station owners, Nexstar and Sinclair, have positioned themselves as Trump administration allies, leading public interest groups to raise concerns about the objectivity of the news coverage coming from the stations. (A top Sinclair executive famously told Trump, back in 2016, “We are here to deliver your message.”)

Scheiring said, “Orbán and his crew systematically went after local outlets, buying them up directly or forcing them into compliance.” For owners of media outlets in the US, he said, “the financial incentives are clear: it’s easier to make money through loyalty to the Trump-state.”

ABC’s suspension of Kimmel’s show also sidelines a prominent Trump critic, at least temporarily, which Scheiring identified as another priority of so-called strongmen.

Noting that Trump had previously called for ABC to cancel Kimmel, Scheiring said “personally targeted campaigns and character assassinations are the lifeblood of Orbán’s regime too: they demonstratively raise the cost of speaking up and speaking out.”

David Pressman, the most recent US ambassador to Hungary, wrote in a recent New York Times guest essay that American corporations are clinging to an “illusion that they can preserve their independence and integrity while making deals with a strongman, just as Hungary’s elite believed they, too, could emerge unscathed.”

“President Trump, like Mr. Orban, no doubt believes that everyone can be bought. America’s elites are proving him right,” Pressman wrote. “There is a Hungarian phrase I heard often: ‘Van az a penz’ — ‘There’s always a price.’”