Political Quotes

“Donald Trump is powerful, but he is not all-powerful. It is true that he is trying to consolidate power in illegal and dangerous ways, but it is also true that he is often failing to do that because of public opinion, because of markets, because of institutions, and because of the law itself. I want to give a couple of recent examples. Two weeks ago, shortly after Trump and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr threatened to punish ABC if it didn't suspend Jimmy Kimmel's show, the network announced that it was taking the show off the air indefinitely. So at first, the public coercion seemed to work. Brendan Carr had said, point blank: We can do this the easy way or [we can do this] the hard way. And the network caved. But a swift and searing backlash quickly followed. Consumers revolted. People began canceling their subscriptions. Disney's market cap fell by close to $6.5 billion in a matter of days. Artists, advertisers, and employees spoke out. Even Republicans in the Senate denounced the move. My Senate colleague Ted Cruz called it 'dangerous as hell': I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we're going to decide what speech we like and what speech we don't, and we're going to threaten to take you off [the] air if we don't like what you're saying. Criticizing your own party's administration is hard. I understand that.…”