A former White House official shut down a conservative's attempt to defend President Donald Trump forcing ABC to drop late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel because he didn't like his criticism.

ABC announced it would pre-empt the comedian's program indefinitely after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr suggested the agency would revoke licenses for stations owned by parent company Disney if it didn't punish Kimmel for his coverage of Charlie Kirk's assassination.

"This is not about free speech, it's about power," said Meghan Hays, a former communications staffer to President Joe Biden. "Whether or not the Disney could have fired Jimmy Kimmel, absolutely everyone can, you know, for what he's wearing. Absolutely. That's not a free speech issue. But what we are silencing people for critiquing the president, and they are using the power of these [corporate] mergers to be able to do that, and that is what is not right here, and I think what's interesting is why there aren't more people speaking up about the government using the power to silence media. We are running dangerously close to state-run media."

"CNN This Morning" host Audie Cornish pointed out that the media landscape was much wider than it once was, and former Trump communications director Mike Dubke agreed, suggesting that Kimmel might start a podcast instead.

"Can I can I defend you for one second?" Dubke said to Cornish. "What I'm trying to say and what I took your question to mean is, there are so many other avenues for entertainers, for news to go out into the public. Now, with the internet and all these other places, the media doesn't exist as it did before."

"But that's not the point," Hays interjected.

"When there were three stations and they did control the narrative," Dubke continued. "Now the narrative is is there's 1,500 different avenues one can take, and, you know, Jimmy Kimmel can find find another way. He can. I bet you he's going to podcast."

"This isn't about Jimmy Kimmel," Hays rebutted. "This is about the government using their power in the merger here to control, to control organizations and control corporations."

Dubke argued that TV networks made business decisions by pulling talk show hosts who Trump has been targeting on social media for months.

"There were 40 million reasons for [Stephen] Colbert to go off the air," Dubke said. "There are, there were Democratic administrations, along with Republican administrations, going back decades that have done this, as I said, in private, and now it's out in the open and we're going, 'Oh, my.'"

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