David Letterman went to bat for Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday, denouncing President Donald Trump’s “authoritarian criminal administration” for cracking down on the free speech of comedians.

“This is misery,” Letterman told journalist Jeffrey Goldberg during a conversation as part of The Atlantic Festival in New York. “We see where this is all going, correct? It’s managed media. And it’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. And you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.”

Letterman, who hosted The Late Show on CBS for 22 years before Stephen Colbert took over in 2015, also went after Trump’s FCC Chair Brendan Carr, whose threats against Disney and ABC led direct

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