Kimmel brushes off FCC Chair Brendan Carr's Senate grilling, laments no one was held 'accountable'

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Kimmel brushes off FCC Chair Brendan Carr's Senate grilling, laments no one was held 'accountable'

Late-night host says nothing came of committee grilling FCC Chair Brendan Carr

Hanna Panreck Fox News

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December 18, 2025 10:30am EST

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Kimmel brushes off FCC Chair Brendan Carr's Senate grilling, laments no one was held 'accountable'

Jimmy Kimmel brushed off the Senate's grilling of FCC chair Brendan Carr on Wednesday and lamented that no one was held accountable after his suspension in September.

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Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel brushed off the Senate's questioning of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr on Wednesday and said nothing was likely to come of it.

Kimmel joked that the hearing stemmed from an "unwanted vacation" he took in September and quipped that Carr "is the tough guy who threatened the company I work for, saying we could do this the easy way or the hard way."

Carr appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee, testifying for the first time since his comments in September targeting ABC's handling of Kimmel over his controversial remarks about the Charlie Kirk assassination.

Kimmel noted that the hearing aired on C-SPAN3, joking, "You know it's bad when you can't even make the main C-SPAN."

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Jimmy Kimmel brushed off the Senate's grilling of FCC Chair Brendan Carr on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (ABC/JimmyKimmelLive)

"In the end, none of the Republicans confronted the commissioner anyway. No one watched this. No one admitted to anything. Nothing was done to prevent it from happening again. No one’s held accountable and your freedom of speech is only guaranteed depending on what you have to say. It was not the bipartisan effort we might have expected," Kimmel said.

FCC Chair Carr did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

Kimmel also said he couldn’t believe he was the subject of a Senate hearing.

"It was so weird watching this morning while I made bagels for my kids. If you told me 30 years ago the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation would be holding a hearing about me, I guess I would assume I got drunk on a plane and tried to force the door open in the air?" he joked.

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Federal Communication Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Kimmel was briefly suspended due to remarks he made about Charlie Kirk's alleged shooter in September, but returned to air a few days later.

The suspension drew bipartisan criticism, with some conservatives expressing concern over Carr's comments about ABC.

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Jimmy Kimmel, winner of the Outstanding Host for a Game Show Award for "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", attends the 2025 Creative Arts Emmy Awards at Peacock Theater on Sept. 7, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said at the time that Carr's remarks were "dangerous as hell."

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"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 we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off-air if we don’t like what you’re saying," Cruz said on his podcast.

Hanna Panreck is an associate editor at Fox News.

Kimmel brushes off FCC Chair Brendan Carr's Senate grilling, laments no one was held 'accountable'

Kimmel brushes off FCC Chair Brendan Carr's Senate grilling, laments no one was held 'accountable'

Late-night host says nothing came of committee grilling FCC Chair Brendan Carr

Kimmel brushes off FCC Chair Brendan Carr's Senate grilling, laments no one was held 'accountable'

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