The panel for CNN’s Saturday Table For Five exploded over Vice President J.D. Vance’s assertion that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies led to “deliberate” discrimination against white men.

Host Sarah Sidner played video of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chair encouraging white men to sue their employers if they feel they’ve been wronged.

Sidner said that not only did Vance repost the EEOC’s message, he took “many steps further by claiming that DEI isn’t just, quote, ‘lame diversity seminars or racial slogans. It was a deliberate program of discrimination primarily,’ he said, ‘against white men.‘”

“Did some white men get screwed over because of DEI? Probably,” said panelist and comedian Paul Mecurio. “Did everybody to the point where you do — that was like a shyster personal injury law firm commercial, wasn’t it?”

He continued, “So this isn’t correcting a systemic inequity. It’s treating discrimination as symmetrical. And it’s not because what you’re doing is you’re ignoring the imbalance of power that led to the civil rights legislation. And so do I think that some white men have unfairly been treated as a result of DEI? Yeah. Life’s kind of sloppy that way. But it’s not perfect. But I don’t think you go so far as to tell everybody to start suing the government and start suing your work.”

“Wait, hold on,” Republican politician Joe Borelli interjected. “Why shouldn’t a white person who has been discriminated, which you just admitted is real and it has happened? Why wouldn’t a white person who has been discriminated and can prove a case, or at least can bring a case? Why wouldn’t they be able to sue for that?”

“Because I think the federal government, in that kind of announcement is emboldening people that maybe don’t have a claim, but feel the government is telling me to do it, I’m going to go do it. That’s why,” Mecurio shot back.

“Maybe the bigger question is, why is the vice president putting this out there, telling people to sue?” Sidner asked.

SIDNER: Because there’s a big question here. There is an entire community that feels discriminated against by the —

BRIANNA LYMAN: Yeah, white men.

SIDNER: — president. The Somali community feels discriminated against by the president. He called them garbage.

LYMAN: American white — Joe Biden called us garbage — white American men are being discriminated on the basis of their race and gender.

In October 2024, then-President Joe Biden said, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” after a Trump rally comedian referred to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

The post CNN Panel Explodes Over JD Vance Assertion DEI Is ‘Deliberate’ Discrimination Against White Men first appeared on Mediaite.

X Screenshot

Police in Columbus, Ohio responded to “noise complaints” when protesters in freezing temperatures blared music for hours outside a hotel hosting ICE officers — but they were there to support the demonstrators, not to stop them.

The social media account of political commentator @rooster_ohio posted video of the cacophony that included people banging on metal drums, writing, “Columbus, Ohio said no sleep for ICE at the Embassy Suites hotel.”

Brandon Baker, who posted video to Facebook, wrote, “This is just wild!! People are blaring music and sounding alarms to keep ICE from sleeping!”

Baker told The Columbus Dispatch, that the “mostly electronic dance music with heavy beats” began around 9 p.m. “and didn’t cease for hours.”

On the video, a woman can be heard exclaiming, “This is crazy! This is amazing!” adding, “There’s a guy playing a trombone!”

“It’s important to recognize that Columbus is a melting pot and we’re not going to tolerate this kind of intolerance,” Baker told The Dispatch.

“It was a good symbol and a good thing to see Columbus kind of fighting back against this group of individuals who have pretty much taken it upon themselves to terrorize people,” he continued. “If we’re so anti-terrorism in the United States, why are we allowing something like this to even happen?”

The video panned to Columbus police milling around outside the hotel, but they didn’t attempt to stop the protesters.

On Friday, Mayor Andrew Ginther (D) and Columbus Police Chief Elaine Bryant said, “no city resources would be used to help federal agents in immigration enforcement operations,” The Dispatch reported.

A hotel employee told The Dispatch that they refunded “a few guests” who happened to be staying there along with ICE.

ICE confirmed two arrests in Columbus after city leaders warned citizens of a possible increase in ICE activity throughout the city.

“These enforcement actions are part of ongoing efforts to uphold public safety and enforce federal immigration laws,” an ICE spokesperson said.

ICE described those arrested as the “worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” according to ABC6.

One of those arrested had multiple prior charges, including criminal trespassing and drug-related offenses. In a separate court document, the man was charged with aggravated robbery for allegedly stealing sandwiches from a local store.

The other detainee had “a traffic citation for failure to control a vehicle and not wearing a seat belt,” according to ABC6.

The post ‘Just Wild!’ Ohio Protesters Blare Music Outside Hotel Hosting ICE Officers As Police Look On first appeared on Mediaite.

Evangelical preacher Franklin Graham told participants at the Pentagon ‘s “Christmas Worship Service” that the “God of love” they’re familiar with “also hates.”

Graham addressed troops and Pentagon employees Thursday at the event hosted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his wife, Jennifer Hegseth.

“You know, we think about, God is a God of love,” Graham said before reciting Bible verse John 3:16, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that he whoever believeth in him shouldn’t perish, but have everlasting life.”

Graham continued, “We know that God loves, but did you know that God also hates? Do you know that God also is a God of war? And many people don’t want to think about that, or forget that.”

Graham read a Bible passage where Saul was called on to attack Israel’s enemies, saying, “Utterly destroy all that they have. Don’t spare them….but kill them, both men, women, infant, nursing child, oxen, sheep, camel, and donkey.”

“Now, people will say, ‘Franklin, that is so hard. That’s not the God I believe in.’ Well, you’d better believe in him!” Graham said.

Graham then talked about “the sins of our country.”

“I pray that God will forgive the sins of our country,” he said. “When you think of all the things we do, and the mistakes we make, pray that God will heal our land, and that America will once again turn to the God of our fathers and serve him.”

Pete Hegseth closed the event by remembering the American soldiers and interpreter who were killed in Syria last week.

“I just got back from Dover for a dignified transfer for three great Americans,” Hegseth said.

“There’s no way to manage what to say when you’re in that room with those families,” he continued. “But almost to a man and a woman, you see them find hope, that there is something bigger. A place where they know where their loved-ones are. Yes, they served our nation, the put on the cloth of our uniform, served all of us, on behalf of all of us. But they serve a bigger and greater God. And we know where they are.”

The post Franklin Graham Says ‘God Also Hates’ and ‘Is a God of War’ at Pentagon’s ‘Christmas Worship Service’ first appeared on Mediaite.

As you get stronger, you become able to lift heavier and heavier weights. That's the idea at the heart of an often-misunderstood fitness concept: progressive overload. Unfortuantely, there are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about this principle, so here's how to use it to plan your own workouts or judge whether a program you're following will keep you on track.

What is progressive overload?

Progressive overload is the increase, over time, in the amount of work or stress you ask your body to handle. The term is used two different ways: as a principle of how the human body works, and as a description of how a workout program changes over time. If you want to know how to "do progressive overload," you're thinking of the second one—how to design a workout program.

The simplest way to implement this is to just do a little more each time you're in the gym. More weight, or more reps, or making the workout harder in some other way. You can still take some easier "deload" workouts (or weeks) from time to time, but over the long term you want to see a trend of the workouts getting harder. They won't necessarily feel harder, because you'll be getting stronger. It's more like the workouts are keeping up with you.

In other words, progressive overload is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. As you get stronger, your workouts need to get harder to keep up. But in a sense you are also becoming stronger because you're challenging yourself with harder workouts.

What does progressive overload look like in real life?

If you’re bummed out by the idea of working harder and harder forever, don’t panic. You’ll work harder in absolute terms—by lifting heavier weights, let’s say—but the challenge stays about the same in relative terms. Your workouts will fall into an effort level you might call “hard, but doable,” and you’ll notice progress because your numbers are going up. (A similar approach applies to endurance sports. As cyclist Greg Lemond reportedly said: “It never gets any easier, you just go faster.”)

When I started lifting weights many years ago, 65 pounds was a decently challenging bench press for me. I remember being proud of myself for being able to squeeze out a rep or two at 85 pounds. Now, if I’m going to do a bench workout, I don’t even bother loading those amounts onto the bar. My warmup sets start at 95 pounds, and a heavy single might be around 135. That 135 feels just as hard as 85 used to, but it’s undeniably more weight.

How did I make that progress? Well, I kept lifting the weights that felt heavy for me. Over time, the same weights that used to be challenging started to feel easy, and I needed to add more and more weight to the bar to get something that actually felt heavy. (I have a guide here to figuring out whether you’re lifting “heavy.”)

Most of the time, I either followed a program that told me how many pounds to lift, increasing that amount slowly over time, or one that told me what effort level to lift at (a concept called RPE), which allowed me to choose an appropriate weight each day. Following a program will usually net you better progress than just winging it, but as long as you’re using the overload principle and the progression principle, you will get stronger.

Workout routines that use progressive overload

Here are some examples of workout routines that use progressive overload:

Double progression. Let's say you're aiming for three sets of eight to 12 reps of dumbbell shoulder press. You choose a weight that you can handle for 3 sets of 8 reps. The next time you do shoulder press, try to add at least one rep. If you can't, that's fine—just do your three sets of eight. One day maybe you'll get 10 reps on the first set, then only eight on the next two. Another time maybe you get 12, 10, and eight. After a few weeks you manage three full sets of 12. That means it's time to increase the weight! The next time you do the exercise, you'll use a heavier set of dumbbells and start again at three sets of eight. It's called "double" progression because first you increase the reps, and then you increase the weight.

Linear progression. This is a common progression for barbell exercises for beginners. You do the same number of reps every time (say, five sets of five reps) but add a small amount of weight every workout. Often the program will have instructions for what to do if you can't complete the five sets of five reps at the new weight. These workouts aren't usually realistic for experienced lifters, since you can't keep increasing the weight forever, but they're great for people who are learning an exercise for the first time or returning to the gym after a break.

Set progression. This may be used along with double progression, or may be its own thing. You start with just a few sets of an exercise per workout, say two or three, and then add a set each week. Once you're doing, say, five sets, you'll start over with heavier weight. If you're using it with double progression, you'll increase sets, and then reps, and then weight.

Density progression. This is commonly used in timed sets, like Crossfit WODs ("workout of the day") or for accessory lifts. Set a timer for several minutes and do as many reps as possible in the given time, resting as needed. The next time you do the workout, try to do more reps in the same amount of time. Once you can do the lifts with little to no rest, you'll either add weight or find another way to make the exercises harder (for example, doing dips instead of pushups).

As you can see, weight isn't the only variable that progresses. You can increase reps, or sets, or increase the amount of work you do in a given time by decreasing rest. You can increase the difficulty by choosing a harder exercise (like progressing from dips to pushups). As long as things get harder over time, you're doing progressive overload.

How to use progressive overload even if you can't add more weight

Adding weight is part of most progressive overload schemes, but you don’t have to add weight to the bar literally every time you lift. There’s a wide range of weights and rep ranges that can be effective for building strength and muscle. For example, if I did a bench workout today, I might do sets of 10 at 100 pounds, or sets of five at 120, or some heavy singles at 140, or any combination of these. If I’m really tired or stressed, I might decide to do the sets of 10 at just 90 pounds. If I’m feeling great, I might be able to do them at 105. This is what I mean by a wide range: All of these are hard enough work to spur my muscles to adapt and get stronger. (There are reasons you might choose one of these workouts over the others, but we don’t need to get into those details at the moment.)

What wouldn’t be progressive overload? Well, if I did sets of 10 with just the bar, that wouldn’t help me get stronger. If I had a mini barbell set, and it maxed out at 85 pounds, my strength would stagnate once I got to the point where 85 pounds isn’t a challenging weight anymore.

Even as your strength improves, you don’t have to do more every single workout, as long as you’re getting stronger in the long term, and your workouts are still in the range that is challenging to you.

So let’s say you’re doing bicep curls with a 10-pound dumbbell. You can do eight or 10 reps with it. Perfect. But the only way to add weight, at your gym, might be to pick up a 15-pound dumbbell. If that weight is too heavy for you, that’s okay. Keep working with the 10-pounder, and in time you’ll be ready for the 15.

You can progress on more than one metric

While you’re probably itching to lift heavier weights, weight on the bar is not the only way to progress. Sometimes you can’t add weight because of equipment issues, or just because your strength is improving slowly. (Even if your beginner gains were meteoric, everybody’s progress slows down at some point.)

But if you’re smart, you probably don’t want to only get better at one specific thing. A lot of beginners start off doing squat, bench, and deadlift in sets of five reps, and trying to add weight each workout. But you’ll be a more well-rounded lifter if you also know how to lift heavy singles and sets of 10 or 15. Depending on your goals you might consider front squats in addition to back squats, and reverse hypers or kettlebell swings in addition to deadlifts. There are ways to improve at all of these things, and it’s normal for a lifter to be simultaneously increasing their reps in accessory lifts, increasing their weight on the bar for heavy singles, and increasing the amount of time they spend on conditioning workouts.

How to spot workouts that don't use progressive overload

Not every workout or routine will have progressive overload built in. For example, if you have a favorite workout that you do every day, but you never make it any harder (say, it's always three sets of ten pushups), you won't make progress over time. That's OK if you enjoy the workout for another reason, like if you're just trying to get the mental health benefits of a little exercise boost in the morning. But if you want to get better at pushups, you need to find a way to do more of them over time, or make them harder in some way (like elevating your feet, or doing them with a backpack on).

Workouts with progressive overload tend to be personalized to you. If the workout tells you exactly what to do, down to the exact weight of dumbbell to pick up, it's not giving you room to choose the weight that matches your current strength level. The 12-3-30 treadmill workout, for example, is the same for everyone every time. If it's one-size-fits-all, there's no way to progress.

That said, some workouts have a sneaky progression built in. If you jog for 30 minutes each day, chances are you'll get a little faster over time even if you don't realize it, and then you're doing more work within the same amount of time. Or if you do "three sets of 10" of an exercise, but each day you pick up whatever dumbbells feel appropriate for that level, you'll probably end up using heavier ones over time. Just make sure you don't get stuck doing the exact same thing month in and month out.

The limits of progressive overload

One last thing, now that we’ve discussed what progressive overload looks like. It’s important to remember that progression happens in the long term. Some competitive lifters might not test their one-rep max outside of competition, which means they’ll only find out once or twice a year how much their deadlift has gone up. That doesn’t mean they haven’t progressed in the meantime. If they’re doing an effective program, consistently challenging themselves, they’re still working.

Plateaus are a fact of life when you’re a lifter. Sometimes it takes a while to get stronger. Sometimes you need to work on your technique to be able to express your newfound strength. Sometimes factors like stress or weight loss or changes in your training can make you weaker in the short term, but if you keep training in a way that challenges you, you’ll set new PRs soon enough.

(AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

You’ve heard of the reverse Jim Cramer, but in the Kalshi Era, perhaps it’s Fox News host-turned-House Hunters: Qatar star Tucker Carlson whose intuitions shrewd bettors should short.

The first year of the second Trump administration has seen Carlson whiff on both of the two major predictions he’s offered. In March, Carlson mused that “a strike on the Iranian nuclear sites will almost certainly result in thousands of American deaths at bases throughout the Middle East, and cost the United States tens of billions of dollars.”

“A bombing campaign against Iran will set off a war, and it will be America’s war. Don’t let the propagandists lie to you,” he added for good measure.

A few months later, Chicken Little reared his head again.

“The first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans. It could also collapse our economy, as surging oil prices trigger unmanageable inflation. Consider the effects of $30 gasoline,” warned Carlson in June. “But the second week of the war could be even worse. Iran isn’t Iraq or Libya, or even North Korea. While it’s often described as a rogue state, Iran has powerful allies. It’s now part of a global bloc called BRICS, which represents the majority of the world’s landmass, population, economy and military power. Iran has extensive military ties with Russia. It sells the overwhelming majority of its oil exports to China. Iran isn’t alone. An attack on Iran could very easily become a world war. We’d lose.”

By the end of the month, President Donald Trump had not only disregarded Carlson’s faulty advice and crippled the Iranian nuclear program, but bestowed an apt new nickname upon him: “kooky Tucker Carlson.”

The Iranians’ retaliatory strike on the United States’ Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar — which came complete with a forewarning to the U.S. and Qatar and resulted in zero casualties — was pitiful. Still, self-professed America Firster Tucker Carlson reacted to the news not by expressing his concern for American lives, but by nearly shedding tears on behalf of the Qataris, whom he argued only host the base “to be nice.”

Wednesday night’s address from the president resulted in yet another swing-and-a-miss from the cable news flameout.

Carlson previewed Trump’s speech by declaring that “members of Congress were briefed yesterday that a war [with Venezuela] is coming and it’ll be announced in the address to the nation tonight at 9 o’clock by the president.”

“Who knows, by the way, if that will actually happen,” he added. “I don’t know, and I never want to overstate what I know, which is pretty limited in general, but a member of Congress told me that this morning.”

Well, he was right on at least one count; what Tucker Carlson knows is, indeed, limited.

Any cursory review of the headlines summarizing Trump’s speech will reveal that he did not, in fact, plunge the nation into war on Wednesday. But it gets worse for Carlson — the president did not so much as mention Venezuela.

And that congressional briefing to which he referred? That didn’t happen either, per Axios’s Marc Caputo.

Of course, Carlson is no stranger to lies and is long past feeling shame. That he was, yet again, wrong, yet again, is likely of no consequence to him. But this particular misfire betrays something much more devastating: Carlson is out of the loop.

Such a falling out probably seemed impossible last summer, when he delivered a speech and sat beside both Trump and JD Vance — the man Carlson had helped talk the nominee into picking as his running mate — at the Republican National Convention. Yet Carlson’s conspiracy theories, grumbling over Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments, and promotion of outright anti-Semitism have isolated him.

To be sure, Carlson still has friends — Vance most prominent among them — in the administration. But then again, Carlson must now be wondering why the vice president failed to save his longtime ally from the embarrassment of crying wolf. Again.

The bad news for Carlson doesn’t end there, either. On Tuesday, Trump hosted one of his nemeses, Fox’s Mark Levin, at the White House for a Hanukkah reception at which the commander-in-chief asked the longtime conservative commentator to “say a couple of words,” and he obliged by deeming Trump “the first Jewish president.” One can only imagine how that went over in Carlson’s bunker.

The hits keep coming. Another foe, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, visited the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday to deliver a withering takedown of Carlson. That’s right, the same institution that came rushing to his defense after his chummy conversation with professional bigot Nick Fuentes this fall is now inviting his sworn enemies to excoriate him.

Perhaps none of this matters to Carlson, who can continue to print money while spreading hatred and misinformation in equal measure for the rest of his life should he choose to do so. But his abhorrent behavior has apparently destroyed his relationship with the Trump White House.  And that leaves him in the same class as Alex Jones — a clown performing tricks for an immature audience, albeit with a pedigree that renders his descent all the more degrading.

The post ‘Kooky’ Tucker Carlson’s Embarrassing Misfire Shows Trump Has Kicked Him Out of the MAGA Club first appeared on Mediaite.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

As you build your DIY toolkit, you'll quickly discover there's rarely just one version of any given tool. Of course there are Phillips head and slotted screwdrivers, but even hammers—possibly the simplest tool of all—come in a surprising range of varieties designed for different tasks.

When it comes to power tools, the differences can be more complex to suss out. Take drills: When starting out on a job, how do you know if you need a standard power drill, a hammer drill, or whatever an "impact driver" is? While you can get pretty far in your home maintenance career without knowing the difference, but there will come a point when using the right tool for the job will make your life a lot easier. If you’ve managed to get through life without knowing the difference between a drill, a hammer drill, and an impact driver, here’s the rundown you need.

Drills vs. impact drivers vs. hammer drills

Drills, impact drivers, and hammer drills are all used to drill holes and drive fasteners, but they work in different ways and are well-suited to different tasks:

• Drills are the easiest to understand, conceptually: Your trusty power drill spins the bit, delivering consistent, constant torque at a variety of speeds. When the motor encounters resistance, it disengages. That means that when your drill hits its limit, there’s not much more it can do to drive a fastener or bore a hole. A standard drill is good at both drilling and boring holes.

• Impact drivers also spin the bit and provide consistent torque—until the driver hits resistance. Then it adds a rapid, perpendicular, concussive force that temporarily increases the torque beyond what a standard drill can do. If you’ve ever hit something on the side with a hammer to loosen it, or clamped a wrench in place and hit the handle with a hammer to get a stuck bolt moving, that’s what’s going on here, but it's happening dozens of times a second. The impact driver doesn’t have a clutch and will keep working even when it hits resistance. It’s usually pretty loud, and the vibration involved can tire out your hands and arms. As a result, an impact driver isn’t great for drilling—it’s best used to drive fasteners.

• Hammer drills operate like a standard drill, but when they’re in hammer mode (which you have to select), they deliver a downward-driving force (like a hammer hitting a nail) as opposed to the impact driver’s horizontal force. Hammer drills can operate like a standard drill if you disengage the hammer function—and like a standard drill, the motor will disengage when it hits resistance. A hammer driver in hammer mode is best for boring holes in tough materials, but not driving fasteners.

How to choose between a drill, impact driver, and hammer drill

Knowing how each of these tools works makes it a little easier to decide when to use one over the other. In general, here’s when to use a drill, impact driver, or hammer drill on your project:

• Drills are precision tools that are ideal for driving small fasteners like standard screws or boring holes into softer materials, like wood or drywall. It’s an ideal general tool for most small-scale DIY projects, and when you need more control over the driving or drilling action.

• Impact drivers are best used on denser materials, like very hard woods, or with larger or longer fasteners that require a lot of power to drive home. If you’ve ever tried to drive a long screw with a drill and discovered that it becomes frozen halfway through, that's when an impact driver might be the answer.

• Hammer drills are best for drilling or fastening in very hard materials like stone, concrete, or brick—in fact, you should avoid using hammer mode on lighter materials, because it can cause damage. But because you can disengage the hammer function on most hammer drills and use them as standard drills, they can be a good multipurpose choice.

One final difference: Hammer drills and standard drills use a chuck that can accept a variety of bits, but an impact driver will only work with 1/4-inch hex-shaped bits.

Which one you should buy

DeWalt Max XR Hammer DRill

$244.00 at Amazon

$279.00 Save $35.00

Shop Now

Shop Now

$244.00 at Amazon

$279.00 Save $35.00

Since a hammer drill can also be used as a standard drill, it’s the best option if you’re not sure which tool you should get or you want to avoid buying an additional tool for a future project—it gives you both standard drill capabilities and the added power of the hammer action. You can hold off on picking up an impact driver until you tackle a project that actually calls for one.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr (R) testified Wednesday before the Senate Commerce Committee, alongside two of his fellow commissioners, Anna Gomez (D) and Olivia Trusty (R). Democrats on the committee took the opportunity to grill Carr over his handling of the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco several months ago, during which critics accused Carr of pressuring ABC to punish the late-night comic for comments that angered MAGA.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) used his time to call for Carr’s resignation and deem him the “chairman of the Federal Censorship Commission.”

Markey began his questioning, “Thank you. Chairman Carr, you are not reinvigorating the public interest standard. You are weaponizing the public interest standard. That is what the Carr FCC is doing every single day. Behind me are your past tweets declaring your commitment to the First Amendment.” The Massachusetts Democrat added:

You even defended political satire, saying in 2022 it challenges those in power and that’s why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship. That’s why your threats against ABC and Disney over Jimmy Kimmel’s political monologue were so outrageous. And here’s what you said in September of 2025, as the chairman of the FCC: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct or take action frankly on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC.” Now, that statement was roundly condemned across the political spectrum. Chairman Cruz called it “dangerous as hell.” Chairman Carr, do you regret making that statement, yes or no?

Carr replied, “Senator Markey, thank you for the question. My job is to enforce the law as passed by Congress. That includes a public interest standard. And broadcast TV is fundamentally different than any of the other media. We have a new…”

Markey cut in, “Do you regret making that statement?”

“My job has been to enforce the law,” Carr hit back as Markey pushed:

So you don’t regret making that statement. Well, that’s a refusal to take accountability for your language, for your use, your abuse of power. You will not say that you made a mistake. For example, in your response to my oversight letter in September on the Kimmel incident, you repeatedly stated that the media companies made their own decisions in preempting and suspending Kimmel. You seem to think that your words, the most powerful communications regulator in America, especially your threats, don’t matter. So just to be clear, your position is that your mafia threats had nothing to do with Nexstar and Sinclair and Disney’s decisions to preempt and suspend. Is that your position? Is your point that you had nothing to do with the suspension of Kimmel?

Carr replied, “Senator, if you look at the evidence, the express statements by every single company involved, from Nexstar to Sinclair to Disney, as recently as last week, is that they made these business decisions on their own. The record is clear on this.”

Markey doubled down, “You’re refusing to take accountability for your own words. You intimidate the companies. They do what you want.” He continued:

And then you say, “Well, it was up to them.” You’re the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Actually, you’re now the chairman of the Federal Censorship Commission. And these broadcasters, they feel that censorship. You have broad authority over the media industry, especially broadcasters. Your words and actions matter. Now I’m going to give you another chance to take accountability for your actions.

The two tussled for several more minutes, with Markey finally concluding, “All right, so I’ll just finish, Madam Chair. He is turning the Federal Communications Commission into the Federal Censorship Commission. It’s a betrayal of the FCC’s mission. You should resign, Mr. Chairman. You are creating a chilling effect.”

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.

The post ‘You Intimidate’: Dem Senator Rages at Brendan Carr, Calls Him the Chair of the ‘Federal Censorship Commission’ first appeared on Mediaite.