GOP lawmaker says Trump is wrong to threaten the media in wake of Kimmel controversy

By Aileen Graef, CNN

(CNN) — Rep. Don Bacon is leaving Congress next year — and offering some of the sharpest criticism to date of President Donald Trump of anyone in his party.

Bacon, a Republican who has represented a Nebraska swing district for the past eight years, says the GOP has departed from the conservative ideology that had dominated the party for decades. Instead, under Trump, he contends that the party has taken an insular turn and an isolationist approach to the world and protectionist economic policy — both of which, he warned, make the US less secure.

In a wide-ranging interview with CNN’s Manu Raju, Bacon raised concerns over Trump and the First Amendment in the wake of controversy over the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show – going further than other Republicans to criticize him directly.

“I think the President doing threats against media is also wrong. We don’t threaten the media,” Bacon said on “Inside Politics Sunday.”

He added later: “To threaten media and say you’re going to pull their license, that’s not what America’s about. We do have a freedom of speech, freedom of the press. We should, we should defend that.”

Disney’s ABC took Kimmel’s show off the air indefinitely amid controversy over his recent comments about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer.

The move came after Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr suggested Kimmel should be suspended and said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

“Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform last week.

While Bacon did think that pulling of Kimmel from the air was “by and large” a business decision by ABC, he called the threats from Carr a “mistake.”

“There’s a difference between threatening media and saying you’ll pull their license. That’s not right, it’s wrong to say you’re going to prosecute that,” he said.

Bacon said Trump should tone down the rhetoric in the wake of the Kirk assassination rather than blaming “left-wing violence” and lamented that the president centers on “anger and opposition.” He argued the president missed the moment to instead unify the country in the days after.

“He had a chance to be more Ronald Reagan to try to unify on both sides out of this, it would be one thing if it was more Republicans being murdered, but it’s not. We see, we see on both sides,” he said, adding that “this affects everybody.”

‘I don’t think people voted for him for tariffs’

Bacon was one of the Republicans who nearly sank a procedural vote on the floor last week over a provision that would restrict Congress’ ability to be a check on tariffs enacted by the president.

Bacon, a vocal critic of tariffs, said the use of the tool is “his position not mine,” referring to Trump, and said, “I think a lot of my colleagues actually agree that they’re reluctant to go against the signature policy that he ran on. I don’t think people voted for him for tariffs.”

When asked if he thought the president was overreaching on tariffs, Bacon said, “He is by far.”

“But I would, I see damage being done because of tariffs. Iowa and Nebraska are really struggling right now with our farm economy. We’re not growing markets for corn or soybeans. The president’s making trade deals. But not a single country that I could see, has bought more corn or soybeans,” he said.

What bothers Bacon the most

Another point of divergence between the congressman and the president is isolationism from allies. Bacon, who has been critical of Trump’s at times seemingly close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Trump has helped bring Putin in from the “wilderness.”

“He seems to go too far in accommodating Putin and he does very little to accommodate [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky or Ukraine,” he said.

Bacon, who said the president has lacked “moral clarity” in his handling of Russia’s war in Ukraine, pointedly refused to say if Trump has the moral character he wants to see in a president.

“I just think we gotta be careful about that,” Bacon said.

“I don’t see the moral clarity right now out of the White House, Ronald Reagan had the moral clarity,” he said, saying Trump “sends out such mixed messages on NATO and totally morally ambiguous messages about Ukraine and Russia. It really, it’s probably the thing that bothers me the most.”

The congressman said he hopes the significant changes he has seen to the Republican Party are not a “permanent remaking.”

Despite his upcoming departure from Congress, Bacon said he will continue to speak up. And while he is “a little bit” concerned with Republicans in his party showing a lack of independence, he thinks in his next act he could “have a good role in supporting traditional Republicans and try to swing this back to where. … I was very comfortable with Ronald Reagan.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.