FCC commissioner declares their agency's censorship campaign a success, on the record.

…(cont) All together now — the document that makes the rest of this column unnecessary. The Hill's headline says it plainest: the FCC's lone Democratic commissioner said Kimmel's "self-censorship" shows Trump's bid to "control" media working. A sitting commissioner, on the record, calling the chilling effect of their own agency's pressure a documented result rather than a risk.

Two days later, on September 12, The New York Times ran its own accounting of the same project — agencies across the government, the paper reported, harnessed to curtail press freedoms, with effects free speech advocates called lasting. The commissioner had already filed that finding, one Senate interview ahead of the Times.

Line it up plain: a candidate makes an unremarkable joke about his own nickname; the network airing the joke pulls the whole interview from broadcast over a regulatory threat; the agency behind the threat has a commissioner on record calling the pullback proof the threat is landing; the paper of record spends the same week documenting the pattern the FCC had just demonstrated for it, live, on a comedy show. The interview is still online. The candidate is still running. The equal-time rule exists to keep broadcasters from favoring one candidate over another. This week it was cited to keep one off the air entirely.