Things have become so bad, that even the U.S. president can no longer complain about Britain’s lack of free speech

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Barely a heartbeat after black columnist Karen Attiah was fired from her position of opinion editor at the Washington Post for her comments about Charlie Kirk and it would appear that this censorship by proxy new trend in the U.S. has caught on.

Then came the dismissal of late night TV talk host Jimmy Kimmel who was also fired for his political comments relating to the killing of Kirk. The move comes after Kimmel said on his show “We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”

And so the new all-time low for America who many still believe is the beacon of democracy in the free world is in fact that media bosses are shutting down commentators now for their views which they assume will displease the Trump regime.

“This is clearly the government overreaching” an employee of Kimmel said. “There’s no such thing as free speech in America, if the government can lean on companies to stop any content they don’t like,” he added after Trump – who it is believed despises the TV host – called the late-night show’s suspension a “great day for America.”

It’s hard to believe but Trump has finally shifted media into a position where he can manipulate its workers. He has at last created a culture of fear whereby he gets what he wants or he presumably threatens isolation for those who don’t get in line.

Remarkably, the attack on satire, is a real wake-up call which shows just what a farcical democracy America really is. Satire, traditionally, in the Anglo-Saxon world, if not the western world, always got a free pass both in terms of political interference or defamation litigation. No more under Trump.

This new media landscape under Trump has horrific consequences for America whose elite still parade it as a great democracy and example to the rest of the so called free world. Ever since Trump took power, he and J D Vance have been attacking Britain, rightly, for its abysmal lack of free speech, a country which now locks up well over 3000 people a year for posting their views on social media platforms. But now, with the Kimmel firing which is clearly political posturing by ABC owners, we can see that the old colony is following its master’s lead. Just as in countries which the West enjoyed mocking for its totally dominated media, like North Korea or China, now the UK and the U.S. have become birds of the same feather.

“We all see where this is going, correct? It’s managed media. It’s ridiculous” argues late night host David Letterman. “You can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian, criminal administration. That’s just not how this works.”

Yet, sadly that is exactly how things are working under Trump 2.0. Just recently, when he was in the UK for a state banquet, he was asked at a press conference if it were really the UK or the U.S. which has a free speech deficit. In reality though the UK’s press is so entrenched into the sphincter of the deep state, that Robert Peston’s cheeky question to Trump was an ace in satire in itself. Yet in Britain, it is clear to see how political satire in shows like Have I Got News For You exist if not thrive due to the sinking level of journalism itself. You only have to see how the Ukraine war is reported, for example, to see how the government’s own ministry of defence managed to place its own talking points into journalist copy or even how British journalists have become victims of the Kiev propaganda machine and its lies. The other aspect also is that when journalism and policing gets to the point of parody that it’s so bad, that what gets presented as regular news actually appears as satire. Recently in the UK there was a report of women police officers posing as joggers so as to arrest men who ‘wolf whistled’ at them. The video report made by a national network was so surreal that it looked like it was the work of 1980s satire genius Chris Morrison who produced The Day Today and Brasseye – both spoof news shows which the BBC itself had banned as its role of chief censor.

The UK is way ahead of the U.S. here. Any really good satire which exposes inept government or corruption got cancelled decades ago so the Trump administration and its bullying of regulators to lean on networks in the U.S. who are seen as MAGA haters has some catching up to do.

The FCC, the federal body in the U.S. which is supposed to be independent and police the airwaves is taking direct action to police networks that do not align with the MAGA movement. And Kimmel’s dismissal is not the first to come under fire, either from the FCC or from Trump’s lawyers. Kimmel’s hiatus in fact follows Trump’s lawsuits against 60 Minutes and The New York Times, as well as CBS dropping The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

So why has it shocked so many? Perhaps it is in exactly what Kimmel said. When talking about how Trump took the news of Kirk’s death, he mocked Trump for talking about the renovation of part of the White House, responding to a journalist. “He’s at the fourth state of grief: construction,” Kimmel joked. “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”

Was this what blew a fuse and perhaps got Trump to pick the phone up and call ABC bosses? Or worse, did he even need to, or did they second guess the White House’s anger and plunge the dagger in themselves?

Many Global South countries – countries in Africa which Trump would no doubt call “shit holes” – often have in their constitutions a line about no one being allowed to mock the sitting president. It’s what you would expect from developing countries. Do we have this Trump clause invisibly woven into the U.S. constitution by tacit agreement with TV bosses and the FCC? Has America become third world?