Do late night comedians — and more pointedly, their studio bosses — need to fear reprisals and retaliation for jokes they tell about Donald Trump? Such a threat might sound remote, but the prospect could have a chilling effect on one of the country’s leading forms of political commentary: late night comedy.
Despite legal guardrails protecting free speech, the question becomes whether a Trump administration can use the Federal Communications Commission’s oversight of broadcasting to create headaches for these companies, and by extension, the hosts.
The latest shot across the bow, directed at NBC’s Seth Meyers on Tuesday, came days after Bill Maher, the host of HBO’s “Real Time,” suggested that anything is possible in terms of the president-elect seeking to take action against his critics.