Brendan Carr, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission
"The Easy Way or the Hard Way": The FCC Chair's Mob Boss Moment Was No Accident
He knew exactly how intimidation works. He'd watched it up close for a decade.
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,032: Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026.
It’s been a long time since I’ve published two articles on the same day. And for good reason.
But…so much is happening as we close in on the midterm elections, and there are just some stories that you really, really want to get out to subscribers…so…you make an exception.
Let me get one thing out of the way, because it’s the sharpest knife in this whole drawer.
Brendan Carr did not abuse anyone at Midtown. The people who were there say so. So…I’m not going to say otherwise.
Not because he’s earned a shred of grace from me. He hasn’t. He’s a punk.
It’s because the truth…is far more damning than any rumor…and…I don’t need to make anything up to bury him.
What the Guardian Found
Carr, the chair of the FCC, spent about a decade in his late teens and 20s in a rogue Alcoholics Anonymous group that some former members compared to a cult.
The group was called Midtown. It was based around Washington…and it drew in young people looking for help with addiction…often because their parents sent them.
It was run by Michael Quinones. Former members say he controlled where they lived, worked, and went to school. He died of cancer in 2007. One former member called him the “Epstein of AA.”
Former members allege that teenage girls and young women were pressured and coerced into dating and having sex with multiple male members…some of them decades older.
Carr joined in 1996, at about 17, and appears to have stayed about nine years…straight through law school.
The former members were emphatic that Carr wasn’t part of the abuse. Several said he was a victim of the group’s manipulation himself.
Fine. Let’s take that at face value.
Because…it makes what came next unforgivable.
He Knew Exactly What It Felt Like
Think about what that means.
For nine years…Brendan Carr lived under a man who decided who stayed…and who got pushed out. Where saying the wrong thing could cost you everything. Where power…was used to squeeze people into line.
He knew what that felt like. From the inside.
And…when he finally got real power of his own…what did he do with it?
He picked up the same playbook.
“The Easy Way or the Hard Way”
September 17, 2025.
The most powerful media regulator in America goes on Benny Johnson’s podcast and takes aim at ABC over a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. He hints the FCC could come after ABC affiliate licenses to pressure Disney into punishing a comedian. Then he says the quiet part out loud:
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
That’s not a regulator talking. That’s a shakedown.
And…it worked. Nexstar, which owns 28 ABC affiliates…pulled the show within hours. Sinclair, with 38 ABC stations…followed and actually thanked Carr for the push. Then ABC suspended Kimmel indefinitely.
So how did the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission celebrate a comedian being yanked off the air?
He sent a CNN reporter a “raise the roof” GIF from The Office.
Then, a few days later…with a straight face…he claimed he’d had nothing to do with it.
Let that sink in.
A grown man…sworn to protect the public airwaves…threatens broadcasters on a podcast…gloats with a cartoon GIF when they fold…and then swears he never touched it.
That’s not leadership. That’s cowardice with a government pension. Did I mention Carr is a punk?
Explain the Photo, Mr. Chairman
Here’s the detail Carr doesn’t want you chewing on.
The Guardian saw a group photo from a men’s retreat that sources say was taken in 2006…with Carr standing a few rows behind Quinones. Through a spokesperson, Carr denied being a Midtown member “up to and through 2006.”
Maybe the photo’s misdated. Maybe it isn’t.
But this is the same man who threatened a network with “news distortion” complaints over a late-night joke. He wants everyone else held to the letter of the truth.
So…let’s hold Brendan to his own rule. Answer the question. Under oath would be nice.
He can do it the easy way.
Or the hard way.
Besides, I don’t think I’m alone when I say I’ve always enjoyed watching snot-nosed punks like Brendan Carr… testify under oath.
These People Don’t Get Our Respect
I’m done pretending this is a polite disagreement between reasonable men.
Brendan Carr used a federal agency to try to scare a network into silencing a comedian. He laughed when it worked. He lied about it afterward.
He doesn’t get my respect. (You might have gathered that’s why I’ve referred to him as a punk several times in this article. And…it’s the same thing I’d tell him face to face.) He doesn’t get yours.
Civility? Sure. We’ll keep our facts straight and our aim steady, because that’s what makes the punch land.
But…respect is earned. And…he burned his on a podcast with Benny Johnson.
The women of Midtown got bullied by a man with power who faced no consequences. Carr…of all people…should have spent his life making sure that never happened to anyone again.
Instead…he became the guy with the clipboard deciding who gets to talk.
What We Do Now
The FCC answers to the U.S. Senate, which confirms its commissioners and oversees the agency through the Commerce Committee.
So call both of your senators this week. Tell them you want oversight hearings on the FCC strong-arming broadcasters over content. Say “the easy way or the hard way.” They’ll know exactly who you mean.
Then…circle Tuesday, November 3. Roughly a third of the Senate is on the ballot…the same body that decides who holds Carr’s job and whether anyone ever drags him in front of a microphone he doesn’t control.
He’s betting you’ll be too tired to show up.
Make him lose that bet.
And…you know the rule around here. Don’t go alone. Bring five.
#HoldFast
Back soon.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins
P.S. Share this. The rumor…lets him play the victim. The Kimmel record doesn’t give him anywhere to hide.
P.P.S. Forward this to the five people you’re taking to the polls. If they ask why the FCC matters…show them the GIF.
Sources
Brendan Carr was a member of a rogue Alcoholics Anonymous group some labeled a ‘cult’ (The Guardian, via inkl, Sept. 22, 2026)
Same Guardian report, including the 2006 photo and Carr’s denial (via Finwire)
Trump FCC Goon Brendan Carr’s Secret Past in Alleged Alcoholics Anonymous Sex Cult Midtown Group Revealed (The Daily Beast)
Trump appointee spent teens in ‘cult’ run by ‘Epstein of AA’: report (Raw Story)
ABC Pulls Jimmy Kimmel’s Show ‘Indefinitely’ After Remarks About Charlie Kirk’s Death (WTTW, Sept. 17, 2025)
FCC Chair Downplays His Role in Jimmy Kimmel Suspension (Variety)
When It Comes to Destroying Trump’s Allies, Anything Goes on the Left (Hot Air, the opposing view)
Jack laid out the facts. I want to sit on one detail a beat longer, because it explains everything that came after.
Carr spent nine formative years learning to survive by finding the strongest authority figure in the room and making himself indispensable to it. That's not therapy. That's a training program. And he graduated summa cum laude.
Here's the part people skip past: Carr didn't wait for the FCC chairmanship to start building his empire. He wrote the blueprint while he was still just a commissioner — authored the FCC chapter of Project 2025 with his official title stamped on it, a move so brazen that sixteen House Democrats asked the agency's own ethics office to look into whether he broke federal law doing it. That's not a guy who got handed a playbook. That's a guy who drafted his own coronation while pretending to still be a neutral regulator.
So when he finally got the gavel and told Disney "we can do this the easy way or the hard way" over a Jimmy Kimmel joke, nobody should've been shocked. That's not policy language. I've heard that sentence structure before — it's the sentence a guy uses right before somebody's knees stop working. It's mob syntax dressed up in a suit from Men's Wearhouse, and it came out of him as naturally as breathing, because he learned that cadence before he learned how to drive.
Nobody's pulling strings here, Jack. There's no puppet master monologue, no smoke-filled room. This is entirely curry favor, dressed up as regulatory philosophy. This is a man who learned as a teenager that submission gets you protected, and he's been auditioning for protection ever since — first from a cult leader who's dead, now from a president who isn't, and this time he wrote his own audition script and got caught doing it in daylight.
And there's something genuinely sinister buried in how casually he did it. Threatening a network's broadcast license over a comedian's monologue isn't muscular deregulation — it's the federal government leaning on a private company to punish a joke it didn't like, delivered in the exact tone you'd use to lean on a bar owner who's late on payments. Carr built a career insisting government shouldn't touch newsroom decisions, then wrote himself the authority to do exactly that, and used it the first chance he got.
The FCC used to regulate spectrum. Now it's running protection. And the guy holding the ledger learned the math at seventeen, in a room where the wrong answer got you sent away.
#HOLDFAST
Punk is the perfect description of this asshat.