FCC officials checking to see if Colbert’s vile Trump joke will be considered ‘obscene’

Late night comedians have taken unprecedented aim at President Donald Trump. And one might have taken it far enough to be fined for it.

The opening monologues of Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert were analyzed by Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University which found a big disparity between jokes told about President Donald Trump and his predecessors.

The group found a total of 1,060 jokes told about the president during his first hundred days, which put him on course to smash the record set by former President Bill Clinton in 1998, the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

The number rockets to 1,530 jokes when quips targeting President Trump’s family and administration are added.

But even the 1,060 for his first hundred days tops the numbers reached by his three most recent predecessors in their entire first years.

Image: Screenshot

According to the report President Obama was the subject of 936 jokes, President George W. Bush was hit with 546 and Clinton tallied 440.

The report showed that Colbert was the most frequent offender with 337 quips at the president’s expense.

But one of those jokes might cost him.

Colbert’s unhinged rant against the president this week was the subject of “a number” of complaints, according to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai.

“We are going to take the facts that we find and we are going to apply the law as it’s been set out by the Supreme Court and other courts and we’ll take the appropriate action,” Pai said during an appearance on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT Thursday on Thursday.

“Traditionally, the agency has to decide, if it does find a violation, what the appropriate remedy should be,” Pai said. “A fine, of some sort, is typically what we do.”

Before he reviewed the joke on Wednesday he told Fox Business’ Neil Cavuto that he would have to see if Colbert’s remarks, which included what many deemed to be a homophobic joke about the president’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, were “obscene.”

The FCC’s website says that the comments must meet a three-tier Supreme Court test in order to be considered “obscene.”

It must appeal to an average person’s prurient interest; depict or describe sexual conduct in a ‘patently offensive’ way; and, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

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