However, threats in public by someone official to take someone off the air "the easy way or the hard way" do. If there were none he would not be on the air.
If Carr was not inept, Kimmel would not be on the air. Carr is inept and stupid, doesn't know how to use plausible deniability, and created the result he has wrought.
Basically, if he acted like someone in government and used the phone and not a podcast, it would not look like the government was punishing someone for speech giving a path back to the airwaves. We know that this happened, because Kimmel is on the air. We don't need any further proof of it than that.