In the run-up to the hearing, Fox News and CNN commentators anticipated a “grilling.” Divisions within Trump’s movement were becoming more common, with fights breaking out over the Epstein files, Israel and even the place of neo-Nazis in the Republican big tent. The F.C.C. attack on network television had thrust free speech into the mix, with a few Republicans saying things had gone too far and others saying they needed to go further still. JD Vance, the expected Trump standard-bearer in 2028, dismissed Carr’s threats as “a joke on social media.” But Cruz, whose own undisguised presidential ambitions rested in part on maintaining his reputation as a free-speech warrior, had said they were “dangerous as hell,” and likened Carr to a mobster “right out of ‘Goodfellas.’” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, which agreed, called it Cruz’s “finest hour.”