Disney and its CEO Bob Iger have found themselves between a rock and a hard place. On one side, the company has faced significant customer and financial backlash following the indefinite suspension of late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”, while on the other side, statements from the administration could put the company’s mega-deal to acquire NFL Media into question. Regardless of how Disney decides to navigate this sticky situation, it is likely to have far-reaching consequences.

Last week, during his opening monologue on Tuesday’s episode, Jimmy Kimmel questioned the political beliefs of Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson and then made fun of President Donald Trump for how he was grieving Kirk’s death.

Watch the comments that got Jimmy Kimmel suspended:

The comments led to pushback from conservatives, local station owners, and F.C.C. Chairman Brendan Carr, who accused Kimmel of distributing misinformation. At the time, little was officially known about Robinson’s reasoning for killing Kirk, other than that he came from a conservative family. Since the episode aired, authorities have released text messages that indicate that Robinson was motivated by what he considered Kirk’s hate speech.

In response to Kimmel’s comments, Carr appeared on right-wing commentator Benny Johnson's podcast and said that the F.C.C. might step in if ABC didn’t address the situation.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action frankly on Kimmel, or you know there’s going to be additional work for the F.C.C. ahead.”

Following Carr’s comments, local station owners Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcast Group announced that they would preempt Kimmel’s show ahead of the Wednesday night broadcast; Disney then announced that the longtime host would be suspended indefinitely. Almost immediately, progressives responded by calling for customers who see the government’s pressure as a First Amendment violation to cancel their subscriptions to Hulu and Disney+ in protest. Since the suspension last week, Disney has lost over $4 billion in market capitalization according to StockTwits.com.

With growing concerns over First Amendment violations, even Republican Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has called Carr’s threats to pull ABC’s broadcast license “unbelievably dangerous” on his podcast “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” and compared them to mob tactics.

“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired,” Cruz said, “but let me tell you, if the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said. We’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives.”

At this point, Kimmel has not been fired, and Disney is reportedly engaged in discussions behind the scenes to decide if the host and his show will return. Iger once contemplated a presidential run against Trump in 2020 before returning to Disney, and the company has been at the center of conservatives’ “anti-woke” campaigns for years, so politics will likely be part of the decision regardless of which way it shakes out.

However, there are larger considerations currently at play for Disney. In August, the company announced that it had reached a deal with the NFL to sell a 10% equity stake in ESPN in order to acquire NFL Media, which includes NFL Network. The deal also saw a broad rights distribution deal for the popular whip-around channel NFL RedZone.

That deal now needs regulatory approval, something that the NFL began working on almost immediately. However, with the specter of Carr’s comments and those of President Trump, who has threatened to pull networks’ licenses over coverage that he believes to be unfairly negative, Disney now must negotiate a difficult balancing act.

Former White House press secretary for George W. Bush, Ari Fleischer, told Front Office Sports that it is almost guaranteed that Trump will get involved in this deal.

“Given his interest in the NFL, and his history of using media mergers for leverage, it’s hard to see him not playing around with this,” Fleischer said. “I doubt this will be a straightforward commercial transaction.”

Disney’s concern over the government’s involvement in its NFL deal comes on the heels of many analysts believing that the president’s dislike for Stephen Colbert, and the late-night host’s ongoing comments against CBS then-parent company Paramount’s decision to settle a lawsuit with the president over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, played a role in the long-running lat-night show’s cancellation this summer.

Colbert asserted that Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to ensure that the administration would allow Skydance Media to acquire Paramount. That transaction officially closed in August, three weeks after it was announced that CBS would cancel “The Late Show.”

While former Disney CEO Michael Eisner said that Carr’s threats of pulling broadcast licenses are “aggressive yet hollow,” the government might not need to actually make any moves to impact Disney’s ultimate decision when it comes to Kimmel. The host’s contract is set to expire within the next year, and if two of the largest local ABC affiliate owners in the country — Nexstar and Sinclair, both of which are right-leaning organizations — refuse to air “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”, Disney might not have any choice but to end the late-night show.

While the calls to cancel Disney streaming subscriptions might not ultimately have a major financial impact on Disney, advertising analyst Brian Wieser said that media outlets that “more aggressively self-censor going forward may turn off viewers who will further shift their current affairs consumption towards digital platforms,” like Substack, YouTube, and social media.

No matter what Iger decides to do with Kimmel and his late-night show, there will likely be far-reaching consequences. But with the importance of the company’s NFL deal likely at the front of mind, it is difficult to imagine a solution that satisfies both Kimmel’s supporters and the administration, and only one of those constituencies can derail a deal that Disney has been working on for years.