Left officials will secretly message tech companies to censor speech that they don't like, and cover it up so that it only comes out in litigation. So that even years afterwards, most people have no idea and the media can successfully cover up what they did.
Right officials will shout from the rooftops "HEY, YOU BETTER CANCEL THIS GUY OR WE'LL DO IT THE HARD WAY", so that even a voluntary decision to pull someone who is unfunny and has bad ratings will appear like government censorship.
The difference between people who want to accomplish something and people who are solely interested in their public image.
I don't know which side is which in your theory, but it is deception vs forthrightness. Unscrupulous underhanded power vs fair warning. Generously, Captain Kirk in TOS vs Sisko in In the Pale Moonlight. You can clearly see the difference in individual billionaires. Elon Musk hasn't done anything any of the others don't do, but they do it quietly and behind the scenes while he screams like an autist. That is hardly helping his image.
Republican politicians ARE the professional losers who write sternly worded letters with no intention to act, but that's a different issue. Something was accomplished here no matter how our image is perceived.
The people who advertise "HEY, IN CASE YOU DIDN'T NOTICE, I CANCELED JIMMY KIMMEL! IT WAS ME!" are the people who are interested in their own image, while the people doing it secretively are the people who want results.
Even if you believed that government pressure to cancel lawful speech is OK, shouldn't you want it done in the most effective way possible?
I bet even from a Realpolitik POV, the damage done from "Republicans are censoring" will be greater than the cancellation of a show that no one but boomers watched and who only served to galvanize the right.
If you say something is accomplished, I assume you mean that this would not have happened without government pressure. I sort of doubt that. His ratings were low and he was pure cringe and very unfunny. So if that is true, then nothing was accomplished other than the creation of a "Republicans are censoring" narrative that might be damaging. He should have kept his mouth shut.
Yeah I think Disney would have gotten rid of him eventually but the timing and Republicans pouncing was a convenient way for them to do it without taking blame. Sometimes you need to let your enemy save face. Give them an escape route as Sun Tzu would say. I really don't care about 'the damage done from "Republicans are censoring"'. Again, perception of virtue vs reality.