9/19/25: Trump CHEERS Kimmel Shutdown, Late Night RESPONDS

26:52And so he stepped on his own punchline with his own presence. Otherwise, that's pretty funny. He also keeps saying from his first post to just that he's absolutely convinced that Kimmel has been fired. And that is not what any of the reporting suggests right now. And it wasn't what any of the reporting suggests when he fired off his true social at 1.30 in the morning UK time. So I don't know if he knows something or if he's trying to manifest. Maybe they should just not just bring him back and not announce it. And you know what I would never notice. He might not ever know. And what might solve the entire problem is if they give Trump Kimmel's late night spot and then Trump isn't president anymore.

27:36Everybody wins. He would love that job. Yeah. But can he do a five minute monologue or is it just the whole show? Oh, just going to be his monologue. I see. Like, could he contain himself? Although, you know, sometimes, you know, if he was not president, I would watch that. I would make that. Remember that time on the campaign trail? He like they just like stood in silence and swayed to Ave Maria or something like that. That was great. That was great stuff. That was amazing. Some real surrealist content. I don't know what you call that. But I do want to focus in on what he said there, which he specifically said they hit Trump every night.

28:12That's not allowed. It's like literally in America, you are allowed to criticize the president of the United States. That's like kind of the whole deal here. Like that's a big part of what we're all about. And as I said before, makes it plain not only that the real problem he had wasn't, you know, something he said about Charlie Kirk's killer. It was about the criticism of him, which is why he had previously said, hey, Jimmy Kimmel's next, had been calling for his ouster. And also why you've now got, you know, Brendan. And he said, who did he say is next, Jimmy Fallon or Stephen Colbert? And Seth Meyer.

28:48And Seth Meyer. And then you have Brendan Carr coming after The View and, you know, putting them in the spotlight. And The View, notably, and this is like pretty shameful, they didn't talk about this topic yesterday on their show at all. So and that's the point. The point isn't just to get a scalp in terms of Jimmy Kimmel. The point is to send the message out to everyone that you better watch it. You better be careful because you step over wherever that invisible line is. You get a little bit of a, you know, online conservative backlash going. And that's it. Your companies, your corporate executives, they're not going to have your back.

29:28They are not going to have your back. You are on your own. And that message, whether or not Kimmel comes back at some point or doesn't come back, whatever, that message has been sent. And the fact that The View said nothing about this yesterday, I think, shows you the chill that has already been instilled, at least in many journalists, personalities, comedians across the board. Speaking of Canadians across the board, we'll go for it, Emily, while I pull this clip up. I do have a Colbert clip I want to pull up next. I was going to say, if I were Democrats right now, I would immediately be looking at ways to defang the FCC and force Republicans to defend the power of the FCC because the FCC gives what's called news exemptions.

30:13Howard Stern, for example, got his quote news exemption. So this is like it goes back years and years and it's been used in ways that we've become accustomed to because like many things before we had this crazy moment 10 plus years ago, I guess now in the U.S., we didn't think about the tools or we hadn't thought about the tools in this way for like 20, 30 years. And now Republicans, having watched the media, especially with Trump, but like saying going back over the last whatever 30 years, the way that conservatives were covered, are saying, well, hey, there's this public interest tool in the FCC's toolkit and that's there.

30:58So while all of these levers are being pulled, why not take a look at the public interest part of it? Why not say why not take away the quote news exemption from some of these these broadcasters and make it so that they do have to do equal time? Because what Trump said there where he was like, you have to it's not allowed to just bash Trump night after night. if they have their news exemption, maybe the FCC takes that away and then says, actually, it's not allowed. You have to do equal time and all of that, which as a business model doesn't really even make sense anymore. So if I were Democrats, I would make Republicans start defending the New Deal FCC because that would get – I honestly think there's a pretty good case for abolishing the FCC, the way that we license broadcast airwaves and all of that.

31:46But anyway, beside the point. gutfeld needs equal time get me on there that doesn't count because it's cable but like the broadcast networks gotcha gotcha yeah which most people i don't think distinguish a difference between like the average person just views this as just like a freedom of speech thing without the intricacies like oh that's that's broadcast this is cable like you know the problem there is that this isn't really on the up and up it's not as if they have a genuine concern about public interest and they're going to use the remedies existing around the public interest rule. What they're saying is, we don't like what you said and we're going to connect it to this other thing, this merger that your parent company wants.

32:28And we're going to use the threat of blocking this merger, not because we think it's anti-competitive, not because we don't like the merger on the merits, but as power to get you to do what we want. So looking at the rules implies that this is being done on the up and up through the rulebook. And it's not. It's just being done with raw power. So many people are saying, well, what are Jimmy Kimmel's colleagues going to say? What is Jon Stewart? What is Jon Oliver going to say? So we've got a clip here from Stephen Colbert that we'd like to play here. See if it met the moment. I'm your host, Stephen Colbert.

33:09But tonight, we are all Jimmy Kimmel.

33:17I still have a show though, right? Okay, good. Yesterday, after threats from Trump's FCC chair, ABC yanked Kimmel off the air indefinitely. That is blatant censorship. And it always starts small. You know, remember like in week one of his presidency, Gulf of America. Call it Gulf of America. Sure, seems harmless. But with an autocrat, you cannot give an inch. And if ABC thinks, if ABC thinks this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive. And clearly, they've never read the children's book, If You Give a Mouse a Kimmel. and and and to jimmy and to jimmy just let me say i stand with you and your staff 100 and also you couldn't let me enjoy this for like one week all right if you give a mouse a kimmel ryan loved that one that's good stuff i was like oh there's hard there's the key demo folks there's the key demo gen x and i'm sorry i think i am in the demo now i need to start watching these late night shows So did you guys watch these late night reactions?

34:29Do we find that this met the moment? Because I was struck by these feeling very similar to other just Trump takedowns in terms of tone and energy. What did you guys make of it? So I think what they were lacking, I mean, on the one hand, I'm sympathetic because it's hard to make comedy about something that, you know, like to have a topic and be like, I'm going to make a joke about this. And yet their mandate on the show, obviously, is not just to do political commentary, but to make it funny. And it's a difficult thing to be able to nail. Sympathetic there. It's certainly not something I could pull off.

35:02I think what they were all lacking is some sort of a call to action. It's like, okay, you don't like it. And you're saying, oh, this won't affect my performance. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. I mean, I don't even think like as an individual human being, you're not even really fully equipped to assess your own ability to withstand that pressure because you don't know the way things are subtly influencing you. if that makes sense, which is why we've worked hard to insulate ourselves from different pressures that we can anticipate. But there was no like, OK, that's why we need to boycott. That's why we're going on strike.

35:36That's why Democrats need to break up these giant conglomerates. Maybe it's too much to put that on them. But I think people are looking at them for some sort of leadership since this is their industry. And these are really influential, powerful, wealthy people at this point. And there was none of that. It's just sort of like, you know, Republicans are hypocrites. OK, we can see that. You know, we're not happy about what happened with Kimmel. That's obvious. And I think the other thing that's always difficult with Trump is because we've had this is far from the first threat to the First Amendment from this administration, even literally in this week.

36:16So when you've talked about these things before, it also becomes difficult to separate from previous concerns from this moment and to really sort of like put a pin in what makes this particular action different, more extraordinary, more troubling, darker, more sinister than previous things that we've thought about and talked about with Trump. Yeah, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert are really awful free speech martyrs for the left in these cases because they're at heart corporate Dems who have coasted on really lazy comedy and started driving some of these formats into the ground unnecessarily so.

36:56And it's hard to – I think it's hard for people to rally around these guys because they're company men. I agree, Emily, because also it's like liberals have a lot of times turned a blind eye to other freedom of speech issues over the last two years. I mean, like, have they covered the crackdowns from both Biden and Trump on Palestine protest freedom of speech? Like, I see so many people in L.A. Have Colbert and Kimmel talked about that? That's a really good point. I mean, Stuart has. Yeah, Stuart has for sure. But I don't know. I am a little struck by like a lot of liberals that I see online coming out for the first time about freedom of speech after two years of disastrous freedom of speech.

37:36But it's like all when it's like a multimillionaire, like white host of a late night show. That's when it matters. Obviously, he's a more famous person. It's going to make a bigger impact. But yeah, if you haven't been talking about freedom of speech in a lot of other areas, and let's say a lot of these were front page news stories, you like to miss Mahmoud Khalil. That's a front page story. Like, that's not like, oh, sorry, I didn't turn to the third page to see that. Let me defend not, you know, Colbert and these people who I haven't watched. I genuinely don't know. I don't suspect that they said anything about that, but I don't actually know for sure.

38:10But let me defend the libs a little bit here, which is to say, number one, Democrats overwhelmingly, you know, oppose what's happening in Gaza, have opposed the crackdown on, you know, on speech on campus. Like that movement comes from the left. And, you know, it's most more leftist, but also left liberal. So there's that. The other thing I would say is, again, like I was and Ryan was at odds with a lot of liberals in terms of their, you know, ignoring an acceptance and pushing actively cancel culture and trampling on speech and censorship and all of that. Right. So I wasn't on the same page with them there.

38:51However, I will say both in terms of the substance and in terms of the state mechanisms, this is different. Right. Like with the Twitter file stuff, what the Biden administration was messaging to, you know, these social media companies about was covid misinformation that they felt like genuinely was going to cause people to lose their lives. Right. So now we all felt like, OK, first of all, a lot of these accounts are tiny accounts like it's not going to make that big of a difference. You guys have been wrong about a bunch of stuff with covid. We don't want a ministry of truth just by sending these messages and having these meetings.

39:27You're exerting extraordinary pressure. But I don't want to pretend like the COVID misinformation and this like lame comment from Jimmy Kimmel are remotely the same because they're not. Right. So the content is different. And then as Ryan was laying out before, the government action is different as well. So here you have an explicit threat, and it comes in the context of a Trump administration that has used every opportunity, real and imagined crises, to crush dissent, crack down, grab power, and has truly, I mean, it truly is an authoritarian threat to the country and to democracy. So I even as I, again, was not on the same page as liberals, you can go back and look at my support of the Harper's letter and coverage of the Twitter files and all that.

40:17You guys took a lot of heat. You guys took a lot of heat. Yeah. Even though I wasn't on their side there, like, I think it is fair to say this administration, what they're doing now is genuinely different than what anything we saw under the Biden administration. I don't think it even came close. And that's before we even talk about like scrubbing people's social media and, you know, for whether or not they can have a visa and deporting them without due process. And, you know, the massive crackdown over speech on Palestine, et cetera. So that's what I would say in defense of the libs. Um, it's the I think you always have to take what Trump is saying, even if he doesn't mean it.

40:59Literally, you have to take it seriously, because when you have the president of the United States threatening broadcast licenses and even if it's just, quote, jawboning, I think you do have to take it seriously, especially when it comes with threats from the FCC and when you see compliance. So I actually think the way that Trump talks about broadcast licenses is insane. And when they have a track record of weaponizing the government to punish universities, law firms, immigrants, students, anyone that they don't like. When he's coming out and issuing a statement saying, hey, we're going to make Antifa, which is like an ideology, a terrorist organization, and threatening people who are just pro-Palestine with providing material support to terrorism.

41:45That's the record of this administration. So it's not an idle threat. We all know that they have weaponized the entire federal government in every way that they can think of in order to coerce and crush dissent and consolidate power. So that is a very different landscape than what we've dealt with before. The other thing I was going to say is I do think some moves from Dems and the Biden administration, and this doesn't have to become a tit-for-tat thing, I do think things like the Global Engagement Center, which it's hypocritical for Marco Rubio to shut it down and act like he's a champion of free speech, obviously, given what's happened with visas and other students.

42:22But in that case, the State Department was funding blacklists of conservative media outlets and not even just conservative media outlets, but like literally unheard, found its way onto a global disinformation index that was funded by the State Department. The Equality Act, which almost every Democrat supports, would have serious ramifications for free speech because of the way that it reads gender identity into sex. And the same thing was true of the way the Obama administrations and the Biden administrations wielded Title IX. So it's some of that stuff, I think, was was enormously significant in ways that it's frustrating because the Colbert, you know, who's now a free speech martyr and Kimmel is a free speech martyr.

43:06don't give a damn about, they don't care. And some of the people who are supporting them don't care and never did. The media barely covered the Global Engagement Center story, like it wasn't really anything. And there are other examples that we could point to, too. I actually agree. I don't think the COVID one is apples to apples. I think it's apples to oranges. But I do think there are other ones where we saw both the Obama and Biden administrations weaponizing their power to go after journalists and, you know, or not just journalists, but to go after speech. Actually, Ryan, the James Risen case from the Obama administration and the James Rosen case from the Obama administration are examples of that, too.

43:42But in those cases, most of the media was pretty defensive of Risen, if I'm remembering correctly. Yeah, and Risen started late Bush and then went into Obama. And so it was this bipartisan attempt to get – he was a New York Times reporter who had exposed some of the NSA spying reporting that was then later confirmed by Edward Snowden's leaks. and they were threatening to put him in prison in order to get him to reveal his sources. And eventually Obama backed off because he was the kind of person that elites could pressure and say, you're a constitutional scholar, bro. Like you're a law professor.

44:23Like, what are you doing? All right, fine. And so he never ended up going to prison. But, you know, Crystal and I both warned, throughout the teens and early 20s that what the left was doing might be constitutional because it's private stuff. You're bullying. The mob is bullying some company to fire a person or get rid of them. But that it was still eroding of the First Amendment. That the First Amendment has a letter and it has a spirit. And while it might not have been violating the letter of it, it was violating the spirit of it. And amendments that are on the books, but that aren't respected by the cultural spirit, aren't worth what they're written on.

45:11Look at the Fourth Amendment. No illegal search and seizure. Well, how's that working out for us? It's still written there. But because spiritually we kind of abandon it, then nobody follows it anymore. And so that's why people like Glenn and Crystal and I were all saying, no, you've got to draw the line here and protect it in spirit, not just in letter. Because you're not always going to be in power. And in a lot of cases, like Trump was president at the time. And when you fully lose power, look, you know, it's going to ratchet further. The most hopeful thing I've seen, which is probably too hopeful, is that the right is going to have its outrageous spasm of cancel culture.

45:54It's going to use the tools and the power of government to censor speech, taking cancel culture to the next level. but it's going to fall apart because the american people when they vote in elections a lot of the political science says they're not really actually moved by what the media and and what commercials say like that's just that's a that's a fraction of of how people vote what they vote on is the underlying material conditions of their lives which are rapidly deteriorating under Trump. So his effort to like do a Turkey Erdogan or Hungarian like consolidation of the media to hold on to power may not work because we're so federalized and because people vote based on how they, you know, and Democratic Party is the oldest political party in world history.

46:48So people know they're, they don't know what it stands for, but they know it exists. And so if they're not happy with the conditions that they're living in, they know that they can vote for this other party. What is that party going to do? God only knows. They're not telling us. Right. But at least they're not the party in power. So that could still happen. And then at that point, maybe both the left and the right are like, okay, we were wrong. Let's do an amnesty and a truce on this cancel culture stuff. No. Okay. No. Well, let me just say. Like, well, and we all pretend like cancel culture started with like, you know, liberals in the like Hillary Clinton era.

47:27And that's just not true. Like, think back to the post 2001. Yeah. I mean, and yeah, go back to McCarthy. Even the early 90s, like all the little like moral panics about rap lyrics and stuff like that. It was John Adams throwing French aligned people. Oh, so true. In the prison. John Adams was the worst. Original sin. Original sin on First Amendment there. It actually started with Jesus. Yep. There you go. Original podcaster. But I mean, so I like I have to tell you guys, I feel I don't feel scared or angry. I actually just feel depressed because I like let's play this out a little bit. OK, and let's keep in mind you guys, Ryan and Emily, you guys covered this week.

48:11also this consolidation of media institutions in the hands of Trump aligned figures and Zionists, the Ellisons, you know, they're so you're going to have CBS, potentially CNN, HBO, you know, Twitter's already owned by Elon, TikTok coming under that umbrella, too. So, yeah, I've got a breakdown of you of these crystal for you while you're talking. OK, if you want to throw that up on the screen. And so you talk about Orban. I mean, this is Orban. This is like a speed run of Orbanism, which from my study took longer to consolidate than, you know, this has in the second Trump administration. And then what do you do with the remaining mainstream, you know, establishment institutions?

48:50You do what you did with Jimmy Kimmel. You send out the message. Listen, you better not cross me or else there are going to be consequences. And the corporate executives, you know, as a leftist, I never expected the capitalists to fight back against fascism, but they certainly aren't rising to the occasion. There's no doubt about that. And so that message goes on, too. You're going to hurt feelings. Don't hurt feelings with the F word. So that goes out, you know, that goes out, too, to everybody who works there. Like, they're not going to they don't have my back. Nobody has solidarity with me.

49:21I am just out here on my own. And do I personally have any ability to stand up to the entirety of the United States government? Of course not. And neither does independent, quote unquote, independent media either. Like if Disney can be crushed like a bug, what do you think we are? Right. So you have I mean, you have so you that's the media landscape. OK. And then, OK, we have elections, right? We have midterms. We already know Trump is trying to like jerry rig the maps to make it as favorable as possible. cast out on mail-in ballots. They're monkeying around with the voter rolls, like all this stuff that they're going to try to do.

49:58Not to mention we've got National Guard already in the streets in multiple cities. Are they going to be there intimidating voters on Election Day? I don't think it's a crazy thing to suggest. Then let's say that Democrats overcome that. It's too big to rig. They win a majority in the House. They do well in the Senate, whatever. You think this man is going to accept those election results? Of course he's not. Of course he's not. We already know his playbook. He's already projecting what he's going to do when he's casting doubt on elections and mail-in ballots and saying, you know, I wish we had the recourse of the ballot box, but, you know, the ballot box in many cases is rigged and it's not sufficient.

50:35He's going to go out and say, no, these election results are not legitimate. Democrats did not win these seats. They're incapable of winning these seats. And his base will believe him. So at that point, You have a media ecosystem that is completely compromised, that's terrified to tell the truth about the nature of the elections. You've got, you know, roughly half of at least of the voting public that is going along with, you know, his view that this is all rigged and a sham. Like, where are we then? Because the whole thing, to Ryan's point about like, you know, it's all written down on paper, but it's as good as the paper it's written on if we don't all sort of like buy into the spirit of the project.

51:12The whole thing falls apart if you don't have most of the population sort of routinely just like accepting, OK, these results are more or less correct and we're going to move forward with what we get. So that's where we're headed. And this media consolidation piece is an important part of it because they need to be scared to tell the truth going, you know, when and if that happens about what actually occurred. And so that's why I'm feeling very depressed, because I don't see what institution exists or what power structure exists that is capable of like rolling back or resisting any of this. It's certainly not the corporations.

51:49It hasn't been the universities, wasn't the law firms. You know, it's it. Labor has already long been defenestrated long ago. They're irrelevant to the conversation, which is sad and pathetic. The court system, like Trump has realized that, number one, there's this loophole in liberal democracy where if you just do a bunch of shit, it takes a while for the courts to catch up. And number two, the Supreme Court's giving him everything he wants anyway when it gets there. So I don't know, guys. That's where we are. It's pretty ugly. And they're already on Fox News being like, oh, well, the First Amendment.

52:22I don't know if Charlie really would have believed in that now. I think Trump said that. And then someone else on Fox News was like, I don't I don't know if we really I don't know if we can deal with the First Amendment anymore. I'm not sure if that's as important as these other things we're dealing with. literally what every lib said during the biden administration that sent conservatives through the roof not every lib of course but it was like all of the disinformation libs who were complaining about the the first amendment scope being too broad in the way that i mean it is like it she said the thing that was sending uh all of the right onto their moral high horse um and again like in a good way, right?

53:02Like we should all be against the government saying, well, maybe that whole First Amendment thing is a little outdated. So yeah, I mean, I... Yeah, Emily, I'm curious for your take on Crystal's scenario, because it seems pretty dystopian, but also fairly realistic. The only thing I would say could change that arc would be a financial crisis, which we do seem like I think that's a matter more of of when rather than if that could that basically just flips the table. But outside of that, where do you see holes in the kind of arc that she sketched out there? I don't. I mean, I don't. I think, you know, for me, it was also depressing when the Hunter Biden like laptop case broke And I saw the way the media had treated the like Russia collusion thing for years.

54:01And of course, I like I remember not being able to DM that story after the Politico broke that 51 former intelligence people coming out and saying it had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. I remember not being able to send it over a DM in private conversations. So that was like I felt really similarly then. then. And I think probably the most important reservation that people should have about Trump, even if you're conservative, even if you are ideologically MAGA, but you're not like full Curtis Yarvin and want just like a monarchy or an American CEO instead of a president. The biggest reservation people should still have is fake claims of fraud in elections, because in elections, because that is the hallmark of banana republicanism.

54:53And we've seen there's precedent for it. So I don't think like I actually think a lot of conservatives, if you laid out what Crystal just said, would be like, oh, ha ha. But no, I think it's completely serious because, again, we have precedent for it. So I've got nothing in response to that. I'm Mungish Hatikular, and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us.

55:32I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain as opposed to his brain. Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause?

56:16Maybe I have adult ADHD. I need to look this up. Where's my phone? Juliana, your phone is hot to the touch. I think it's asking you for a break. You know what? Maybe I should just ask ChatGPT. Or maybe we can ask an actual human. Yes, like a couple sex therapist. Whoa, that escalated quickly, but okay. Because I have questions. We have questions. And I bet everyone has questions. Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that. How about this one? Is bribing your kids bad parenting? or just negotiating? Oh, and I still do need to know, why was my poop green that one time? Hypothetically, right?

56:51Okay, well, instead of letting the internet guess, we've got actual people answering these exact questions. And laughing with us has got to be better than spending three hours down a rabbit hole online. Listen to Bill and Juliana. The podcast. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

57:12Hey guys, Paul Verzi here, and I want to talk to you about Paul's best podcast. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio. I sit down each week with a special guest and we discuss the absolute best of things. Pete Davidson. It's that and then there's everything else. He would just shout one line and it would murder. Marie! Lunch! Bill Burr. Let's talk about the best moments that we had on the road. I would love a cocktail. Dude, Joe could get last row middle seat on a Southwest Airlines flight. Joe, how was your flight? It was great. The guy on Penn State moving on the field. And the player thought Joe was his former coach.

57:47And he hugged him. And he hugged him. And Joe just went with it. And the guy goes, what are you doing here, coach? And Joe just goes, man. And you walk in, and it is bananas. I mean, it's a feast for the eyes. And I was like, it's not my thing either. But we're here. When in Rome. Top athletes, chefs, musicians, everybody. Listen to Paul's Best Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let me ask you guys something, too, about this York County shooting of, you know, there was an ambush. In Pennsylvania? In Pennsylvania. The cops. Five cops were ambushed, three killed, two others wounded.

58:28And I'm curious if you think that the climate that we're in explains some of the lack of attention that the media is paying to this. uh the guys matthew ruth was the is the killer he was he was he was killed or he took his own life it's there's there's very little information about about this he was stalking his uh his girlfriend his ex-girlfriend she called the police um they suspected an ambush um and still got ambushed um from a cornfield um and and he's he's a registered libertarian i believe white guy like it's what people call demographically inconvenient but even given all those facts the killing of the shooting of five police officers and the killing of three usually makes national news even if the shooter is demographically inconvenient yet there's barely been a blip i I wonder if the political climate the media is under right now is influencing decisions by broadcasters to say, you know what, let's not touch this.

59:42This looks like trouble. I mean, the innocent explanation would be there's just so much else going on, you know, with Charlie Kirk just being assassinated and that being the investigation of that being ongoing and the Kimmel censorship and all of those things. Right. And to presidents in the UK, like all these things that are going on that it just couldn't quite break through. But what I would say, Ryan, is if the shooter were trans and just murdered three cops, everyone in the fucking country would know about it and it would be wall to wall coverage. So I think there's no doubt that the demographic inconvenience of the shooter is a big part of the reason why networks decide, you know, there's a lot of other stories to cover.

1:00:28We're just not going to touch this. We're just going to put this one on the back burner and we're not going to particularly touch it. Now, I will say that's nothing new, of course. You know, how many stories do we have of like adorable little white girls who get murdered and kidnapped or horrible things and they become national names and stories? And same thing happens to an adorable little black girl and nobody ever knows her name. Like this is not a new thing in terms of American media presentation. But I think you are correctly touching on the particular political valence that could be influencing the lack of coverage, lack of details, the lack of curiosity around this one.

1:01:04Because when I saw this break, I was like, wow, what the hell is going on here? And I'm still in the place of, wow, what the hell is going on here? Because there hasn't been much, if any, significant journalistic inquiry into what exactly unfolded and what the circumstances were. So Ryan was asking, Ryan was, Ryan was searching for hope earlier in this episode. And we were also searching for people that were meeting the moment. And a lot of people have been saying, oh, what about all these center right, right wing podcasters who made free speech and cancel culture, a core part of their message, a core part of why they voted for Trump, why they supported Trump and the vibe shift.

1:01:48and a lot of people on the left were saying, oh, these guys are going to duck their heads, not meet the moment. So let's see what that side of podcasting has been saying first here. I've got a few different ones. This one here is from Tim Dillon. This is an Instagram story. For those just listening, it says on his Instagram story, SEC Commissioner threatening to revoke broadcasting licenses has chilling effect on free speech. AG threatening to go after hate speech is a bad sign. When someone has a weapon, Everyone will use it. I continue to unconditionally support Israel and all of its actions now and forever.

1:02:25It's nice to cover your bases there. He also announced that, I couldn't even tell if he was joking, that he'd been fired from the Saudi Arabia. From the Riyadh. Yeah. The comedy circuit? So I actually think that might be true. But he's keeping the down payment. Yeah. Because I looked at their website for the comedy festival. He's off. And I don't see him there anymore. So I think that might have actually been true because he did his whole monologue where which I covered and did a monologue about where he was like, you know, they're paying me enough to look away. But then he said in the monologue, if someone's being beaten next to me, I'm going to look away.

1:03:01If there's slave labor, I'm going to look away. So we sort of named the things that Saudi Arabia is doing. So I I I can't I couldn't totally. But I think he may I think he may have been canceled from the company. The funniest thing to do is take the down payment and get fired. Getting fired is the funniest thing you can do always as a comedian. And that's why Tim has been unafraid to kind of like poke all sides, including like his friends. Like, I mean, he's ripped RFK. He rips Barry all the time. He used to get invited to dinners there. So he also he also joked, I'll be taking the down payment and donating it to a foundation that supports.

1:03:35He's like, I'm just kidding. I'm going to buy a car. Yeah. another exactly see you in Montecito um but this one I thought was even uh more interesting this comes from a barstool sports podcast um now the CEO uh Dave Portnoy seemed to support the decision was kind of gaslighting people and saying it's not really a big deal it's all about a business decision but here's one of the podcasts under his arm and what they had to say no right now in 2025 at 10.06 on September 18th. The extreme right are the biggest group of pussies that has ever existed in America. A bunch of, because people with green hair at Starbucks, because once in a while a fucking guy swam against girls.

1:04:20You fucking pussies have broken in half. Led a duo in consequence culture Portnoy, who is just waving his arms at the right to like him again after the thing last week where he said it was Trump's fault privately and publicly that Charlie Kirk died. Now he's like, I gotta get them back. I gotta get them back. I gotta get them back. Typical, I will say, fits the tribe profile. So there's that, and you know, is he getting, wait, is that, is he just getting antisemitic at the very end there? Yeah, the tribe profile? Is that he still on Barstool? All right, let's, we'll look into this. We're gonna look into this.

1:05:01I thought he got into a big fight with Portnoy. He had me until the end there, yeah. Talk about not sticking the landing. Yeah. Is Portnoy Jewish? Yes, he's Jewish. Yes, Portnoy is. Yes, he's Jewish, yeah. Yeah, so he just wraps it up with some blatant anti-Semitism. Yeah, wraps it up with like... But he's talking about Portnoy, wasn't he? He's talking about Portnoy, and he says typical member of the tribe. He's just basically saying like typical Jew. So, yeah. Yeah. All right. He has me until then. We lost that one. Tim distuck the landing far better by hailing Israel. So we're showing the right way and the wrong way of doing this.

1:05:39We've smoked out the true anti-Semite on Breaking Points, and we all know it's now Griffin. Griffin. Okay. This is the free half of the show. This is the half the Fox News producers watch, Emily. This is not okay. They watch the whole thing. They absolutely watch the whole thing. They share one premium sub. I'm a defender. I'm a defender of Jewish people all around the world. We need to check the IPs of their login, see how many people logged in. They did name drop Starbucks, though. And I had to throw this up here. There's an update here from Starbucks. Update, Starbucks employees must write Charlie Kirk's name.

1:06:18No matter what your name is. Yes, exactly. In response to some conversations on social media, Starbucks shared the following, there are no restrictions on customers using Charlie Kirk's name on their order, and we are following up with our team, which I just think is such a great example. It's like, this is the world that they're envisioning, like that they need a safe space at Starbucks so that they're what? It's so live coded. The trans barista can write Charlie Kirk on it. Like, I don't know. I do. I want to say, go ahead, Crystal. I just, I, when, before Starbucks made this decision or whatever, I felt really bad for these baristas who are trying to navigate like this corporate policy against writing anything political on the cups and these customers coming in and berating them and recording them and putting them on blast the world.

1:07:03I felt very bad for the baristas. Right, how is that not political? Yeah, I mean, how do you navigate that, right? Your boss is telling you to do one thing and then you've got this customer who wants to make a social media moment of it and then Libs of TikTok is going to send it out to the world and make it out like you're some evil pro-murder lefty or whatever. So I, yeah, the whole thing was, I don't know. And Portnoy fired some intern from Barstool because he posted condolences to Charlie Kirk on like the Barstool, Texas account or something. And he fired him saying that you're not allowed to do politics.

1:07:46Wait, what? Yeah. You see this? Yeah, I didn't see that either. I didn't see that. That seems weird. um and portnoy said i i always hated this kid he knows you're not supposed to do politics on the account it's not about what he said it's these are these are accounts it's not his personal account she's not supposed to do politics he had the kid had posted like basically thoughts and prayers for charlie kirk uh from the texas barstool account um so but they have a very strict rule no politics from the account so to crystal's point if you're a barista and they say no politics on the cup and somebody asked you to do put a political gesture on the cup you say no then you get filmed and now you're on libs of tiktok and so yeah starbucks kind of put them in a bad situation i agree with you there yeah i mean i also just do want to say because i i genuinely think this is important that when something happens to somebody who's in the media space um i think this probably also explains why dean withers for example had such a visceral reaction after but really though griffin like after it happened did you see withers video for those don't know dean withers is like dean withers is a very young zoomer liberal tiktok debater and he was i mean it was by the way here's this oh there it is okay scumbag wow yeah he was not But anyway, what I was going to say is, for me, like as someone who did not know Charlie Kirk nearly as well as a lot of people who are in the media who were very, very close with him, like in right wing media who are like very, very, very close with him were.

1:09:32this is just all i'm trying to say here is not defending any like censoriousness or whatever but just to say that i have been trying to extend a lot of grace to people and hopefully people have extended some grace to me because that was like a collective trauma for people on the right who are really close to charlie kirk and are now the ones that find themselves in positions to be like in the public space discussing it so i hope that some of this dies down i don't think all of it will die down but i did just want to say that like if something god forbid happened to like someone on the left i do think we would also be seeing some of this like deep visceral um anger that's like feels really raw and again i'm not saying that's gonna go away i don't think it is but i do just want to say like i just knowing some of these guys what this did to them psychologically was incredibly hard and i can't imagine again i wasn't like a close personal friend of charlie but a lot of people that I am close friends with were.

1:10:34And it's just so anyway, just a word to say, I think some of it will go away. I don't think all of it will go away. And it's been crazy. I think that's a fair point. I don't extend that point to the president of the United States, though. And that's who it's fair, you know, because because he showed that he had no emotional reaction that he doesn't care. Yeah, I mean, yeah, he was. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm doing great. My renovation is going fantastic. You know, so, you know, and I don't know how capable he is of human emotions on the best of days, but whatever. I mean, and so that's that's like it's one thing.

1:11:10OK, a cultural phenomenon, random influencers. You know, I still think you're a person with a platform. You still have responsibility. Certainly, I don't think grace would be applied in the other direction. Not that that should dictate what you do, whatever. But that's one thing. But the president Johnson is a good example. Yeah. President United States is using this as a chance to crack down. Right. In any number of ways on media figures, media outlets, he doesn't like on left wing groups. You've got Stephen Miller, who is like basically the real president of the United States, who is out overtly like we are going to use this aggressively to go after all of our political enemies.

1:11:48And they will. I mean, that's I believe them when they when they say that and they are already taking steps in that direction. So, you know, my my my grace that I can extend to individuals who who directly knew Charlie and are impacted by this on a personal level does not extend to the president of the United States, who was supposed to represent all of us and is probably the worst person I could possibly imagine to be the president at a moment such as this. that's yeah absolutely and i also before we go to the premium one other point um that i think i think the audience correctly sussed out that that that the trauma that um emily is talking about having hit you know people close to him but also people in the broad kind of ecosystem also does you know bleed out into people on the progressive side too like you and i think that just you know psychically psychologically people like me and crystal and hassan and um anybody who's kind of like a public figure you know saw themselves in that and i and i then i and i think the audience is right to you kind of be to be wary of the of that fact like understand that we're that our analysis flows out of out of that bias um and so that um that i but i don't think there's you'd have to be just a stone cold, not human person for it to be any different.

1:13:15And that's not who we are either. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, on that note, folks, we are going to get into a lot of other fun stuff here in the second half. We're going to be analyzing, breaking down the Candace Owens new released photo of the shooter, Tyler Robinson, alleged shooter. And we're going going to be getting to a few other stories. If you want to see all that and ask us questions in the AMA, you can sign up at breakingpoints.com to support us and our independent journalism. We don't read ads. We don't take money from anybody. It's all you guys. And we'll see you there on the second half.

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1:14:55But we're more than just hoops. And the real conversation is what we actually bring. It's been really, really cool seeing kind of these women just really step into their power off the court and understand that they are basketball, right? And they're not asking for permission. Listen to Levels to This with Cheryl Swoops and Tarika Foster-Brasby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mange Shatikular and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talk to scientists, biopunks, curmudgeons, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us.

1:15:39And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.