“Guilty of EVERYTHING He’s Crying About!” Jimmy Kimmel Uncancelled | Piers Morgan Free Speech Debate

0:00It doesn't matter if it's red or blue, you should be allowed to speak truth without fear of censorship. Jimmy Kimmel is guilty of everything he's crying out against right now. And yes, wearing blackface. If you get caught doing that too many times, they make you the prime minister of Canada. What we're finding, though, is that the MAGA movement really doesn't believe in the Constitution, doesn't believe in the First Amendment. It's a party of grievance and it's a party of one.

0:22Piers Morgan:Two people have now been confirmed dead, including the attacker, after a shooting by a suspected sniper at an immigration facility in Texas. The FBI says anti-ICE messages were found on rounds fired at the scene of the attack. ICE is the new iteration of the war on law enforcement. If you don't like Donald Trump, don't vote for him. But don't kill the people who are following the orders to follow our immigration laws. Jimmy Kimmel Live returned to ABC last night, ending days of frenzy debate about state censorship and conservative cancel culture. There was some contrition but no apology and a crystal clear message that free speech is under attack.

1:05Look, I never imagined I would be in a situation like this. I barely paid attention in school. But one thing I did learn from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern is that a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn't like is anti-American. That's anti-American. And I am so glad we have some solidarity on that from the right and left and from those in the middle, like Joe Rogan. Maybe the silver lining from this is we found one thing we can agree on.

1:39Piers Morgan:Personally, I find it quite hard to feel too much sympathy for Jimmy Kimmel, who only makes jokes about Republicans and only gives airtime to Democrats on what masquerades as a show for all Americans. And if conservatives are doing cancel culture now, they're not very good at it. He was silenced for all of three shows before returning to lash Trump on network TV in return for his$50 million salary. But that doesn't mean he's wrong about everything. The glee about his suspension by some free speech superfans was hypocritical. And the pressure from the FCC was outrageous and unacceptable. Government controls on ideas and speech are not just anti-American, they're anti-democratic and they're dangerous.

2:14Piers Morgan:That's why I fully expect all of the people who cried fascism and autocracy this week to condemn the news that the Biden administration bullied Google into closing down YouTube accounts it didn't like. That's a pretty huge free speech scandal about a platform which has an audience 1 ,500 times bigger than Kimmel's. But so far, the outrage about that has been pretty well non-existent, a bit like Kimmel's sympathy for the many cancelled TV stars that he didn't like, who always skewed to the right. We'll head to debate this as comedian and host of Fox News on Saturday night, Jimmy Faller, the CPAC chairman, Matt Schlapp, Daniel Coe, the former senior advisor to President Biden, now host of the People's Cabinet, and Mike Nellis, host of Endless Urgency and the brains behind White Dudes for Harris.

2:57Piers Morgan:Well, welcome to all of you. Jimmy Faller, it seemed to me a lot of stuff went on with this Kimmel thing, which is concerning. I think most people agree the FCC guy behaving like Don Corleone, not a good idea. Probably not a good idea for Donald Trump to be publicly saying the complete opposite to what his administration says, which is they're not interfering in Jimmy Kimmel and his free speech when he clearly thinks they should be. But also a lot of hypocrisy from Kimmel, who's always led the charge in celebrating the downfall of people like Tucker Carlson, Roseanne Barr from his own network, gleefully trampling on their career graves, and a lot of hypocrisy from the left who spent the last few years cancelling everyone they could think of, but then suddenly they've got a martyr, and because it's one of their own, then, oh, we've got to save this guy.

3:47Piers Morgan:Something they didn't apply to many, many, many people that they greedily cancelled in the last few years. So there's a lot here to unpack. But to me, the overriding thing that's important is people need to be consistent. Yes. Well, that's where I would say, Pierce, on the right, our reaction to this is that getting free speech advice from liberals is like getting marriage tips from O.J. Simpson. You don't exactly have the best record on this issue because what are they reacting to? They're reacting to Brendan Carr, who I agree should not be talking as the FCC chairman in such a heavy-handed manner.

4:27But all the liberals are really proving is that they're on board with the government doing this in private, but not in public. Meaning we now know that they pressured Google in private. The government, senior White House officials under Joe Biden. We also know, courtesy of Mark Zuckerberg, that they went out and pressured Facebook to take down stuff that didn't jibe with their COVID ethos. So when I saw the Jimmy Kimmel thing last night, yes, it's good to see a comic back on the airwaves as someone who gets paid to say dumb things for a living. But let's not misconstrue this. We are not living in a world where the government fired him over a joke.

5:06The government, or at least his affiliates, took him off the air because he lied and misrepresented the political views of Charlie Kirk's shooter. That's what we were reacting to. We're not anti-comedy on the right. We have Greg Gutfeld, the highest rated show in Late Night. He is the king of Late Night. I come on on Saturday night. I'm more like the Rodney King of Late Night. I get beat up a little bit. But we're doing okay because we like comedy. We just don't like the fact that liberals are misrepresenting conservative views to the extent that we're getting killed for it.

5:43Piers Morgan:Okay, let's bring in Daniel Koker. You were a former senior advisor to President Biden. And I was stunned by the fact that yesterday there were two free speech stories. One involves a comedian who made a crass comment about Charlie Kirk's murder, whether he meant to or not. and only he really knows, but he absolutely inferred that the MAGA crowd were doing everything they could to try and pretend this guy wasn't one of theirs. Inference, he probably was. He says that's not what he inferred. Many people took it that that is what he inferred. But putting that to one side, you've got this other story breaking where Google have revealed officially that they were put under extreme pressure by the Biden administration, senior White House officials, directly telling them to censor accounts that were spreading, in their view, COVID and political misinformation.

6:38Piers Morgan:To me, that is far more egregious than Jimmy Kimmel on his own. So my question for you, I guess, is, did you know about what was going on with Google in terms of censoring these accounts? And do you agree with me that it is more serious, given the scale of it? So I didn't know. I think it's fair to say that what is being described is incredibly concerning, and I want to learn more about exactly what the threats were. But I want to be very clear that it doesn't matter if it's red or blue, you should be allowed to speak truth without fear of censorship. So I agree with you being intellectually honest that we need to be very careful about curbing free speech, and we need to be incredibly concerned with what was just emerged that was allegedly done.

7:23The thing that I would say that I think is important to point out is that we can have the conversation about Kimmel. But Donald Trump has tried to silence journalists and institutions that have said truth that he just doesn't like. A$15 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal for something he claimed was false that later came out as utterly true. So I think we need to make the distinction between what is being discussed and what is actual silence of actual truth.

7:50Piers Morgan:OK, Matt Schlapp, it seems to me on the right, a lot of people on the right have got themselves into a bit of a hypocritical pickle on this. Not all. I've watched people like Clay Travis, Ben Shapiro, Ted Cruz, a surprising group, actually, who've come out and were very intellectually honest. They said, look, if you think this is a good idea, it will come back and bite us, it will be used against us, and we have stood up against this kind of stuff. for the last few years, and we can't do the opposite. Now it's someone, you know, that we don't like. And I think that is intellectually honest. But a lot of people on the conservative right in America race to want to have Jimmy Kimmel cancelled, race to applaud what the FCC guy did, and so on.

8:37Piers Morgan:What do you feel about that? Because it seems to me if the right starts to cede the high ground on free speech, it's got a problem. Well, the best thing for my politics is to let Jimmy Kimmel have a show, THE RATINGS ARE SO TERRIBLE. NO ONE IS REALLY WATCHING. HE'S NOT HAVING MUCH OF AN IMPACT. I THINK WHAT WE'RE GETTING ALL CONFUSED ON IS WHEN GOVERNMENT HAS THE AUTHORITY. LET'S FACE IT. THE GENERAL WHO JUST MADE THIS CHARGE THAT DONALD TRUMP IS TRYING TO SHUT DOWN JOURNALISTS OR MEDIA OUTLETS. LET ME TELL YOU, IF DONALD TRUMP HAD THE AUTHORITY, AND IT WOULD BE MISUSED, IN MY OPINION, IF HE DID THIS, TO SHUT DOWN A JOURNALIST, ONE OF THOSE BLUE BINDERS WOULD HAVE BEEN SIGNED.

9:15WE WOULD HAVE HAD A PRESS

9:20THE MEDIA IS HIGHLY TILTED TO THE LEFT. THE QUESTION OF JIMMY KIMMEL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GOVERNMENT. THE QUESTION OF JIMMY KIMMEL WAS WHEN YOU HAVE THESE LATE NIGHT SHOWS THAT ARE INCREASINGLY UNFUNNY TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE MY POLITICS, MORE THAN 50 % OF THE COUNTRY, AT WHAT POINT DO THESE SHOWS START TO GET CANCELED? WE 'VE ALREADY SEEN THIS WITH STEPHEN COLBERT. THAT'S NOT A CONSTITUTIONAL FIRST AMENDMENT QUESTION. THIS IS A QUESTION ABOUT INVESTORS AND PEOPLE THAT RUN A COMPANY AS TO WHETHER OR NOT THEY WANT TO HAVE THIS HOST OR THAT HOST. WE ARE GETTING IT ALL WRAPPED UP INTO THESE OTHER QUESTIONS.

9:56I AGREE.

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10:40Piers Morgan:To watch their full stories and find out more, scan the QR code on your screen or visit OxfordNatural.com slash peers. And here's the best part. Use the code peers, P-I-E-R-S, and get 70 % off your first order. Get 70 % off with the promo code peers. You know, when Donald Trump posts on Truth Social like he has today, I can't believe ABC fake news gave Jimmy Kill on his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his show was cancelled. Yeah, it looks... Hang on, let me finish. Let me finish. Something happened between then and now because his audience is gone. His talent was never there. He's yet another arm of the DNC, and to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major illegal campaign contribution.

11:23Piers Morgan:I think we're going to test ABC out on this. Let's see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me$16 million. This one sounds even more lucrative. I mean, there he's talking about conversations he says happened between the White House and ABC, where assurances were given by ABC to the White House that Kimmel was out, and he's surprised that has now been reversed, and then saying he may sue over it. You know, this doesn't look like a president who wants to keep out of this. It looks like somebody who wants to influence it. Big difference between what Joe Biden did, which is, and it wasn't just Google, it was all these social media companies.

11:58I think Jimmy's already brought it up, it happened with Facebook. I know it happened with every one of these major platforms where they were brought into the White House, and whether it was with the Surgeon General or the Press Secretary... Yeah, but I agree. Let me stop you.

12:10Piers Morgan:Let me stop you purely because I totally agree. In fact, I've just written a book called Woke is Dead where I go over all this stuff, and it's shocking when you lay out the scale of what was going on in terms of the suppression. Notably, of course, the New York Post having its great bombshell scoop on Hunter Biden's laptop completely suppressed, right? So you won't get any argument from me about any of that. It's just even more incumbent, I would argue, for when the Republicans get power that they then don't start to behave in a similar manner. Would you agree? Yeah, but there's not a misuse of power for citizens and for Americans to take to the courts to ask this question.

12:49This is a fair question, Pierce. Maybe the FCC doesn't have the ability to change what ABC does with these editing decisions, and they don't. That was about local broadcast stations. That wasn't about ABC or Disney. But the real question is a company that has a news organization, if they are 90 % playing for one political party for one side of the political argument, eventually you have this question of whether or not they are breaching these standards of colluding with one of those political parties. And that's what Donald Trump is bringing up in this truth on this post of truth. And this is a very important part.

13:26It's the reason why we have such a divisive political nature, because the news went left, our major institutions went left, the late-night talk shows went left, and those of us with my politics feel like, where do you go to find the truth?

13:38Piers Morgan:Listen, I don't disagree. When you look at the graph I had posted earlier, which is just ridiculous how few conservative people the late-night shows collectively have on it. And there's also a kind of farcical thing that they all bang on about diversity, and there's four middle-aged white guys, always as big. So there's a lot of hypocrisy there. Let me bring in Mike Nellis. Talking about the hypocrisy of Jimmy Kimmel in all this, it was pretty distasteful to see the clips re-emerge of him gleefully celebrating people like Tucker Carlson being fired, Roseanne Barr being fired by ABC. No holding back from him there, no racing to support them.

14:20Piers Morgan:But the person who I think really summed this up perfectly was Megyn Kelly, who posted today, remember when I was cancelled and held back the tears on air and Kimmel stood up for me saying all she did was ask a question about blackface Halloween costumes, whereas I, Jimmy, have actually worn blackface many times and still have a show, this is wrong. And she added, no, me neither. F him and his self-pity. And I'm going to show a picture of Jimmy Kimmel in blackface because that was Jimmy Kimmel. and by the yardstick of the cancel culture left for the last few years, he should have been cancelled for that alone, but he wasn't.

15:00Piers Morgan:And her point is a good one, Mike Nettles, isn't it? Hypocrisy. It's like, where was the defence for her when she says something far less offensive, frankly, than what Jimmy Kimmel said? Well, Jimmy Kimmel is actually talked about repeatedly when he did Blackface a million years ago, and I think, to me, that's beside the point. The right actually had a pretty good argument to make that some aspects of cancel culture had gone too far. And what most of them have proven, and you see that in Matt's response right now, they didn't really believe in that. They love the idea of cancel culture. They want to be able to use it themselves.

15:31And that's why the entire MAGA movement was so gleeful when Jimmy Kimmel got suspended here. And let's be clear, Matt said that this doesn't have anything to do with the government. It has everything to do with the government. The only reason ABC suspended Kimmel in the first place was because Donald Trump's FCC threatened to remove ABC's broadcasting license. And the point on the affiliates... Matt, I didn't interrupt you. I'd ask if you didn't interrupt me, please. Thank you. That's not right. The whole thing with the Sinclair and the rest of the affiliates, they're working through a merger right now.

16:00So Donald Trump uses the power of the federal government to get what he wants, and that's what he's doing here. And I'm glad to see folks on the left, the right, the middle coming out, Joe Rogan, a whole bunch of other comedians. That's a good thing. What we're finding, though, is that the MAGA movement really doesn't believe in the Constitution, doesn't believe in the First Amendment. Also, I point out, doesn't really believe in the Second Amendment because we're two and a half weeks removed from them saying they were going to ban all transgender individuals in the country from having guns, and the NRA had to come out and rebuke them.

16:24So they don't really believe in these rights. They want to be able to use the power of the government to tell you, me, everybody else what to do in their image. And do you believe...

16:31Piers Morgan:Okay, but using that yardstick, presumably you would condemn the Biden administration bullying Google into censoring YouTube accounts for talking about COVID. So I think there's a huge difference between what we're talking about. When you talk about free speech, you don't have the right to shout fire in a crowded theater because people could get hurt. So I think it's worth having a conversation of if people are intentionally spreading disinformation using social media platforms, can the government step in and have a conversation with the company? I'm happy to have that. I also have a hard time believing you can really bully Google, which is a massive corporation.

17:06Senior White House officials reaching out and saying, hey, this is dangerous at a time of crisis during the pandemic. It's not the same as Donald Trump threatening to remove the license for ABC.

17:14Piers Morgan:OK, Jimmy, you want to jump in there? Yeah. Yeah. OK. The analogy of yelling fire in a crowded theater doesn't hold up here because the government was telling us you don't have the right to yell accurate COVID information during a pandemic. People were being deplatformed for simply saying that vaccinated people were continuing to catch COVID. And one of the people cheering them on was Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Kimmel is guilty of everything he's crying out against right now in terms of cheering on other people's censorships. Yes, wearing blackface, which he better watch with the blackface, because if you get caught doing that too many times, they make you the prime minister of Canada.

17:54It's a very severe penalty. You've got to go be Justin Trudeau for it.

17:57Piers Morgan:Three times Trudeau did it. And that's the bigger if issue. Three times Trudeau got called doing that. Okay, we're arguing. Yeah, I mean, Pierce, the big news was the Halloweens where he didn't do it. We were like, is he feeling okay? Why doesn't he have the blackface on? And that was Kimmel. He didn't do Car Malone once. He did it multiple times. That's why as a comedian, I wasn't surprised to see him get Charlie Kirk's shooter wrong because this is the same Jimmy Kimmel who thought he was a black guy who played for the Utah Jazz. But the point is, again, on the right, you're kind of, I get your point and there's nuance to this, but we're still misrepresenting our views, okay?

18:35We do not want the government imposing heavy-handed censorship on comedians or anybody when it comes to speech rights. That's why there are people on the right saying Trump and Brendan Carr should ease off the throttle. We actually don't love this. We're capable of that distinction because in our party right now, we feel that the people, the people are more important than the politics. Meaning the biggest divide in media right now is in the last two weeks, Republicans are mourning the guy who got shot. Democrats are mourning the$16 million a year late night host who got in trouble for misrepresenting the shooter's political ideology.

19:12And the reason Kimmel isn't going to win people back is when he came out there last night, he still misrepresented what the shooter stood for because he said this guy's a fringe lunatic. His views are his own. They're not his own. There's a Rasmussen poll out today that says 54 % of liberals feel like the Charlie Kirk shooting was somewhat justified. Okay? We're not living in the same world if you can't condemn that unilaterally regardless of political views. Okay? And that's why this doesn't come down to something else.

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20:27Piers Morgan:And remember to tell them that I sent you. Cozy Earth, built for real life. I actually want to bring it on this point. I want to bring in Daniel again, because Hillary Clinton was on MSNBC today talking about the need for both sides to stop demonising one another. I want to show that clip first, but then I want to show a clip about her talking about the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden right before the election. So let's watch these two. We have got to stop demonising each other. Yeah. Now, I think most of that right now in our country's history is coming, you know, from the right, coming from people who want to dominate.

21:07But that jamboree happening right now, you see it there on your screen, in that place is particularly chilling because in 1939, more than 20 ,000 supporters of a different fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, packed the garden for a so-called pro-America rally, a rally where speakers voiced anti-Semitic rhetoric from a stage draped with Nazi banners.