Jimmy Kimmel Pulled Off Air Over Charlie Kirk Comments

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0:53Just get them all. Burlington. Deals. Brands. Wow. Welcome, everyone else, to the beat. As you saw, our very first guest in a way was Nicole Wallace. I was actually very curious, and she makes some interesting points there. We're reporting on the confrontation of these two people, as you know, an entertainer who uses his comedy voice and words to criticize the government. a very American endeavor. And this president who has complained and attacked and then seriously threatened that same comedian for years. And now the Trump administration finding a way to, according to legal experts, abuse government powers, possibly violating the First Amendment, which I opened the show with so you can remember, it prohibits the government.

1:42it says Congress, it's been interpreted to mean the whole government, from prohibiting or abridging freedom of speech in the press. And so here we have the pressure on private companies to do that and to do Trump's bidding. And the news is breaking now about how this went down. We first learned of this this very hour last night that ABC and Disney would bench Jimmy Kimmel. And that came through a rushed panic process after public threats from a Trump official. There are billions hanging in the balance for some of those media companies, which is what makes this so complicated. Nicole Wallace and I just discussing that, and I have more details on that in a moment.

2:18But first, I want to be clear. This is a story about government censorship. Right now, it's about Donald Trump's right-wing MAGA government censorship. If he gets away with it, it could break truly very long precedents and be used or abused by others. But right now, it's MAGA censorship first and foremost. It's now immediately become a scandal for Trump's communications official, Brendan Carr. He's facing calls to investigate what he did here and some calls on the left for his resignation. Others are speaking out against the First Amendment abuses. We have more on that. There's also the question of how these companies responded to an extraordinary exertion of political pressure from powerful Trump officials.

3:01As the New York Times put it, Trump aide's seizing on what many identify today as a pretext, meaning this isn't the real reason, even if other people are justifiably concerned about these statements, but a pretext of Kimmel's reference to MAGA leaders' initial response to what was that terrible Kirk shooting. And the Federal Communications Commission has been pulled into this in a way we haven't seen before, because, again, if you're just tuning in or if aliens were landing on Earth and wondering how we do things in this country, the FCC, as you already know, is not in the comedy review business, nor is it supposed to be in the political and democratic censorship business.

3:40So let me get this out of the way. The FCC's actual job is a regulator dealing with communications, promoting competition. That means protecting against, for example, monopolies or one person or company owning too much media in one place. And they deal with regulations for new technologies to flourish alongside diversity and localism. That's diversity of the press, something the Trump administration opposes. They want only their views. And then localism doesn't have to be left or right, just the idea that we care about people getting local coverage in the country. But now under Trump, they have a Project 2025 vet, FCC Chairman Carr, who has a totally different approach.

4:18And he is seizing these powers and seeing from the courts and the companies whether he gets away with it. So he went on this MAGA podcast, publicizing a quite literal series of demands. And he pushed Trump's longstanding grudge against Kimmel, calling him kind of a sick project or the work that he does being sick, and then outlining a very specific public plan that ABC should suspend Kimmel. Many wondering whether this will probably be a cancellation. It has been covered that way. But initially, the demand was suspend Kimmel, but the FCC would make it hard on the company. you know when you look at the conduct that has taken place by jimmy kimmel um it appears to be some of the sickest conduct possible a very reasonable minimal step that can be taken i mean obviously there's calls for kimmel be fired um i think you know you could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this.

5:18And again, you know, the FCC is going to have remedies that we could look at.

5:24We have remedies. Be careful. Now, Carr's appearance, that was yesterday daytime. As you know, if you're watching this, by night, they had made the announcement. It set off rushed emergency meetings. Campbell was going to address this issue and those remarks. And there was apparently a script because he normally has a show. Then at the local level or that next level down Nextar, which is a huge ABC affiliate, they distribute more ABC than any other affiliate, announced it was basically going to preempt Kimmel indefinitely. And top leadership at Disney and ABC felt that bottom-up pressure from them, plus whatever backroom dealings we don't know about, plus car going public.

6:01And then we got to here. And I just want to slow down for a minute and make sure we understand what we're witnessing. Because when the news first broke last night, it looked bad. In a First Amendment sense, it looked suspicious. But very quickly, you have all of this other evidence, and that spells out a government censorship campaign. And there are people, and maybe there's more people than usual, who say, if it's for their team or their side, anything goes. But that is, of course, the definition of being lawless. And we aspire to more than being lawless in this country. When it comes to free speech, it's the First Amendment for a reason.

6:42So what this looks like is an unconstitutional effort from the government to censor and punish speech. And the wider history is that Donald Trump doesn't hide the ball on these things. It's not a secret. He's not mysterious. If this were a case, as I've mentioned in our coverage, it would hurt the administration, would hurt the Trump administration as the defendant in a free speech case if they've admitted to all this, because then it looks like the government has a grudge, is unconstitutionally political, and then comes up with or brainstorms other later reasons as the pretext. That would be the tough evidence against them.

7:19And then you have the fact that everybody knows this. Jimmy Kimmel had emerged, in fact, more so than some Democrats or writers because of his reach in media and comedy and culture as a very consistent and some would say effective critic of Donald Trump. you know things have gone sideways when you're watching something you're thinking guy i wish donald trump was there the three judge panel shot down his arguments in a strongly worded 57 page ruling it was a devastating moment for trump especially when melania started clapping it's trump versus elah what an unexpected i'm not sure who to root for it's like diddy versus r kelly our founding father would appear to be very upset about reports that say he's been sleeping during in the trial.

8:08That is protected speech. That's free speech. That's First Amendment protected speech. And so while we're all free in this country to debate it and people are free to say they don't like it and oppose it and criticize it, that's the whole point. We don't have a constitution that says the government should just punish that. And Trump's responding to Kimmel now not by saying, okay, thanks, glad we got that done. Quite the opposite. Continuing a drumbeat that we've been covering where when a law firm or a university or a media company gives in to him, he immediately demands more. You have to ask yourself what these executives, including Disney's chief Bob Iger, who we'll get to in a moment, what they think their strategy is because immediately after the Kimmel suspension, Trump is publicly demanding other companies oust other hosts, including, full disclosure, our sister channel, NBC, on the entertainment side.

9:01We work with NBC News. We don't do much directly with NBC Entertainment, but he is naming two hosts over there that he wants fired from their late-night appearances. Meanwhile, his enforcer appeared on Fox News and basically admitted the improper motive. They're now facing the consequences of the choices that they made to appeal to a very narrow audience. Again, you can do that. You can start a podcast. You can go on YouTube. But if you're going to have a license from the FCC, we expect you to broadly serve the public interest. And I'm very glad to see that America's broadcasters are standing up to serve the interests of their community.

9:38We don't just have this progressive foie gras coming out from New York and Hollywood. Number one, he's admitting they don't like that it's progressive. That's not what the government's supposed to do. You could substitute the word conservative, MAGA, or any other persuasion. The government is not supposed to, through the FCC or frankly any other part of the government, punish what he calls progressive foie gras. Okay, that's one. Two, legal fact check. The public interest standard is not something that he can just make up and lie about. There is a standard in the FCC rules and under the governing provision by Congress, if you want to get into it, Title 47, about what the public interest means.

10:25And it doesn't mean a sitting politician who doesn't like someone because they criticize him just throwing around the word public interest. As for the attack on television, well, we can all discuss how the media has been changing. But Jimmy Kimmel gets over 1.7 million TV viewers, roughly, and has broken out as one of the more popular late night hosts online. So on YouTube, which is the top streamer, it gets more than Netflix, he's got a whopping 20 million subscribers. So he has a TV audience and a large streaming audience, and no one really takes it that seriously that Trump thinks that it's bad that he's criticized by Kimmel, but also that they believe Kimmel is irrelevant or the FCC wants to help ABC run its business better.

11:09The broader effort is Trump trying to distort what people see and hear in the free press. Companies settling sometimes thin or legally frivolous lawsuits rather than go at the administration. But as I just showed you, those efforts are met with more retribution. It was ABC that settled the Stephanopoulos lawsuit, but now they have the Kimmel thing. NBC, again our sister company, now facing Trump calling to get rid of their late night host. But that's not his only demand. All of this can even chill how the government is covered by outlets that keep their position when you see this much pressure.

11:44Now, Trump's attorney general is facing backlash from the right for her First Amendment attack this week, while the FCC chief admits an anti-First Amendment agenda. A big government approach where they want the government, through Trump and his officials, to help run these companies in the way that they think serves them, not you, the public, not free and fair democracy, but just serves their partisan agenda. And they're saying, change your conduct or these companies can have to do it the hard way. Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.

12:21These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action, frankly, on Kimmel or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead. Many experts calling that a shakedown. The companies face what could be the misuse of FCC power and its censorship demands when it comes time to approve or reject what could be multi-billion dollar deals, some of which are alive right now. Now, the FCC is supposed to look out for the public in those deals, monitoring whether, as I mentioned, there's local coverage or a monopoly. But the$6 billion deal that hangs in the balance is being linked quite clearly and in part of the pressure campaign of the FCC making these other demands.

13:04This week, the FCC chair provided what sounded like a roadmap if you want to do business with them. I mean, those are his words. After Kimmel's suspension went public, another ABC affiliate went further, saying Kimmel should be donating his own money to Charlie Kirk's conservative group, Turning Point USA. Now, that's an odd request. Kimmel may have his political views, but having members of the media pressured by the Trump administration to tell other members of the media, an independent comedian, artist, or even journalist, to go donate and fund the political group, this is really out there.

13:42Trump is also weighing in, saying networks who criticize him could face more government retribution over their licenses. Again, improper motive. This would be evidence against him in court. Quote, they give me only bad publicity. They're getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away. That is not how the license system works. if any network decides to fight and litigate this rather than give in, these are pieces of evidence against the government. And two years ago, the Supreme Court upheld these protected speech rights in what was then a unanimous decision that government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views the government disfavors.

14:28Let me read that again because this is from a case involving the NRA and a bunch of issues and all the Trump appointees on the court. This is a preview. And if Disney or Bob Iger or anyone's watching, I'm sure your own lawyers could tell you this too. You have a very recent ruling with Trump justices saying they can't do what they're doing this week. Government officials cannot coerce private parties to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors. That would include presumably the foie gras progressivism that Brendan Carr admitted he is suppressing. That's the stakes. These are the roadmaps.

15:07We're going to bring back a special guest in 90 seconds.

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16:14Normally in these ads, you expect somebody to ask you to buy something, but this is something different. I'm Julian Barnes, and I'm a reporter for The New York Times. I'm a national security reporter, and that means I'm reporting on military operations. These are fast-paced, quickly-moving situations. What exactly is happening on the ground is often shrouded in mystery. But we turn to trusted sources, satellite imagery, and expertise built up over years in order to ferret out the facts that wouldn't otherwise come to light. I'm here to ask you to seek out a news source that does firsthand fact-based reporting.

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17:12We have a First Amendment crisis in America. We've had several high-ranking officials, including the Attorney General, announce that they are attacking and undermining First Amendment free speech rights in the country. And as concerning as that was, Ted Cruz and others firing back, we have the last 24 hours where an apparent admitted agenda of censorship and viewpoint discrimination was announced by the government and quickly ABC Disney responded by benching a prominent Trump critic. So that's where we are. There are many days in this Trump term where we've had important and significant things, but this is one where you can see the inflection point.

17:49I want to bring in Jamil Jaffer, who's an expert on these issues, directs the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and Washington correspondent for Puck News and longtime journalist Julia Yaffe. Welcome to both of you. Julia, before Jamil and I talk more about the words of the Constitution, which even in a crisis can become annoying when lawyers do that too much for too long. I wanted to get your view as a journalist on the meaning of this type of government campaign against speech, be it entertainment or political in nature. Well, the meaning is very simple. It is to chill speech that President Trump does not agree with.

18:33I mean, think about it. If Donald Trump and Brendan Carr can do this to Jimmy Kimmel, who is watched by tens of millions of people, who is going to be just fine, he's a millionaire, what can he do to you, to me, to a journalist in a local newsroom who doesn't agree? He can completely obliterate them. And I think that is also the point that we need to not miss, the forest that we shouldn't miss for the trees, is this personalization of power, that it's free speech when I do it and it's disgusting and sick and needs to be banned or punished when you do it, right? Right. You're seeing this all over the U.S.

19:17government right now. I had a piece yesterday in Puck about what Trump is doing at the State Department and all over the government. This task force to root out anti-Christian bias. Also, First Amendment issue, right? Freedom of religion. But what it means in practice, as we're seeing in these U.S. government agencies, is creating a protected group of not just Christians, because there are Christians I spoke to at the State Department who feel incredibly alienated by this, who feel incredibly alienated by the anti-Muslim bias they're seeing spring up with all of this. A specific kind of Christian nationalism that aligns with the MAGA movement, those are the people, the people in that group, they get freedom of religion.

20:04They get religious accommodations. They get free speech. The rest of us do not. And I think you'd be wildly mistaken if you don't think that across newsrooms all over the country, people aren't having very tough conversations about how far they are willing, editors, business side people, are willing to let their reporters go because can they afford a$15 billion lawsuit the way the New York Times can? Even if it is made to go away, I mean, you know about slap lawsuits, right? Even if it's a ridiculous lawsuit that is filed against a media organization, even if it's something that they can win in court, you still have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers.

20:52Lots of time that is spent fighting the lawsuit rather than doing the journalism. This also applies to NGOs, which Trump has said he's also going to go after. Right. And that really goes to Jimmy Kimmel. This is also about civil society. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, at that broader level. Jamil? Yeah, I mean, this is exactly what the First Amendment was supposed to prevent. You know, if there's one thing that the First Amendment protects, it is speech critical of the president. But that's precisely what the president is trying to shut down. You know, this latest instance involving ABC and Disney and Jimmy Kimmel shares the structure of many other instances in which the Trump administration has, you know, weaponized regulatory power of one kind or another to silence its enemies or attempt to silence its enemies and enforce a kind of ideological conformity.

21:54We saw it with the universities. We saw it with law firms that were, you know, sanctioned and prevented from taking on the clients that they wanted to take on. We've seen it with cultural institutions and we've seen it with the media, not just in this instance, but, you know, with the kind of coerced settlements of these frivolous lawsuits that the Trump administration or President Trump filed against ABC and CBS. Yes. So, you know, there's obviously a pattern here. The pattern is the president trying to shut down speech he doesn't like. And so, Jamil, I'm curious where where the First Amendment advocates go on this.

22:36I want to show on satire. Carr within the last three years said satire is one of the most important forms of free speech, challenging those in power while using humor. That's why people in influential positions have targeted it for censorship. and I want to play for you his own history comparison on the public interest. Fox News doesn't have an FCC license. CNN doesn't. But ABC, CBS, NBC, those broadcast stations do. And with that license comes a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. We at the FCC are going to enforce the public interest obligation. If there's broadcasters out there that don't like it, they can turn their license into the FCC.

23:20But that's our job. Again, we're making some progress now. Carr dunking on Carr, Jamil, because 2019 Carr says, of course, the FCC has no mandate to rovingly police speech in the name of, quote, public interest. He now fails that Carr standard. What do you think of that? And is there a place here to fight this in the courts? Yeah, I mean, this is spectacularly unprincipled, right? I mean, they are saying one thing on Monday and totally the opposite on Tuesday, depending on whose ox is being gored. These guys are not trying to come up with a principled understanding of the First Amendment. They are just trying to go after their enemies and they're using whatever tools are available to them.

24:06But I hope that Americans across the political spectrum will see the problem with a society in which the president gets to decide which comedians are on TV, gets to decide what news is in the papers, gets to decide what university professors can teach. None of us wants to live in that society. Like we may disagree about, you know, a million different political issues. But I think that Americans across the political spectrum will rebel at this notion that the president should decide how editorial decisions are made at major media companies, how, you know, academic freedom is exercised at the universities.

24:50you know all of us have an interest in protecting that you know that freedom it's it's kind of that freedom that distinguishes the united states uh you know from so many other places in the world and and really the the the one of the things that we really need to hold on to um uh in this country is that um uh freedom of not just speech but the press freedom of inquiry freedom of association that the you know all the freedoms that the first amendment protects jameel and i do think you could on this i'm i'm out of time i got d.l hugley standing by but i want to thank you both and we'll have you back uh d.l is next when we return

25:35the trump administration's censorship its efforts here are not only against comics but all free speech that they deem too critical of the sitting government, that is against the First Amendment, as we've covered. And they're not shy about it. We want to play more from Trump's FCC commissioner discussing how they effectively can't take a joke. This is today. Do wonder, and I think many people do, whether you really are just targeting comedians who typically through the years have made fun of political figures in a way that because the president simply is offended by it. No, no, no, look, again, broadcast TV is different, and it comes with an obligation to serve the public interest.

26:16And my colleagues are remembering, though, the times of Johnny Carson. Now, again, to that point, Chairman, I mean, you know, the administration in power was typically the subject of most of his jokes, as would seem to be the case now. Well, look, I can tell you, Jimmy Kimmel is no Johnny Carson. The answer is part of the problem. We have never been a country that wanted to have the government picking and choosing what free speech is acceptable or what political jokes are funny. No surprise, people often don't find the jokes making fun of them as funny as those of others. And of course, as reference there from Carson to basically every Saturday Night Live ever, American democracy has included people making fun of leaders across the spectrum.

27:05There used to be a lot of stories about me. Remember when the whole thing broke and I tried to lie about it. I don't think we could get Mr. Nixon to stand still for a socket to me. Socket to me? Mr. President, you're going to leave office as a very young man, and yet the presidency has taken its toll. Your hair is so white, it could be a member of your cabinet.