Kimmel uncancelled: Is this a fight Trump can't win?

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this. Yes!

0:17I mean, I've had the opportunity to meet and spend time with comedians and talk show hosts from countries like Russia, countries in the Middle East who told me they would get thrown in prison for making fun of those in power and worse than being thrown in prison. They know how lucky we are here. Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country. And that's something I'm embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air. That's not legal.

0:52That's not American. That is un-American. That is Jimmy Kimmel, uncancelled and back on the air and finding himself as the tip of the spear in the battle for free speech, which was in danger and maybe still is of being trampled upon. Trump and those around him managed not to cancel him, but actually to amplify him, giving him one of his biggest audiences ever. So what happens now to late night comedy and any satire that hits Trump? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John. It's Emily. And Ukraine, you had a comedian turned politician leading the fight.

1:45In the United States, it is a comedian. comedian that seems to be now leading the fight for free speech and who may have scored a significant victory for it in returning to the airwaves last night after Donald Trump and the head of the broadcasting watchdog in America essentially said get Kimmel off the air if you want your broadcasting license to be renewed. Yeah in case you missed this story a very quick potted history, Jimmy Kimmel made some remarks in the aftermath of the shooting of Charlie Kirk that reflected on President Trump's response to that death, to the murder. And they were judged by the head of the FCC.

2:32In other words, I guess like Melanie Dawes, Ofcom, the sort of media commission, the regulator, to have crossed the line. Now, whether he really thought they crossed the line or not? We don't know. But he told a right wing influencer, Betty Johnson, on a podcast out loud that they had crossed the line, maybe because he thought he would conjure feeling goodwill with Trump. As a result of that, the network itself, Disney, turned round and said, we're going to cancel the show. Disney, we should say in brackets, ABC is hoping to make a very significant merger, Nextar and Tegna, which is a£6.2 billion merger, would make an absolutely massive company.

3:16And there was a sense that if they didn't do this at that point, they might jeopardise their merger, upset the president. And so they preempted any criticism of the show by taking Kimmel off the air for what they said was an indefinite period of time. And what was so striking about it was that the head of the Federal Communications Commission, which is, as you say, Emily, the same as Ofcom in Britain, is that this Trump appointed head also threatened that they could lose their broadcast licence if they kept Kimmel in position. So it was like Melanie Dawes saying to... I love Melanie. She'll be so happy that she's got a double name check on the USA version.

4:02Someone who has been politically appointed, actually, Melanie Dawes is not a great example, but someone politically appointed is there announcing who you can have as your presenters. Otherwise, you lose your license. That is not a free country. And what was striking in the reaction to what Kimmel said was that it split the MAGA community with some people saying, hang on, whoa, this is mafiosi stuff. That's what Senator Ted Cruz said in the manner in which it was done. And there were a variety of... The phrase that Brendan Carr, the regulator, used was, we can do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way.

4:40The kind of stuff that you don't normally say out loud if you are a mafia boss threatening somebody, but he did. If you want to wake up swimming with the fishes, if you want to wake up with the horse head... Now you do sound like Ted Cruz. If you want to wake up with the horse head next to you in the bed, this is what you do. It was some of that. And I think that, frankly, it kind of went too far, too fast. And so Kimmel came back on the air last night and it was a question of how he was going to address the issue of had he gone too far and where free speech's lines are. I thought it was an artful and clarion call for free speech, but also a recognition that he'd got some of it wrong in terms of the way it left people feeling in terms of his response to Charlie Kirk's murder.

5:26I don't think what I have to say is going to make much of a difference. If you like me, you like me. If you don't, you don't. I have no illusions about changing anyone's mind. But I do want to make something clear because it's important to me as a human. And that is, you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.

5:49I don't think there's anything funny about it. I posted a message on Instagram on the day he was killed, sending love to his family. and asking for compassion. And I meant it, and I still do. Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual. That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make. But I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you're upset. If the situation was reversed, there's a good chance I'd have felt the same way.

6:23I have many friends and family members on the other side who I love and remain close to, even though we don't agree on politics at all. I don't think the murderer who shot Charlie Kirk represents anyone. This was a sick person who believed violence was a solution, and it isn't. I think Jimmy Kimmel could not have done that any other way, frankly, because once the show was cancelled, he was completely silent. We didn't hear from him for the best part of a week. He didn't go on the airwaves to rage. He didn't start criticizing Trump. He didn't even kind of re-qualify what he was trying to say. What we understand was there were discussions behind the scenes.

7:06And there was a deep discomfort, I think, at the top of Disney with Bob Iger, who suddenly saw his name on these placards, protests, you know, what are you doing, curtailing free speech. Iger didn't want to be out in the limelight like that. There were people, we understand, cancelling their subscriptions. One of the jokes that Kimmel made was when he said, I'm going to read this little statement from Disney. He's like, this is how you resubscribe. So clearly Disney felt that it was kind of getting on the wrong side of its viewers, of its subscribers. And also a lot of actors and artists. And a lot, exactly.

7:39I mean, I suppose that there are two points here. Kimmel goes back on air and he has to get this emotional kind of tone right, because at the heart of, I guess, the whole story is the murder of Charlie Kirk. He pays tributes to Erica Kirk, the widow, and he actually talks from a sort of position of unity. And you can hear his voice breaking there. And I think it's pretty strongly felt. But then he importantly turns a corner. And this is where he starts to embody what feels like the beginning of a resistance movement. And I don't mean that it's the beginning. Of course, There are people, there is probably half of America who have been feeling deeply uncomfortable with everything that has been going on with the Trump administration for the last few weeks, if not months.

8:27But suddenly you can feel the kind of space in the room. You can feel the sense that the audience are just dying to hear some central figure or figurehead bring them together and say, yeah, we're not going to stand for this. You know, you are not going to shut down satire, comedy, free speech just because you, President Trump, feel a little bit hurt. And I think that Jimmy Kimmel, you know, there was a kind of we were talking about it yesterday of would he kind of pull back or would it be a kind of a more muted Jimmy Kimmel that would come out? And the jokes would be a bit kind of lamer and weaker and wouldn't have the same sort of cutting edge.

9:09Not a bit of it. He went after Trump in no uncertain terms, and it's worth listening to. And I am a tiny part of the Disney Corporation. They welcomed me back on the air, and I thank them for that. Because I know that unfortunately, and I think unjustly, this puts them at risk. The President of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can't take a joke. He can't take a joke. And I just wonder, to your point, Emily, that you're making a moment ago, this is some kind of uprising.

9:54I mean, is this some kind of turning point for the last six months of the Trump presidency? Everyone has been, oh, my God, he's coming for us. Retreat, retreat, retreat and you know whether it be congress and the rights of congress whether it be the supreme court which seems to be giving a rubber stamp to more or less everything that donald trump wants whether it's corporate america doing whatever donald trump wants here we have this comedian who said no enough and it seems that disney have backed him and i do wonder whether this i mean maybe i'm exaggerating the significance of this and maybe in the heat of the moment of what has happened with Kimmel, that we're exaggerating its importance.

10:33But I do wonder whether this represents something of a turning point where people say, yeah, we can say no. We can actually fight back. We can actually counter some of this. We don't have to lie down in the road and be run over by the tank. I think it's very different when you have that sense of a late night theatre, an audience that is ready to whoop and cheer. And you get the sense, as you sometimes do at a campaign rally, that everyone is feeling this when actually you're dealing with the people in the room. I do think what was different this time, noticeably from other people who've lost their jobs or faced losing their jobs, like Stephen Colbert, is all the other late night hosts came out in support.

11:21It was like the penny had dropped, You know, you can tell us it's about ratings for one. You can tell us it's about crossing a line for another. You can tell us it's about a change in television viewing habits. But once it becomes part of a pattern, the penny drops. If he's come for me, he's coming for you. And I think there was much more of a concerted movement this time round amongst all those who suddenly realised that, you know, we now have Kimmel, Colbert. We've had, as you say, you know, the fines against the journalists at ABC, the fines against the journalists at CBS, the lawsuit against, you know, the Wall Street Journal, another lawsuit looming against New York Times.

12:02And I think there is a moment where they all just came out together and went, OK, you know, well, I think the ambiguity is gone here. We realise what's happening, not least because Brendan Carr had made it so explicit and not least because Trump himself is furious. I'll just read you this truth post tweeted thing, which is Trump saying, I can't believe ABC fake news gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his show was cancelled. Something happened between then and now because his audience is gone. His talent was never there. Why would they want somebody back who does so poorly?

12:39Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he puts the network in jeopardy by playing 99 % positive Democrat garbage. So here you have Trump who cannot stop his hurty feelings from coming out in public. He's not pretending he didn't want it cancelled. He's not pretending it wasn't because he finds Jimmy Kimmel offensive. You know, I think the whole chimera of defending free speech in the Trump age is absolutely washed away now. It is in the gutter, down the sewer. You know, let's not even pretend he cares about that. He cares about people not hurting his feelings, as Kimmel said. And he doesn't really mind if everyone knows that he, as an emperor, tried to order it off air, but it came back on it.

13:26But also that phrase that you just read out, Emily. Yeah. It puts the network in jeopardy. Yeah, exactly. The menace, the threat is back because Trump has lost. And so, you know, that's why I do think... I mean, we should say to that point that there are still many subsidiaries of ABC who decided not to show the Kimmel show. In other words, they kind of stayed on the side of whatever the business deal looks like, the Nextar deal looks like, the regulator, and they didn't put him on air there. obviously everyone will see the clip anyway because it's all over America it's all over the world but there is now a split between the people who still think that they want to stay on the right side of Trump and the people who've kind of gone where's our backbone yes and I think that those affiliates who kept it off the air I wonder how they're feeling today given the acclaim that it's been met by given by how widely the clip has traveled and you've denied your subscribers the chance to listen to it.

14:23So I kind of think that they have made a big call. But you're right when you talk about the threat to the press as well. And that was something else that I thought was interesting that Kimmel addressed last night. And it follows this edict given by the Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, about journalists working at the Pentagon. And it's not just comedy. He's gunning for our journalists too. He's suing them. He's bullying them over the weekend. His foxy friend Pete Hegseth announced a new policy that requires journalists with Pentagon press credentials to sign a pledge promising not to report information that hasn't been explicitly authorized for release.

15:05That includes unclassified information. They want to pick and choose what the news is. I know that's not as interesting as muzzling a comedian, but it's so important to have a free press. And it is nuts that we aren't paying more attention to it. And to that point, back to Trump's Tweety thing on Truth Social. The last line is, 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 dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers. let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his bad ratings. In other words, the threat is back. I mean, Trump is not cowed by being exposed as somebody who is trying to muzzle the press or the comedians.

15:54He's like, well, yeah, I just hope I win this one. I'm going to win again. And we were joking about the kind of mafiosi references, but Kimmel played the ultimate Trump card on this when he brought onto the show the mafiosi boss actor himself, Robert De Niro. Speech, it ain't free no more. What? It's a free no more? Yeah, we're charging by the word now. You're charging by the word? How much are you charging? It depends on what you want to say. Like you want to say something nice about the president's beautiful, thick yellow hair or how he can do his makeup better than any broad. That's free. OK.

16:32All right.

16:38But if you want to do a joke like he's so fat, he needs two seats on the Epstein jet.

16:46So I think the stuff about the press and what you can say and what you can't say, the idea that the Pentagon is more or less checking your copy before you file it to see whether it meets their approval is just not what journalists do. You know, I've been in the White House as an accredited correspondent. I've been in Downing Street as a accredited correspondent. The idea that we have to make sure that we would lose our credentials if someone spoke to us off the record and told us anything interesting. What they are saying is you only publish what we want you to publish. I'm sorry, that is advertising.

17:23That is not journalism. But that is where Donald Trump wants to take it now. Yeah, and I think the thing that the administration's forgotten is that America still has, I'm going to say this cautiously, probably the best scriptwriters in the world. And they will tie him in knots with this stuff because every time he shows how hurt he is by a comedian, how hurt he is by a joke, how hurt he is by satire, they will just come back and do it again. And in a moment, we'll be speaking to Congressman Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia who's on the House Judiciary Committee. And we're going to be talking to him about the limits of free speech in America right now.

18:16The News Agents USA. We're joined now by Congressman Hank Johnson. He represents Georgia's 4th District and is a ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee. And we have heard so much from this administration about free speech and even kind of lecturing Britain on free speech and where it's falling short. And yet we had the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel and now his return. What does this all signify? For the last eight months, this country, the United States of America, has spiraled towards dictatorship and authoritarianism and indeed fascism. And we have experienced unprecedented corruption.

19:04We have seen an undermining and an ignoring of the rule of law. We've seen the Department of Justice turned on Trump's political enemies, while at the same time, personal liberties like freedom of speech we have seen being eroded. And the Jimmy Kimmel situation with his show was just the latest example of that right-wing shift that is very dangerous and people here in America are fighting back against it. And that's why you had the return of Jimmy Kimmel after his show had been suspended indefinitely. That had the markings of that show never coming back. That was the initial plan for the network, ABC, to bow down and adhere to what President Trump wanted, which was for Jimmy Fallon to be punished and to not be brought back onto the air.

20:05And that would send a message to others that they should never be so bold as to to criticise anything that this administration does. But that did not work. Congressman, I think the surprising thing for many of us was not that Jimmy Kimmel found his show cancelled, but that it was reinstated. Where do you think that pressure came from? What do you think the shift was that made Disney think twice about getting back on air? Well, when people started cancelling their memberships or their subscriptions to Disney-related entities, because ABC is owned by a conglomerate, and that conglomerate, Disney, has its fingers in many enterprises throughout the United States.

20:51And those enterprises began to attract the attention of Americans insofar as boycotting is concerned. So it started to become a costly situation for Disney, the parent company of ABC. And so when the public was agitated about the loss of the First Amendment, insofar as Jimmy Kimmel is concerned, they rose up and there were a lot of protests around America, people out in the streets last weekend to protest this cancellation. But what really hurt was the loss of revenue by the company. And the company saw that that was an unsustainable trajectory that it was on. And so they quickly buckled and brought Jimmy Kimmel back.

21:41And his return last night was triumphant. It was really something to see. I just wonder whether you think this signifies something that maybe a turning point is too strong a way to put it. But that, you know, it wasn't just that there were people cancelling subscriptions. There was a split within the MAGA world about whether this was the right thing to be doing, cancelling a comedian because he makes jokes and pokes fun at the president. And I wonder whether that is kind of maybe showing to Donald Trump the limits of what he can do. Well, I think it was ultimately the American people who forced some of Donald Trump's acolytes to turn against him on this issue.

22:23It just got too hot for them. And some of them conscientiously understand how important the First Amendment right of freedom of speech, our Constitution, First Amendment to that Constitution guarantees freedom of speech in this country. Many MAGA Republicans understand that concept, even if it only goes so far as to cause them to be fearful that their rights could be taken away by the next Democrat who becomes president. Whatever the motivation, we welcome that unity on this particular issue. And I think that it is a watershed moment. It is a opportunity for the American people to stand up together, regardless of ideological leanings, to support that foundational concept of American life, which is freedom of speech.

23:17Jimmy Kimmel was quick to include many of those working in the press, journalists, or the rest of it have also come under Trump's attempts to silence. But one area which has now become even more dark, I guess, is his persecution of political enemies. We've seen him pushing the top law enforcement officials to go after his political adversaries with limited success. But this contradicts exactly what he said he would be doing before he came into office. Yes, and he's doing everything that he said he was going to do. And I think people did not really take him seriously before he got elected. But since he has been in office, he has been very efficient in doing the things that he said that he would do during his campaign.

24:09And these are things that people understand should not be happening in America. And that is the flipping of the justice system towards the political will of the person in charge and using that justice system to get back at perceived political enemies. President Trump has had a lot of people willing to follow him, willing to implement his devious plans, but yet the people in America serving on grand juries, which indict people, have refused to indict Trump political opponents because they see that it's a political persecution. And so people have arisen, and that now has caused some of the people who are in key positions to implement Donald Trump's policies to step aside and resign and refuse to carry out his illegal and unconstitutional edicts.

25:07That's another good sign that we are at a watershed moment here where people are no longer just bowing down and doing what Trump wants them to do. They're actually resisting. Congressman, you use the word fascism in your first answer. And I just wonder whether people might think that's hyperbole, a bit over the top, given, as you say, the democratic checks and balances seem to be working a bit. The grand juries aren't indicting. Some of its most loyal supporters are speaking out against some of the things that he's doing. Yeah, I mean, fascism is what is causing that to happen. And so this right-wing, dictatorial, authoritarian, corrupt move that is trying to consolidate power while depriving the people of their power, that's classic fascism.

25:58But what we are seeing now is people are standing up and fighting back, and doing so with growing unity. And so that's why I believe that the Jimmy Kimmel situation has provided a watershed moment for Americans to come together to show Trump that we're not going to go down this road with you voluntarily. We're going to fight back and we're going to win. But do you think that there is a failure of politics here? That the fight back hasn't come from the Democratic Party? The mobilisation of the people hasn't come from the Democratic Party? It's come from a comedian. He is we, the people. And Democrats do not have control in the two houses of Congress, in the House of Representatives and in the Senate.

26:46Both of those bodies are controlled by MAGA Republicans. And under MAGA Republican leadership, Congress has failed. But Democrats have been speaking out. Democrats have been on the side of the people. And Democrats have been working alongside we the people to bring about the conditions that we're talking about today. And so when Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives, which is likely in the 2026 elections, then you're going to see even more resistance to this move towards authoritarianism that Trump is taking us in the direction of. Congressman Johnson, just as we've been speaking to you, a story is breaking.

27:30I'll assume you haven't seen this, that three people have been shot in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Dallas. This is coming from the acting ICE director. We don't know any more details of this, but I think we understand that the shooter has been found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I wonder what this speaks to or says to you now about the feelings that are running high around immigration or whether you think it is just a totally random, senseless, unrelated killing? Well, I'm hearing the news from you for the first time. I have no way of knowing the intent of the shooter.