462 - Cancelling Kimmel, Fired From Riyadh, & The Prison Housing Market

0:00If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones, and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium. It has offline downloads, so you can watch without Wi-Fi. Background play, so you can lock your phone and it still plays, baby. Oh, and it is completely ad-free. Yes, I said it, ad-free. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime.

0:30Tim Dillon:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Tim Dillon Show. Let's address it out of the gate. Let's talk about the biggest free speech issue right now in the world. Let's tackle it head on. Everyone is talking about it. Everyone wants to know what it means. I was fired from the Riyadh Comedy Festival. It is the most important free speech news. Everybody has a take. Everyone has an opinion. It's inescapable. Go to a lunch. It comes up. You're at a christening. You think you're safe. You're not. Did you hear comedian, podcaster, Tim Dillon fired from Saudi Arabia's first comedy festival? Shocking developments.

1:27Tim Dillon:What does it mean? What does it mean? I'll tell you how it went down. And then we'll address that thing at ABC with Kimmel. I also heard there's an issue there. But my agent called me and told me, first of all, I'll lay out the whole thing. I was supposed to perform in Dubai I mixed up Dubai and I said Abu Dhabi apparently this is a big deal over there this is like a real problem my agent called me and he goes you said on Joe Rogan that you were performing in Abu Dhabi and you're actually performing in Dubai they're cities and they have a rivalry and I go dude who gives a fuck what do I stop I made a mistake this is not a malicious slander It's a mistake.

2:26Tim Dillon:He goes, well, they're very angry and they sent an email that you need to be controlled. I said, well, good luck. Whatever, I don't have to do it. I don't care. And then he called me a few days later and I thought he was going to talk about the Kimmel thing. I thought he was going to talk about the Kimmel thing. But he called me and he said, they heard what you said about them having slaves. and I said, I was being positive about it. I was defending them. He goes, well, I know that. I know you were defending. I said, I was defending them for having slaves. I literally said, slaves are probably hard workers and for the most part, agreeable.

3:15Tim Dillon:But they didn't like that. You can literally support somebody too much. I've learned this. You could actually, by the way, in life this happens. Too many compliments, too much, too much support, and then they turn on you. I was saying that slaves were proud of some of the buildings they built. That's what I was saying. I was saying that if I was a slave, not that I want to be, if I was a slave, and I built a really nice thing, I might say to my slave children, daddy built that. That's what I was saying, that I would have said, hey, daddy built that. When my slave children said, ooh, look at that, I'd say, you know, daddy built that.

4:08Tim Dillon:I was going that angle. Apparently, this got to the people in Saudi Arabia and they were unhappy about it. They're huge fans of comedy, over there. Now, I am very clear about the way I will do a gig. If I accept a gig, I am not going to break the rules of the gig, meaning Amish people call me. They go, Tim, we're going to pay you a lot of money. We want you to perform in the Amish, Pennsylvania, Dutch country, but we're Amish so we don't want to hear about iPhones or Calci which they should hear about it's phenomenal this Calci we'll get to it later but if that was a rule I would respect it while I'm there while I'm in Pennsylvania Dutch country eating shoo fly pie respecting their culture you have a culture you've got Sharia law would I like Shreelah?

5:12Tim Dillon:no I don't want it actually I don't want it I'm good but you have it so I don't it's not like I have bits in my act about the prophet anyway so I certainly wasn't going to show up in your country and insult the people that are paying me the money one it's illegal so I wasn't really planning to go to a Saudi jail but on my own show in my own country where I have the freedom to speak and say the things I want, I'm going to be funny and I'm going to be who I am. And if you're not buying that, you don't have the right to tell me on my own show. People were coming up to me saying, why would you go to that country?

6:00Tim Dillon:They have slaves. In Tribeca, they're assaulting me, these people. I'm just leaving a lunch and they're coming out. They have slaves, they say. And of course, I addressed it in a funny way and they fired me. And then they told me, they go, my agent, they all call me. You don't have to talk about this, they say. Don't talk about it. Remember when you talked about Joker? I said, what? They go, it hurts you to talk about these things. In what? In what is even left, you bums? the only thing left is what I'm doing nobody what what are you talking about so and what I mean by that is like the business doesn't have any teeth anymore they can't tell me what to do or say they're not even offering anything they're not even offering anything we don't want people thinking you're a problem but they already how do they not think that How could they not think that?

7:10Tim Dillon:A Google of me and a read, a 60-second scroll. You buy me, you buy what I'm going to do. Joker was a bad movie. Why would I lie and say it's good? Everyone thought it was bad in the world. Okay? Every article that came out was like, hey, this thing sucks. What was I supposed to do? By the way, I was in it for a second and I made no money. What loyalty am I supposed to have? And the director was mean to me. So I'm supposed to go out there and talk about how great it is? Well, you're actually just misunderstanding the movie. It's actually really good. The Joker doing dance numbers is good. It's good that it doesn't have a plot.

8:00Tim Dillon:It's actually good. It doesn't work. who the fuck wants to watch that? You know? So, you know, they were like, well, you don't have to tell people that you're not going because, you know, we don't want people thinking you're that person that gets fired. Yeah, whatever, think it. What do I give a fuck? I mean, what? Who cares? I'm going to get fired again. I'm going to get fired again from people that are not even Saudis. I'm going to get fired by people who don't chop hands off. I'm going to get fired by reasonable people. I'm going to get fired by people that don't practice Sharia law. I will be fired by many races and religions.

8:45Tim Dillon:I'm going to be fired by others. This is the most controversial the people who fire me will ever be. Let me relish in this. Let's take this win. The future people that fire me will be good. Mothers and fathers, family people. who probably fire me for a completely rational reason. You know, I just rolled out of bed and I just decided to do something they didn't like and that's completely fine. It is what it is. This is the first time I've been fired by people that actually do really bad things. So let's take this win. Let's take this win. I'm now with Iran Iran's against them I'm with Iran now you've pushed me into the bosom of Iran do you understand that?

9:45Tim Dillon:I'm going to Tehran to do their comedy festival I don't care I'm being pushed into the arms of Iran those types of Muslims what are those ones called? Shia I'm Shia now I was gonna be Sunni I think Saudi is Sunni and Iran is Shia, right? Yes, maybe? I'm Shia now. Shiite, right? Shia. That's what I am now because you've done this to me. You fired me and created a Shia problem. I'm a Shiite problem now, biatch. so who cares by the way I get to keep my agent knows this he knows often if you represent me you're going to get calls that people are unhappy he just thought it would be like the usual suspects the people around this town this dispiriting dump called Los Angeles he thought it was going to be those people at the you know whatever the Riviera Country Club calling me going, we don't really, this guy's like, what is he doing?

11:00Tim Dillon:Why did he have Candace Owens? Why does he open his mouth? What's wrong with him? Why is he dressed up like a Muslim, then a Jew? What's going on? I don't get it. That's the normal calls. He didn't think he was going to get a call from the Middle East. He didn't think I was going to get fired by a theocracy in the Middle East. Neither did I, but I'm with Iran now. That's what happens. This is geopolitics. Do you understand? this is why the Middle East is so effed up because there's no fucking unity. There's no goddamn unity. That's all. So I will be with Iran. I don't know what to tell everyone.

11:41Tim Dillon:Now let's talk about Jimmy Kimmel which by the way I think is much less interesting than what happened to me. But as usual, it's dominated the headlines. Jimmy Kimmel, I don't know Jimmy. I've never met Jimmy. I don't watch his show. My friends know him and really, really like him. As a guy, he's like less annoying in real life than he is on television. This is what I hear from people whom I trust. I think Jimmy was a funny guy. I don't watch what he does now. It's very political. It's very like kind of annoying to most people. Even the people that are in the middle, it's annoying. To people that are apolitical, it's annoying.

12:23Tim Dillon:It's way over the top. Colbert, him, everybody went way over the top. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. He should still be on the air, and I'll get to why. But setting the stage here, they all went way over the top. Johnny Carson said years ago, I'm not political. I'm here to put Americans to bed. These guys went fully the other way. They alienated half the country. It's their right, by the way. It's their right. Is it a great business move? Probably not. Probably not. You know, if you opened the pizzeria, you wouldn't call it like, you know, fuck Trump pizza unless it was like in Portland or something.

12:58Tim Dillon:You know, if you're trying to appeal to a demographic of people that is of many political stripes, but they're not. They've given up on that. That's fine. That's their right. It's their right to politicize their show to a point where it's unwatchable. And by the way, that's anyone's right. Okay? I'm going to play the joke he made. It's a weird joke and it's a not factually correct thing, but here's why I'm going to not only defend it, but I think it is ridiculous to pull this guy off the air. I think it's ridiculous to pretend it was about money. I think it's ridiculous to pretend that it's not a political hit shop.

13:41Tim Dillon:It's a political hit shop and we know it. Was ABC, is it the cash cow it was 10, 20 years? Absolutely not. We know late night TV is dying. We know all of that. That's not why this show got yanked And pretending it is Is an insult to people's intelligence Okay It's an insult to people's intelligence This was a hit Politically motivated it job Okay It's Something that most people who talk for a living Should care about if you talk for a living If you're making money Entertaining people Informing people Whatever it is you think you're doing out there. Anybody who's doing that should care a little bit about this.

14:27Tim Dillon:Let's watch his joke and then let's talk about the fallout. We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger pointing there was grieving. On Friday the White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism. But on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this. My condolences on the law of your friend, Charlie Kirk. May I ask, sir, personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir?

15:04I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. and it's going to be a beauty. Yes. He's at the fourth stage of grief, construction. Demolition. Construction.

15:29Tim Dillon:So, here's the thing. Not a bad, you know, it's a fun joke. The setup to the joke where it's like they're doing everything they can to pretend this guy's not a MAGA guy. Nobody thought this guy was a MAGA guy. People thought he was a far-right internet kid or a far-left internet kid. No one thought he was like a card-carrying member of the MAGA group. So he's presenting the premise is false, whatever. Highlighting Trump's absurd reaction when asked about Charlie Kirk, you start talking about a ballroom. Dude, I mean, it's the president's own words. And then he does, you know, joke about, you know, he's at the fifth stage of grief, fourth stage of grief, construction, whatever.

16:15Tim Dillon:you know it's it's kind of now listen it's it's being it's being done in a climate that's very charged emotionally a guy got shot in the face his wife and kid will watch that for the rest of their life his wife and children the reactions to it some of them were abhorrent some of the reactions to that were including some of the mainstream media obits were wild scoring political points on the guy with a hole in his neck it's insane and it's radicalized a lot of people and I'm not saying that was everybody's reaction but there were people that reacted in a way now by the way again I'll say it again I dressed up like a dead health care CEO and satirized how people feel when someone divisive dies.

17:10Tim Dillon:I'm not against people doing comedy, dark comedy, black comedy, whatever you want to call it. I think that the reactions to the Kirk thing were people that were rationalizing, not in a satirical way, but in a very genuine way, rationalizing this guy getting shot, rationalizing him being killed, going, this is good, more of this, we need this, okay? And if you're on that side where you believe people that you don't like should just get shot in the face, hey, what am I going to do? But it's abhorrent to many people. it's not a bit it's not a joke there is a difference between a guy that's denying life-saving treatment to people who's a health care ceo and the guy sitting on college campuses debating kids i don't care what you think about his views there is a substantive difference between those two people and i wasn't for the health care guy getting shot in the head i'm not for random people getting shot in the head.

18:27Tim Dillon:I'd gladly pay higher taxes if people got healthcare. They never seem to. Taxes go up and they never seem to get that. But there is a substantive difference. And the idea that like people watched this whole thing and some of the reactions were so beyond the pale, it's going to be hard to get those people to care about what's happening to Kimmel. It is. This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and nonstop action.

19:09The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just$200 down at BKFSEA.com. Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Cullen. BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN.

19:48Sign up now at DAZN.com.

19:50Tim Dillon:People just want scalps. That's what they want. No one in this country has any interest in a bipartisan standard where people agree that they're going to be bothered. America's about being bothered all the time by people you don't like. people in this country are going to make a lot of money saying things you don't like you may be listening to one of them right now that is annoying people don't like that they're never going to like it it'll never be it'll never be satisfying to hear someone you don't agree with say things you don't like and get paid lots of money to do it. But that's part of the deal.

20:51Tim Dillon:It's part of the reality of living in America. Nobody likes this. You either turn it off or you hate watch it or you project onto this person things that you believe they are. Maybe you're right. Who knows? But you can't, you can't think it's a great idea that the FCC, the chairman of the FCC, goes on a podcast and goes, we could do it the easy way or the hard way. We could think about revoking broadcast licenses and then pressures affiliates to drop this show because this guy said something the president of the United States doesn't like. The president of the United States then also follows it up by going, hey, Seth Meyers, you know, Fallon, Seth Meyers, you're next.

21:43You know?

21:45Tim Dillon:You're next. Do we have the FCC? See if we can find the video of Carr. I forget his first name. Yeah, going and talking about this. Okay, let's listen to this. there's actions that we can take on licensed broadcasters and frankly i think that it's it's really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on comcast and disney and say listen we are going to preempt we are not going to run kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we we licensed broadcaster are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the fcc if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.

22:27So I think, again, Disney needs to see some change here. But the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it's time for them to step up and say this garbage, to the extent that that's what comes down the pipe in the future, isn't something that we think serves the needs of our local communities. But this sort of status quo is obviously not accepted. They're building

22:49Tim Dillon:China. It's what they're building. It's why all of the tech people decided they were Republicans. It's why all of the contracts are going to build AI models that look at speech that they don't like from students that attend the protest. They're building China, and they don't want you to notice. And if they can weaponize politics so that you stop caring, they can transform America into something that's kind of unrecognizable. This isn't without precedent. During the 2020s, lunatics ran through a lot of the institutions in America, from the media to the universities, demanding that people they disagreed with be fired.

23:47Tim Dillon:They demanded those people be deplatformed. They demanded those people be made, you know, into sacrifices publicly. Those people, they wanted those people to be broke. They wanted those people's families to be targeted and harassed. And we watched this in the 2020s. And it was disturbing to me. I remember the Covington kids, that grimacing little kid was standing there and the Native Americans beating the drum in his face. And then celebrities, people I know, were calling for the doxing of that literal child and his family, who then upon further reflection, didn't do anything wrong. This is a human impulse.

24:39Tim Dillon:It's a human impulse to get whipped up into a frenzy and join a mob and run around with pitchforks and proclaim that you are morally superior to other people. This is something human beings enjoy doing. There's not that many things that get people off. You know, this is one of them. going and picking up a pitchfork and running down the street with the mob is something that people get great enjoyment out of. It's fun. They like it. They like tearing people limb from limb. And the problem with that is that it doesn't end. See, it doesn't end. The left does it to the right. The right does it to the left.

25:32Tim Dillon:And then eventually the government decides that people hate each other in this country enough that the government can then chop this thing up, sell it for parts. While you all hate each other and fight each other, they can hand the country over to oligarchs. Many of them are friends. They all have dinner in Washington, D.C. they're all talking about how they reach out to people in the media, people like me, you know, they reach out to everybody and they tell you that it's going to be good, that they are the guardians of free speech. They care about your ability to say things that ruffle feathers.

26:24Tim Dillon:They're with you. And they're actors. And behind them are very wealthy people, some of whom you know, many of whom you don't, by the way. And I don't. And we could look them up and have trouble finding them. Not in some crazy conspiracy Knights Templar way, but in the genuine way of like many of the people who have huge ownership stakes in companies are not public figures. They exist on the periphery. They have large sums of money and they're pretty quiet about it, but they funnel that money into places and they strangle industries. And all these people want to merge. They want to do mergers with their companies.

27:20Tim Dillon:They want to monopolize industries. they want government money and they want government grants so they shut up and they don't say anything about kind of this encroaching you know autocratic system and it doesn't come from any one angle you know all these people think well it'll just it'll just I don't care I'm people go I'm from the right it'll come from the you know come from the right it'll silence everyone I don't like and which you shouldn't want anyway but it will never work like that because what is left and what is right isn't fixed it's changing it's changing three years ago the right wing solidly supported israel right now they don't three years ago it was unthinkable for a majority of the right to have turned against america's funding of israel now you are seeing people under 40 on the left and the right agreeing that america should not be funding whatever the hell Israel's doing.

28:18Tim Dillon:You know, building, you know, Las Vegas and the Gaza Strip. Nobody's in for that. Nobody's in for that. When the Israeli finance minister comes out and goes, hey, we spent a lot of money on the war. We got to get paid back a little bit. We're doing a real estate project. It's on Trump's desk. It's all fine. People under 40 are going, hey, man, I don't, I can't own a house. I can't pay back my student loans. Why are my tax dollars funding? you guys going and building Miami in Gaza. Who's that for? Who's that for? And why are people funding it? You know, if you work at a 7-Eleven for 12 hours a day on your feet, dealing with every drunk who walks in, grabbing, you know, they want a pack of cigarettes, they want this, they want a hot dog, they want, you know, you got protein bar, whatever and you do that job which is not an easy job whatever job you do but think about that and you're getting paid whatever i don't know what 7-eleven pays but let's imagine it's not ideal your tax dollars are going so that real estate developers can build luxury condos with like floating bathtubs in Gaza.

29:40Tim Dillon:There's no way anyone elected Trump for this. There's zero possibility that people elected Donald Trump so that their tax dollars could go to luxury real estate development in Gaza or in Qatar. There's zero way that any of this... Take a look at that. To be fair, it does look nice. to be fair. It's a little bit of an AI rendering. But nobody elected him for that. And now if you criticize that, they'll take your visa if you're a foreign student. They'll just shut you down. So shut the fuck up, get out of here. You know? So Kimmel was losing money for ABC, maybe. I don't know. I heard he wasn't.

30:32Tim Dillon:I heard he wasn't making a lot of money, but I heard he wasn't losing it. But by the way, whether he was or he wasn't who cares he was losing it last week and he wasn't off the air it's directly related to that joke the FCC commissioner said it I don't think it was a particularly good thing for Jimmy Kimmel to say this guy was MAGA he wasn't MAGA by the way it's easily correctable you can correct the record without destroying someone's ability to speak This is something that, you know, you try to die on the hill of this. Now, the only thing left in this country, unfortunately, seems to be power.

31:14Tim Dillon:Everybody thinking that Jimmy Kimmel being removed and indefinitely suspended from ABC means that you are winning, you're a fool. Your tax dollars are going to build casinos in Gaza. Plaza, you're not winning. This is not what winning looks like, by the way. Kimmel had planned to address Carr's comments on his show Wednesday night, according to people familiar with the matter. Before his on-air appearance, Dana Walden, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, spoke to the host about his plan. The people said, after the conversation between Kimmel and Walden, she and other senior executives thought that the Stars' approach could make the situation worse.