Speaker 1: Hello there, I'm Chuck Todd. This is a bit of
Speaker 1: a special little update. I guess we could call it
Speaker 1: an addendum to the most recent episode of the Chuck Toodcast.
Speaker 1: When I taped, we had not learned of the of
Speaker 1: what was going on between the FCC, Disney, Jimmy Kimmel
Speaker 1: Next Star, and everything that's going on, and I think
Speaker 1: the I just wanted to give it some context. I'll
Speaker 1: be honest, I I I I go back and forth
Speaker 1: about how much we should be focusing on the media
Speaker 1: problems in this country and the and the and the
Speaker 1: larger issue of that versus our political problems and our
Speaker 1: political divide. But the fact is that they're all intertwined now.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to put some context around why because
Speaker 1: I've I've even had questions of members of my own
Speaker 1: family sort of like, wait a minute, why is what
Speaker 1: is you know? I'll just answer this basic question. You know,
Speaker 1: Disney can decide whether or not they want Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 1: What's you know? How? And I think this what makes
Speaker 1: why so many folks are up in arms. Right. It's
Speaker 1: not just folks on the left, but civil libertarians frankly
Speaker 1: across the spectrum are so alarmed by this. It's the
Speaker 1: sequence of events on how this is done. Because I'm
Speaker 1: going to make a confession, I didn't hear anything that
Speaker 1: Late Night did on Monday Night about Charlie Kirk because
Speaker 1: I wasn't seeking it out. I wasn't interested. Don't I
Speaker 1: don't have the same I see clips of late nights,
Speaker 1: you know, this is part of the economics of late night. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm just like most too many other people for the
Speaker 1: economics of late night, I just wait for the clips
Speaker 1: the next morning. When we started this back in the
Speaker 1: old days of the hotline Wait, we became Washington source
Speaker 1: for Hey, tell me the best jokes that were on
Speaker 1: late night TV. And so the idea of just clipping
Speaker 1: and and just having the political stuff from the late
Speaker 1: night comedians as an easy to digest morning you know
Speaker 1: newsletter is something that that is is quite common. So
Speaker 1: when I I was not following the day to day,
Speaker 1: was not following what Carr was doing, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, there's this breaking news alert about Jimmy
Speaker 1: Kimmel's off the air. So I was like, Wow, how
Speaker 1: bad was the joke that he told about Charlie Kirk? Right.
Speaker 1: So you go back and you think, well, he must
Speaker 1: did he use Charlie Kirk as a punchline? Did he
Speaker 1: what could he have said? And then you actually saw
Speaker 1: what he said and you're like, wait, what he got
Speaker 1: booted off the air for this? You know, because when
Speaker 1: the FCC gets involved, you assume did he say something indecent?
Speaker 1: Did he use a four letter word? Did he expose himself? Right?
Speaker 1: Like you know, ultimately the FCC's role is about you know,
Speaker 1: public decency, right, And in this remark, other than look,
Speaker 1: I didn't love his remark, and I'll tell you why.
Speaker 1: I don't like what's happening right now. There's this contest
Speaker 1: between the left and the right to prove that the
Speaker 1: other side's ideology incites more violence. That's not the problem
Speaker 1: we have here. It doesn't matter whether it's sixty thirty
Speaker 1: on one end or the other. The thirty can cause
Speaker 1: just as much violence as the sixty and vice versa. Right,
Speaker 1: and everybody is so worked up in the sort of
Speaker 1: part and the partisan corners of wanting to prove it's
Speaker 1: the other side that incites more violence, not my side.
Speaker 1: That's not the issue. So I'm sorry he gave voice
Speaker 1: to that concept, but that's not the issue here, right,
Speaker 1: And you've heard me. I wish we would just be hey,
Speaker 1: we've got a political violence problem. We've let this get
Speaker 1: too far. Let's identify the actual problematic source, which of
Speaker 1: course we know is these algorithms and what we've done
Speaker 1: to political discourse in this country through social media. But
Speaker 1: it's the sequence of events here that make this a
Speaker 1: violation of the Constitution. Okay, And you've got to remember
Speaker 1: what the first The first Amendment is about protecting the
Speaker 1: people from government influence. So the second that Brendan Carr
Speaker 1: went on a podcast and essentially threatened, you know, like
Speaker 1: a mob boss, that's a mighty fine network you got there, Disney,
Speaker 1: That's a mighty fine merger you'd like to get completed there.
Speaker 1: Next star, that was coercion. That was government influence. That
Speaker 1: was an unconstitutional threat from Brendan Carr, the FCC chair.
Speaker 1: And I want to read all of his quotes here
Speaker 1: because it's fascinating how delusional this guy is about his
Speaker 1: role as SEC chair. And there's also a ton of
Speaker 1: hypocrisy in what he's saying in here. But I want
Speaker 1: to get through the larger quote. Look, everybody has seen
Speaker 1: the quote, we can do this the easy way or
Speaker 1: the hard way. But I think his larger context matters here.
Speaker 1: So he said to this sort of one of these
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists on the right in some quarters, there's a
Speaker 1: very concerted effort to try to lie to the American
Speaker 1: people about the nature of one of the most significant
Speaker 1: newsworthy public interest acts that we've seen in a long time,
Speaker 1: and what appears to be an action by Jimmy Kimmel
Speaker 1: to play into that narrative that this was somehow a
Speaker 1: mega or Republican motivated person, so that in itself, so
Speaker 1: basically what he is admitting here is that Jimmy kimmel
Speaker 1: sin is insulting MAGA. Jimmy Kimmel's sin had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with Charlie Kirk. This was and this is why
Speaker 1: this is alarming so many civil libertarians. He didn't like
Speaker 1: it that MAGA was criticized. You may not like the
Speaker 1: criticism right twenty nineteen, Brendan Carr, by the way, would
Speaker 1: also be upset. We've all seen his if you've been
Speaker 1: paying attention to the story. Brendan Carr in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: is having a huge debate with Brendan Carr twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: We'll find out who wins that debate. And then he
Speaker 1: says this, I've been very clear from the moment that
Speaker 1: I became chairman of the FCC. I want to reinvigorate
Speaker 1: the public interest. Broadcasters are entirely different from people that
Speaker 1: use other forms of communication. They have a license granted
Speaker 1: by us at the FCC, and that comes with an
Speaker 1: obligation to operate in the public interest. He is factually
Speaker 1: correct on that, and then he goes, look, we can
Speaker 1: do this the easy way or the hard way. These
Speaker 1: companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action
Speaker 1: frankly on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work
Speaker 1: for the FCC ahead. This is a very very serious
Speaker 1: issue right now for Disney. So he says that next
Speaker 1: Star affiliates announce what they announced, those ABC affiliates that
Speaker 1: they're not going to carry Jimmy Kimmel, and then of
Speaker 1: course it puts pressure on Disney. Now this is a
Speaker 1: reminder of the children's book that I cite all the
Speaker 1: time when it comes to capitulation to this administration on
Speaker 1: so many things that are where the laws on the
Speaker 1: side of these entities, and yet they don't want to
Speaker 1: use the law. And that is if you give a
Speaker 1: mouse a cookie. The second Disney paid the extortion price
Speaker 1: on the George Stephanopolis lawsuit, they opened themselves to more coercion. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, the second you sort of give into the bully,
Speaker 1: the second you agree to pay, you know, to pay
Speaker 1: a ransom. Right, Disney was being held hostage by Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and so they paid a ransom on the on that
Speaker 1: with with Stephanopolis, and they came back and decided they
Speaker 1: had more that more that they wanted to get. Right.
Speaker 1: So next Star is doing this huge merger with Tegna.
Speaker 1: Tegna used to be it's just a renamed version. It
Speaker 1: used to be the Gannett TV station. So this is
Speaker 1: going to create the largest owner of local TV affiliates, who,
Speaker 1: of course affiliate. When I see the affiliate network, some
Speaker 1: of you may be like, what the hell are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Right, if you're under the age of thirty five,
Speaker 1: you're like, what is this? But ABC, NBC, CBS, and
Speaker 1: Fox the broadcast, not Fox News the cable channel. They
Speaker 1: have local TVs over the air TV stations that they
Speaker 1: have relationships with. And it used to be the networks
Speaker 1: themselves owned a lion's share of this, and then over time,
Speaker 1: due to some FCC rules, there were these used to
Speaker 1: be local people in the area would own the local
Speaker 1: TV station and then have personal and have affiliations with
Speaker 1: the big national broadcast networks, and then you had this consolidation, right,
Speaker 1: and next Star is one of these consolidated organizations. Techne
Speaker 1: itself was a consolid and this merger is going to
Speaker 1: be even bigger. It needs FCC approval, right, and it's
Speaker 1: a big deal to next Start to get this FCC approval,
Speaker 1: So it is not lost shouldn't be lost on anybody
Speaker 1: that the minute this has heard, you know, Next Start
Speaker 1: literally coming up has had you know, knows its merger
Speaker 1: with Tegna is going to get a review by the FCC.
Speaker 1: Disney is already agreed to buy out NFL's television all
Speaker 1: of it's the NFL's media properties, which is going to
Speaker 1: consolidate ESPN and the NFL network into one thing. And
Speaker 1: that's something else that the FCC has oversight over. And
Speaker 1: so you know, this is in a way that a
Speaker 1: mobster might say, that's a mighty that's a mighty nice
Speaker 1: television network. You might have there. This is a very
Speaker 1: serious issue right now for Disney. He didn't say it
Speaker 1: was an issue for ABC Entertainment, which is who Jimmy
Speaker 1: Kimmel works for, not even work for ABC News. He
Speaker 1: said it was an issue for Disney. Well, that means
Speaker 1: you're going after the corporation. And then of course they
Speaker 1: have shareholders and they have a phidio shared responsibility shareholders.
Speaker 1: So this is why there is so much alarm because
Speaker 1: they already if Brendan Carr never does this interview, never
Speaker 1: goes public with any of this, right, he ended up,
Speaker 1: this is a self owned by Brendan Carr. Right, this
Speaker 1: is where where the where If he doesn't do this
Speaker 1: interview and he behind the scenes exerts this basically reminds
Speaker 1: Next Star in Disney that they need their approval and
Speaker 1: they didn't like what Jimmy Kimmel said. So you might
Speaker 1: want to do something about this if you want to
Speaker 1: curry favor with us. I guess we should be thankful
Speaker 1: he said it out loud. Right, he could have done
Speaker 1: this behind the scenes, we wouldn't know about it. We
Speaker 1: would all be speculating that perhaps Next Star in Disney
Speaker 1: were either anticipating concern about this and decided to act
Speaker 1: Earli or whatever right in the wake of sort of
Speaker 1: a manufactured outrage. As we know, there is a you know,
Speaker 1: jd vance in his in his when he substituted for
Speaker 1: the first show after Charlie Kirk's assassination, he called on
Speaker 1: a fellow travelers to essentially docks people, right, He called
Speaker 1: on them to do this, you know, promoted cancel culture.
Speaker 1: This is the same guy who lectured European nations a
Speaker 1: few months ago for them coming down too hard on speech. So, yes,
Speaker 1: this hypocrisy everywhere in this story, but really a lot
Speaker 1: of hypocrisy here on the right with cancel culture and
Speaker 1: things like that. So but when he put out that
Speaker 1: call for for doxing, you know, it was clear they
Speaker 1: were looking, right, They're looking they were looking for somebody
Speaker 1: to make an example of it. And you know Donald
Speaker 1: Trump himself, right, I mean, this is where the laws
Speaker 1: on their side, right, Trump after after Colbert was fired
Speaker 1: by paramount during you know that whole thing, so they
Speaker 1: could get that merger done, so that Sherry Redstone could
Speaker 1: get her money, Trump himself said, one down Kimmel's next
Speaker 1: lo and behold where do we go? Is it been
Speaker 1: four weeks, five weeks since the Colbert news and lo
Speaker 1: and behold Kimmel's next So look, Kimmel should know that
Speaker 1: the You know, if Kimmel's agent, I would assume told him, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: you oversee something that Disney would love to get rid of,
Speaker 1: So be careful. You know, the smart thing to do
Speaker 1: would have been to avoid that topic altogether. But then again,
Speaker 1: they were going to find something at some point, right
Speaker 1: this was there was no doubt he was going to
Speaker 1: be targeted. There's you know, the president's obsessed with trying
Speaker 1: to silence any of his media critics, and that should
Speaker 1: be what's so alarming here is that they're using the
Speaker 1: power of the state. Right. You know what Jimmy Kimmel
Speaker 1: didn't do. He didn't call for the execution, for the
Speaker 1: lethal injection of homeless people. That would have been a
Speaker 1: really disturbing thing that happened on cable news. So in theory,
Speaker 1: the FCC doesn't have oversight over that, but it was
Speaker 1: certainly in bad taste. He apologized for I guess saying
Speaker 1: for apologize for people noticing that he said something outlandish.
Speaker 1: That's what the apology felt like rather than realizing what
Speaker 1: he said was just awful and hateful, but the fact
Speaker 1: that it was instinctual on that, you know, Fox News
Speaker 1: has a choice if that's who they want representing them,
Speaker 1: go for it. Right, They're a private enterprise and they
Speaker 1: can go ahead and do that. But that was an
Speaker 1: extraordinary bad taste. I didn't hear anybody on the right
Speaker 1: get upset about that, And of course Kimmel didn't do
Speaker 1: anything that was remotely like that. Again, Kimmel sin was
Speaker 1: criticizing Mega. He did not disparage Charlie Kirk. He did
Speaker 1: not disparage Charlie Kirk's family. He's in fact on the
Speaker 1: record offering condolences. What he did was go after Maga.
Speaker 1: And again, like, I think this is bad politics for
Speaker 1: everybody to try to blame the other side for political violence,
Speaker 1: because we're going to not only not do anything about
Speaker 1: our political violence problem, but it's likely to incite more violence.
Speaker 1: And there's a part of me that wonders if that's
Speaker 1: a feature not a bug, if this is exactly what
Speaker 1: Stephen Miller and Brendan Carr hoping, like they want to
Speaker 1: poke and get more reaction so they can come down
Speaker 1: even harder on more institutions. And that is that is
Speaker 1: chilling on all this front. And we've seen now all
Speaker 1: these corporate don't look here's my I'm begging these corporations
Speaker 1: that are publicly traded that own news organizations. Just sell them, Please,
Speaker 1: just sell them. Do not do not stop this. You
Speaker 1: are you are destroying the information ecosystem. You are participating
Speaker 1: in this. You are you are undermining your own employees.
Speaker 1: This is not fair. Look what happened to John Carl
Speaker 1: earlier this week when when when the President threatened him
Speaker 1: and ABC News nobody backed him up. I didn't see
Speaker 1: Disney trying to push back on that, and there was
Speaker 1: nothing illegitimate about that question. In fact, in many cases,
Speaker 1: you know, if it is, it's not worth his time.
Speaker 1: But John Carl could be suing the President for defamation.
Speaker 1: Right if if, if, if you accept the premise of
Speaker 1: Trump's lawsuit against the New York Times, then we all
Speaker 1: then there's a bunch of us who have been defamed
Speaker 1: by Donald Trump over the years via his Truth for
Speaker 1: Truth social organization, which he's an owner of. Right, it
Speaker 1: makes him responsible. It's not he's not a public figure.
Speaker 1: He's a public figure. In addition to be an owner
Speaker 1: of a platform that he uses to disparage with malice, right,
Speaker 1: with malicious intent, which is always part of those things. Now,
Speaker 1: are they extraordinarily hard to prove? And as a journalist,
Speaker 1: as somebody like John Carr gooing, hey man, I can
Speaker 1: take the arrows, of course he is. But if you're
Speaker 1: if you own a news organization and you're a publicly
Speaker 1: traded company and you're not going to stand up for
Speaker 1: your journalists, don't get can get out of the journalism business.
Speaker 1: Just put ABC News up for sale. Put put up
Speaker 1: all these news divisions up for sale, because you're undermining
Speaker 1: the credibility you think they've been. Their credibility has been
Speaker 1: undermined already by this concerted effort on the right to
Speaker 1: undermine the credibility of these news organizations fairly or unfairly. Well,
Speaker 1: what you're doing is actually undermining them for everybody. Right,
Speaker 1: So nobody is going to trust CBS News because of
Speaker 1: what they've done. Look, the guy they hired to be
Speaker 1: an umbudsman would be a good hire if you were
Speaker 1: just hiring a conservative umbudsman and a liberal umbudsman, if
Speaker 1: you were hiring somebody from the Hudson Institute and somebody
Speaker 1: for the Center for American Progress, then I might have
Speaker 1: some faith that CBS was trying to be something different here,
Speaker 1: but that is not what they did, right, They just
Speaker 1: catered to one side of the ouse. So what it
Speaker 1: is going to do? It already doesn't really have credibility
Speaker 1: with the right. Now they've made sure they're not going
Speaker 1: to have any credibility with the people that live in
Speaker 1: the in reality and the people that live in the left.
Speaker 1: So here we all are. So I would just beg,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're not going to stand up for
Speaker 1: your news organizations, the laws on your side in this
Speaker 1: the First Amendment, the laws on your side. If the
Speaker 1: FCC had nixed the merger of Tegna and and and
Speaker 1: next hour over this, or nixed the merger of ESPN
Speaker 1: and the NFL media properties, right, and this was sort
Speaker 1: of a car was going to weaponize his role at
Speaker 1: the FCC. The amount of evidence that Disney and the
Speaker 1: NFL would have to essentially sue and say that this
Speaker 1: was a violation of their kind of the of their
Speaker 1: constitutional rights government, you know, the government's insertion in speech.
Speaker 1: They'd have a case. But what's really scary is that
Speaker 1: they refused to use the law to protect their business
Speaker 1: interests and instead they're capitulating. You know. This is why
Speaker 1: again a lot of US civil libertarians are extraordinarily alarmed
Speaker 1: at how easy it is to control these these entities.
Speaker 1: I personally believe this goes back to the difference between
Speaker 1: you know and Trump one point zero. When he would
Speaker 1: veer into these unconstitutional territories, there were fellow Republicans and
Speaker 1: people in Trump's cabinet who were the guardrails, and when
Speaker 1: they would speak up, corporate America then would actually stiffen
Speaker 1: its spine, you know, sort of the non partisan part
Speaker 1: of the of the nation's sort of cultural and business
Speaker 1: elite would say, whoa, this is too far, and because
Speaker 1: they felt like they had cover because it was coming
Speaker 1: from both sides of the aisle. But Donald Trump has
Speaker 1: purged the party of those Republicans that were comfortable up.
Speaker 1: He's made it clear that if you speak up, I'll
Speaker 1: destroy and end your career, potentially even harm you financially.
Speaker 1: So those that might be speaking out against these this
Speaker 1: government overreach have chosen to not run for reelection if
Speaker 1: they're uncomfortable being members of Trump's political machine, right, and
Speaker 1: so you know, you know who those people are. I
Speaker 1: don't have to I don't have to recite them by
Speaker 1: name right now, but that's what's happened. And then so
Speaker 1: when you've had no Republican pushback, right, then you've had
Speaker 1: all these I think corporate America has been scared away
Speaker 1: from this there's and they know that the government, you know,
Speaker 1: this administration's comfortable weaponizing government against any political anybody that
Speaker 1: they think is standing in their way politically, and so
Speaker 1: they won't stand up because they don't want to look
Speaker 1: if the only people opposing Trump are are you know,
Speaker 1: people like me in the media over these things, or
Speaker 1: folks on the left, if they're the only ones critiquing
Speaker 1: what he's doing, they don't want to look like they're
Speaker 1: just you know, he lumps everybody in as a partisan actor.
Speaker 1: And it gets me to the core of one of
Speaker 1: my biggest sort of and I and I you know,
Speaker 1: to my conservative friends out there who constantly think everything
Speaker 1: that isn't conservative is biased, I would say to you,
Speaker 1: Brendan Carr is a co partisan conservative. He does not
Speaker 1: have the intellectual ability to know what's neutral. He thinks
Speaker 1: anything that isn't conservative is liberal. Right. There's some liberals
Speaker 1: that believe this, that anything that isn't liberal. If you're
Speaker 1: not siding with them, you're part of the right wing machine.
Speaker 1: This is how we've lost our ability to have conversations.
Speaker 1: We've lost our ability to sort of moderate, not in
Speaker 1: saying you have to be moderate, but moderating temperament where
Speaker 1: you realize that the whole point of these you know,
Speaker 1: and ideological left and ideological right and practice politics means
Speaker 1: it's a little bit, you take a little bit of both,
Speaker 1: and whoever's winning, maybe you get seventy percent of the pie.
Speaker 1: They get thirty percent of the pie. When we stop
Speaker 1: viewing politics that way, when we stop governing that way,
Speaker 1: where winning forty nine percent of the vote means I
Speaker 1: get one hundred percent of my way right, which is
Speaker 1: essentially what Donald Trump has done. He did not win
Speaker 1: a majority in this country. Yes, he won the popular
Speaker 1: plurality of the popular vote, but he did not get
Speaker 1: fifty percent. Doesn't even have half the support of the country,
Speaker 1: and he does not govern as if there is a
Speaker 1: robust minority out there that didn't that didn't want that
Speaker 1: point of view. If you want to be a successful president,
Speaker 1: you actually try to govern a little bit for everybody.
Speaker 1: But that isn't what he's looking for. He's looking in
Speaker 1: some cases for revenge or accumulating power. But this is look,
Speaker 1: this is you know, sometimes you have an imperfect moment,
Speaker 1: an imperfect person that ends up being a galvanizing issue
Speaker 1: in the moment. I don't know whether this has long
Speaker 1: term relevance to the mid term elections, for instance, but
Speaker 1: what I will say, you know, and I do worry
Speaker 1: that sometimes these criticisms of that come from US folks
Speaker 1: that are worried about our civil liberties, you know, are
Speaker 1: seen as sort of like a you know, a luxury issue.
Speaker 1: You know about the First Amendment, and it's all about
Speaker 1: the press and all of this stuff. But you'll care
Speaker 1: when it comes for you, right, And how I do
Speaker 1: think this stuff hurts politically long term on the right
Speaker 1: and that they're inviting actually a political loss over this
Speaker 1: over time is that we know people in the middle
Speaker 1: didn't like the cancel culture that was taking place on
Speaker 1: the left, right, this idea, right, you'd hear this all
Speaker 1: the time. You're afraid of you know, you'd have people
Speaker 1: that weren't partisan but would find themselves side with those
Speaker 1: and the right that were complaining that, you know, political
Speaker 1: thought was being weaponized against them, it would cost them
Speaker 1: jobs or cost them opportunities. A lot of people in
Speaker 1: this country don't like that. And now the Republicans are
Speaker 1: doing exactly They're behaving the exact way they said they
Speaker 1: didn't like when they thought the left or other institutions
Speaker 1: were doing this to them. I mean, I will go
Speaker 1: to my grave believing the single biggest mistake we've made
Speaker 1: in the last five years was deplatforming Donald Trump from
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook and the pressure campaign on Jack Dorsey
Speaker 1: and on Zuckerberg when they cave done that. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a it was. It just is a
Speaker 1: monumental mistake, right it That was sort of the moment
Speaker 1: that we stopped even having shared conversation, shared debate. An
Speaker 1: entirely new right wing media ecosystem was created in under
Speaker 1: the guys, an umbrella of grievance, created the situation we're in.
Speaker 1: So you know, I couldn't. I was one of the
Speaker 1: few who said, this is a mistake to not to
Speaker 1: somehow ban anybody that didn't certify the election from TV.
Speaker 1: The fact that so many of my colleagues cave to
Speaker 1: that mindset, did do damage to our trust and did
Speaker 1: do damage the electorate. But if it was wrong, then
Speaker 1: it is wrong now. And that's what's getting lost here. Okay,
Speaker 1: deplatforming half the country, or the perception of de platforming
Speaker 1: half the country was wrong. It is just as wrong
Speaker 1: when those when that aggrieved person decides to go with
Speaker 1: revenge rather than have a principle. Are there any principles
Speaker 1: in this MAGA movement, That's what we're finding out. Are
Speaker 1: there any principles? And when it comes to the First Amendment,
Speaker 1: it's possible that those in power are just drunk with it.
Speaker 1: Stephen Miller and Brendan Carr are drunk with the power
Speaker 1: that they have in the moment, and they have completely
Speaker 1: lost the plot. They do not understand what neutrality even means.
Speaker 1: They do not understand what the role of government. They
Speaker 1: do not understand the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution,
Speaker 1: because if they did, they'd be pursuing different policies, they'd
Speaker 1: be behaving differently. So this is not a left right issue.
Speaker 1: Is is it constitutional or is it unconstitutional? And this
Speaker 1: is an extraordinarily unconstitutional act. This is a weaponizing of
Speaker 1: the government against using using government power to stifle speech.
Speaker 1: It is the first amendment in our constitution or a reason.
Speaker 1: And so when we lose that, this entire experiment begins
Speaker 1: to crumble. So I hope people view it this way.
Speaker 1: Get out of the debate over who's more violent? Okay,
Speaker 1: get out of that debate. That's not a debate anybody wins.
Speaker 1: All right. That's the personal critique I have of what
Speaker 1: Jimmy Kimmel, you know, going on that narrative, that is,
Speaker 1: it's just even it doesn't matter if it's true, it
Speaker 1: it's it's it's only in a moment. We there is
Speaker 1: plenty of evidence that we've got ideological inspired violent actors
Speaker 1: that are on the left and the right. And we
Speaker 1: can have an historical argument over who's got more violent
Speaker 1: violent acts over time, But do you know what neither
Speaker 1: side can say. Neither side can say it's zero. All right,
Speaker 1: get out of that debate and start focusing on constitutional protections,
Speaker 1: because what they did on this is a violation of
Speaker 1: your rights and these single most important rights that our
Speaker 1: founders thought mattered the most because they put it in
Speaker 1: Amendment one. All right, So with that, I'll now see
Speaker 1: you in about seventy two hours. Thanks