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Speaker 3: Hey everybody, Happy Friday.
Speaker 4: Happy Friday.
Speaker 5: I didn't know if you were talking to the audience
Speaker 5: rhetorically or to us, Crystal.
Speaker 2: It could be either both all of the above, you know,
Speaker 2: welcoming people in. Yes, I got us in trouble last Friday,
Speaker 2: So I'm going to try to be more to mure
Speaker 2: this week.
Speaker 6: We're tightening it up. We've got to makeup on. We're
Speaker 6: hair makeup ready.
Speaker 4: That's yes, Yes, a Western bill bumber.
Speaker 7: We're gonna call him down. And and how we objectify
Speaker 7: our nation's assassins.
Speaker 8: And Ryan combed his hair.
Speaker 4: I did he found it looking good?
Speaker 3: Looking good, guys.
Speaker 2: There was a bunch of reaction last night on the
Speaker 2: late night shows to the firing of our indefinite suspension
Speaker 2: of Jimmy Kimmel. I guess it's not clear that he's
Speaker 2: canceled for good, so wanted to get into some of that.
Speaker 2: We got some new Trump comments, We've got updates with
Speaker 2: regard to Israel Netanyahu directly denying that he had anything
Speaker 2: to do with Charlie Kirk's death, and some new information
Speaker 2: brought to light by Candae Owens. A new picture that
Speaker 2: she released that is allegedly of Tyler Robinson hours after
Speaker 2: the killing accur and he's still sort of like hanging
Speaker 2: around in the area at a dairy queen. I don't know,
Speaker 2: we'll probably get to that in the premium section.
Speaker 4: Yeah, really interesting, obviously, really interesting story.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure, And shows him wearing like a combination
Speaker 2: of the outfits that he'd wear worn previously in the
Speaker 2: photos that we've seen, and it's just yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: whether or not the photo is real or not, I
Speaker 2: think is a question in of itself.
Speaker 3: Some people speculate it could be AI.
Speaker 2: We don't have timestamp all of those sorts of things,
Speaker 2: but anyway, we'll bring you all of the latest with
Speaker 2: regard to that investigation.
Speaker 6: Yep, another fast food killer, apparently just like Luigi with
Speaker 6: the McDonald's. So let's start with Trump's comments here about
Speaker 6: Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 8: Why don't we you'll?
Speaker 9: Vice President Vance said the pre speech is under attack
Speaker 9: in the UK. Do you agree with him? And Prime
Speaker 9: Minister we saw dismissal of a very well known chat
Speaker 9: show hosting America last night. Mister Kimmel, is pre speech
Speaker 9: more under attack in Britain or America.
Speaker 10: Well, Jimmy Kimmel was right because he had bad ratings
Speaker 10: more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing
Speaker 10: about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk. And Jimmy
Speaker 10: Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings.
Speaker 10: Have fired him a long time ago. So you know,
Speaker 10: you can call that free speech or not. He was
Speaker 10: fired for lack of talent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we haven't gotten you guys, take at least on
Speaker 2: the air with regard to the indefinite suspension of Kimmel. So, Emily,
Speaker 2: what did you make of all of these developments before
Speaker 2: we get to the president specific comments there.
Speaker 5: You know, I probably am in the position of like
Speaker 5: disagreeing with I'll probably be the one like odd man
Speaker 5: out throughout this conversation because I think with Kimmel the
Speaker 5: timing is is obviously an appearance of conflict of interest,
Speaker 5: and an appearance of conflict of interest is a conflict
Speaker 5: of interest.
Speaker 4: But also my position is that the FCC.
Speaker 5: Either should not exist or this particular power of the
Speaker 5: FCC certainly should not exist. Actually asked Brendan Carr about
Speaker 5: that a couple of months ago, about whether the law
Speaker 5: itself actually needed to be changed, and he said at
Speaker 5: the time, actually, that's probably a conversation that needs to
Speaker 5: be entertained whether the FCC should have any jurisdiction to
Speaker 5: determine what quote public interest is. Because as long as
Speaker 5: that exists, if you're a Trump Republican and you see
Speaker 5: the FCC with this power, and you see corporate media
Speaker 5: going against you for so long, you're going against it
Speaker 5: being like fairly obviously biased in one direction for so long,
Speaker 5: then the tool gets more and more attempting to use.
Speaker 5: And the last thing on that point that I'll say
Speaker 5: is I would not have a problem with the Democratic
Speaker 5: FCC commissioner. If you see NBC News or wherever lying
Speaker 5: our way into another Iraq war, saying we could do
Speaker 5: this the easy way or the hard way. This is
Speaker 5: not in the public interest that you are making up
Speaker 5: intelligence whatever. I would never support them yanking a broadcast license.
Speaker 5: I don't think the job owning is that like significant.
Speaker 5: I do think that the merger question is absolutely significant.
Speaker 5: The next our merger question is absolutely significant. But my
Speaker 5: basic point on this is that I think the corporations
Speaker 5: are opportunistically, opportunistically taking these these dust ups as they're
Speaker 5: like their opportunities. The market was catching up with Kimmel,
Speaker 5: the market was catching up with Colbert. He wasn't turning
Speaker 5: Colbert wasn't turning a profit. I would be shocked if
Speaker 5: Kimmel wasn't losing a decent amount of money. And when
Speaker 5: these things come up, it becomes an opportunity for the
Speaker 5: networks to be like, Hey, we're doing you a favor Trump,
Speaker 5: look what we're doing here. So that's that's kind of
Speaker 5: my take overall, but I'm sure we'll have other disagreements.
Speaker 7: What do you think, Ryan, I disagree basically all of
Speaker 7: that I don't think we can. I don't think we
Speaker 7: have any way of knowing whether or not Colbert or
Speaker 7: any of these people are profitable. You see this claim
Speaker 7: made that they're profitable or unprofitable. The way the broadcast
Speaker 7: networks work is not that you they make a certain
Speaker 7: amount of candy and it caused this much to make
Speaker 7: the candy, and then they sell the candy for a
Speaker 7: higher price and then they have a margin there. It's like,
Speaker 7: it's not like there's so much more to that and
Speaker 7: it and they're they're part of a giant brand and
Speaker 7: which involves their connection to their bigger conglomerates and the
Speaker 7: and the cable revenue that they get in the broadcast
Speaker 7: revenue through the ads that they get and if they
Speaker 7: have even just five hundred thousand people who you know,
Speaker 7: are huge fans of Kimmel, like that can actually make
Speaker 7: it worth it to have the Kimmel. So like, there's
Speaker 7: this we're too quick to say that this that that
Speaker 7: actually these are business decisions they wanted to make, but
Speaker 7: they were afraid to make, which I don't understand either,
Speaker 7: Like companies are usually fine to fire, you know, to
Speaker 7: make business decisions that they think are in their own interests.
Speaker 7: They don't need the government to push them. But I
Speaker 7: think the bigger disagreement is on the problem with the
Speaker 7: jaw boning. I think jaw boning by the government when,
Speaker 7: especially when it is directly connected to an explicit threat.
Speaker 7: You Brennan Carr of the FCC told ABC, you need
Speaker 7: to take action against Jimmy Kimmel or else that is
Speaker 7: a explicit threat of government action unless they take action
Speaker 7: in Missouri versus you know, the Biden or whatever the
Speaker 7: case was, where you didn't even have any threat. What
Speaker 7: you had was members of the government, both the Trump
Speaker 7: administration's DHS and then Biden administration's DHS, going to the
Speaker 7: platforms and flagging I don't think I don't like this
Speaker 7: post here about the vaccine, or I don't like this
Speaker 7: about the lab and the platforms are actually like most
Speaker 7: for the most places, they're like, all right, we're taking
Speaker 7: that down. The reason is a problem is not because
Speaker 7: the government said take this down or else. The fact
Speaker 7: that they're the government means that they come with awesome power,
Speaker 7: enormous power that has to be or else or else
Speaker 7: is just implied. It's it's much worse when you straight
Speaker 7: up say or else, like, that's just gangster stuff. But
Speaker 7: but the awesome power of the federal government needs to
Speaker 7: be checked by the constitution. And that's why the FBI
Speaker 7: cannot even walk in the door and tell you anything
Speaker 7: about your monologue or else. You understand that to be
Speaker 7: an implicit threat. Big fat, beefy Italian guy comes in.
Speaker 4: It's like.
Speaker 7: The Twitter file, right, Yeah, Hey, he's just hey, just
Speaker 7: knocking on the door here, just want to make sure
Speaker 7: that all your paperwork is in order. Like they didn't
Speaker 7: even have to say back off of the Twitter files
Speaker 7: or else you will get audited. That would be horrifying
Speaker 7: if they said back off the Twitter files or else
Speaker 7: you will get audited. How is this any different? Also,
Speaker 7: the entire center left thought that the framing of the
Speaker 7: Twitter files was was misinformation. It was poorly constructed, it
Speaker 7: was cherry picked. So should the FCC or the I
Speaker 7: R S or the FBI have said, you know what,
Speaker 7: we didn't like the framing of the way the Twitter
Speaker 7: files came out. We thought this was wrong. So now
Speaker 7: you're you're going you're going to suffer, You're going to
Speaker 7: get punished. It's it's the exact same thing because The
Speaker 7: conservative argument is that what Kimmel said was misinformation and
Speaker 7: therefore the threats are justified. In fact, if you look
Speaker 7: at exactly what he said, you know, he said, Maga
Speaker 7: folks are desperately trying to find ways to make it
Speaker 7: so that this is not one of their guys. Now
Speaker 7: to me, it turned out it was not one of
Speaker 7: their guys. He said this on Monday night. It was
Speaker 7: it was the case that everybody from every direction was
Speaker 7: trying to make the case that this was not one
Speaker 7: of their guys. That's just what that's that's what they
Speaker 7: were doing. So then come in and say you have
Speaker 7: to take action against this guy or else. And then
Speaker 7: the or else is the dual murders. There's murders at
Speaker 7: the Disney level that are needed. And then Next Star
Speaker 7: wants to Nextar is the biggest you know, which bought Rising.
Speaker 7: Next Star is the biggest owner of local television networks,
Speaker 7: which is trying to buy even more local television networks,
Speaker 7: which we have said for decades is consolidation that we
Speaker 7: don't want to see. So they need the law change. Basically,
Speaker 7: they need an FCC rule changed so that they can
Speaker 7: buy more local television channels. And which are so lucrative.
Speaker 7: Why because of super packing political ads. But that's the
Speaker 7: main revenue source. That's that's the only reason local television
Speaker 7: channels are so lucrative. And as we know because Emily
Speaker 7: and I worked for them for like five minutes, they're
Speaker 7: like they're a trump by aligned freelance. Yeah, we met
Speaker 7: their leadership, their Trump aligned and so then they operated
Speaker 7: like they operated on the UH on the same team
Speaker 7: and helped effectuate this entire thing.
Speaker 2: And they also, by the way, Brendon Carr and his comments,
Speaker 2: I mean directly named chacked like, hey, these you know,
Speaker 2: cable affiliate owners, they need to be looking into this.
Speaker 2: So he says that and threatens ABC.
Speaker 3: Next thing.
Speaker 2: Next Star says, Okay, no problem, we're going to We're
Speaker 2: going to preempt Kimmel. And then and according to the
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone reporting, the executives who'd been meeting and who'd
Speaker 2: been like, you know, shitting themselves over this, they did
Speaker 2: not think what Kimmel said was over the line. Nor
Speaker 2: do I mean, I think what Kimmel said ended up
Speaker 2: being obviously incorrect, but it was not like that crazy
Speaker 2: or wild or in sense like insanely out of bounce
Speaker 2: thing to say. In any case, the executives didn't have
Speaker 2: a real problem with what he said, but they explicitly
Speaker 2: felt that the pressure from the Trump administration was the
Speaker 2: reason why they had to act. And then on top
Speaker 2: of all of that, if you had any doubt in mind,
Speaker 2: then you have Brendan Carr go out and say, hey,
Speaker 2: maybe the view should be next. You have Trump come
Speaker 2: out and say effectively, like you know anything, really, you
Speaker 2: shouldn't be allowed to criticize me, or else your license
Speaker 2: should be revoked. So if there was any doubt whatsoever
Speaker 2: about the reasoning for the decision making of the ABC
Speaker 2: and Disney executive team, it should all be put to
Speaker 2: bed by the chain of events, their own interternal deliberations,
Speaker 2: and then the government basically going out and bragging about
Speaker 2: the power that they wield in their ability to coerce
Speaker 2: news executives to do whatever the hell they want.
Speaker 5: Griffin, we should get you in on this, because comedy
Speaker 5: is your space. One thing to that point, I don't
Speaker 5: I wonder how because the Wall Street Journal was reporting
Speaker 5: after it happened that Kimmel they expect Kimmel to be
Speaker 5: back in a couple of days, And I actually am
Speaker 5: curious if he will be back by like Monday.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I agree with one thing Crystal said on the nature
Speaker 5: of the like the one liner by Kimmel's standards was
Speaker 5: relatively mild. He said, he said some during COVID, he
Speaker 5: said some crazy stuff like he's, he's, he's.
Speaker 4: Been out there. And my thing with Kimmel, I don't
Speaker 4: know what you guys think.
Speaker 5: It's sort of like my thing with Colbert as a
Speaker 5: big like Griffin, we've talked about this like Strangers with
Speaker 5: Candy era Colbert fan.
Speaker 4: It just feels like a lot of it feels lazy.
Speaker 4: But anyway, that's beside.
Speaker 7: The point and one other point I think what people
Speaker 7: were really upset about. And then Griffin, who's if you're
Speaker 7: in comedy, that means you're an outlaw at this point
Speaker 7: because comedy is illegal once again out So there there
Speaker 7: was two pieces of the joke. The first part is
Speaker 7: not even a jokes, like Maggie's trying to out there,
Speaker 7: trying to or political points on this and say that
Speaker 7: it's not their guy. I don't even actually see how
Speaker 7: that's funny. It's just a comment. But the joke was
Speaker 7: the next one, just like let's see how Trump is responding.
Speaker 7: And then Trump gets asked, you know, sir, like how
Speaker 7: are you holding up personally after the loss of your friend?
Speaker 7: And Trump responds, great, we're building this. I don't know,
Speaker 7: I don't know if we have a handy, but like,
Speaker 7: you know, we're building this ballroom. Everybody said we couldn't
Speaker 7: build the ballroom. It's going to be absolutely fantastic. It's
Speaker 7: going to be the greatest ballroom in the history of ballrooms.
Speaker 7: And you know, it goes on and on and on
Speaker 7: about the ballroom. That's it and so, and that was
Speaker 7: his joke. He's like, look at this guy, what a Cretan?
Speaker 7: Like that was the joke. And I think that's what
Speaker 7: Trump was actually offended about. But Trump should have not
Speaker 7: acted like a Cretan if he didn't want Jimmy Kimmel
Speaker 7: to portray him as one.
Speaker 2: Well, and Trump made it pretty plain that that's what
Speaker 2: he was upset about, since he then went on to say,
Speaker 2: you're not allowed to criticize me, you.
Speaker 4: Know, right, yeah, yeah, go griffing.
Speaker 6: If we're to analyze this from a comedy perspective, then
Speaker 6: Kimmy the Kimmel is guilty and should be fired, but
Speaker 6: we shouldn't analyze it from a comedy.
Speaker 8: Perspective because that's that's not right.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: I did have a few questions for Emily. I am
Speaker 6: curious about this idea that the FCC should be eliminated
Speaker 6: or what have you. I'm curious about that, and like
Speaker 6: what what that would mean if it's gone. But like
Speaker 6: also to the point about money to slightly steal man
Speaker 6: Emily's case about views, like I did read last night
Speaker 6: that Jimmy Kimmel was averaging in the Key demo around
Speaker 6: one hundred and twenty nine thousand views, which is about
Speaker 6: like one YouTube clip from US. This clip today will
Speaker 6: probably do more that just acting that the demo, and
Speaker 6: that's actually down fifty percent from what it was a
Speaker 6: couple of months ago, so there seems to be like
Speaker 6: a study decline there. But like if this were just
Speaker 6: purely if Next Star were to try to make this
Speaker 6: look like purely a financial decision, like oh, we're just
Speaker 6: bleeding money on the show, why wouldn't they just make
Speaker 6: an announcement being like, hey, we're gonna slowly fold this
Speaker 6: show down at the end of the year.
Speaker 8: As opposed to this super.
Speaker 6: Knee jerk Disney, I mean from the administration, and like
Speaker 6: why would I'm sorry, yeah, Disney, Like why why wouldn't
Speaker 6: they do similar what they did with Colbert right where
Speaker 6: they're like slow rolling it out. But this knee jerk
Speaker 6: reaction to it seems to be like implicitly a direction
Speaker 6: from the from the government.
Speaker 5: Well, I think because they're trying to please, Like I
Speaker 5: think they're being opportunistic. My my honest opinion is that
Speaker 5: I think they're trying to like exactly what you say,
Speaker 5: Trump operates like a roy Cone trained mafioso. So I
Speaker 5: think they take these sort of dust ups as opportunities
Speaker 5: to be like, look, we're, uh, we're giving you a
Speaker 5: little here, like we're we're cooperating, we we love Trump.
Speaker 5: Maybe it is what they're saying behind the scenes. I
Speaker 5: don't know if you guys caught Sherry Redstone obviously coming
Speaker 5: out and saying that this is this is business.
Speaker 4: There were a bunch of.
Speaker 5: Anonymous sources who went to Puck and and I think
Speaker 5: the Near Post during the Colbert dust up that said
Speaker 5: it was losing around forty million dollars last year. I
Speaker 5: don't know, I mean, like when you have a few
Speaker 5: anonymous sources. It's hard to obviously verify that number without
Speaker 5: the network going on the record.
Speaker 4: Those are catastrophically bad numbers for Kimball. Some of this
Speaker 4: is anyway.
Speaker 5: That is, we don't have to get into the market
Speaker 5: of late night shows just to say that I think
Speaker 5: the network's taken up. I'll grant you to be like, hey,
Speaker 5: look we're working with you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'll grant you. The shows is dude and probably
Speaker 7: is losing money, but it's just hard to disentangle it
Speaker 7: from the entire right network.
Speaker 3: Well, and I just looked it up.
Speaker 2: So the numbers, I'm saying Kimmel was averaging two hundred
Speaker 2: twenty thousand viewers in the demo, which is still not great.
Speaker 3: It's a little better than one hundred couple months ago.
Speaker 8: A couple of months ago, he was it was what
Speaker 8: I read.
Speaker 2: Okay, well he and he was ahead of Colbert and
Speaker 2: Fallon in terms of his numbers. So you know, in
Speaker 2: terms if you look at the genre, he was actually
Speaker 2: the person who was performing the best. And you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm just listen, I'm I obviously I agree
Speaker 2: with Ryan, like the business thing may be true that
Speaker 2: it's losing money, but that is not the reason he
Speaker 2: was suspended right now, because in fact, I think by
Speaker 2: doing it in this way, they have put themselves in
Speaker 2: a much worse position because people are very upset that
Speaker 2: they made this decision, and they have the possibility of
Speaker 2: strikes from talent, and you know, obviously this is a
Speaker 2: giant conglomerate. There's all sorts of ways that talent and
Speaker 2: producers and actors and whatever can speak out and be upset.
Speaker 2: It's created this whole national cultural moment. Like, I don't
Speaker 2: think as a business, this would have been the way
Speaker 2: that they would have wanted to go. Instead, they could
Speaker 2: have done what, for example, like MSNBC did at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the Trump administration when they look around and
Speaker 2: see the writing on the wall and they basically offer
Speaker 2: up joy read as tribute. They're like, okay, yeah, but
Speaker 2: you don't even have to say anything. We're going to
Speaker 2: get rid of this lady, and we're going to sell
Speaker 2: off MSNBC. Are we good now? That in that way,
Speaker 2: there isn't that direct like you're directly threatened and under
Speaker 2: dress you intentionally like cave and capitulate in a way
Speaker 2: that is undeniable and blatantly obvious.
Speaker 8: And also the.
Speaker 6: Reason why these shows, these late nine shows, like in
Speaker 6: general big picture suck is because they are sickophantic to
Speaker 6: the Democratic Party, and now the Republicans are asking for
Speaker 6: them to be sickophantic to the Republican Party. And like,
Speaker 6: to a certain extent, comedy is supposed to be illegal.
Speaker 6: It's supposed to feel illegal. It's supposed to feel like, oh,
Speaker 6: you're not allowed to say that, but the comedian is
Speaker 6: saying that. And that's why it sucks right now when
Speaker 6: they just you know, jerk off the Democratic Party, and
Speaker 6: it's going to suck when they jerk off the Republican Party.
Speaker 6: And so it's like the fundamental like identity and core
Speaker 6: of comedy is going to continue sucking if it's about
Speaker 6: making comedy feel legal, like you're things that you're allowed
Speaker 6: to say, which is the antithesis of the form more Baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of an interesting comment though, Griffin, because
Speaker 2: what Trump is doing, accidentally is making them like Edgy
Speaker 2: and Subversta. Yes exactly, you can't do You're just like
Speaker 2: standard thing is now illegal. So yeah, it's making it
Speaker 2: so because we all watched I mean, I watched a
Speaker 2: bunch of the monologues from last night, which were not
Speaker 2: like particularly spectacular. But now they have this looming interest
Speaker 2: and you know, increased interest in scrutiny and edge to
Speaker 2: them simply because of what the Trump administration has, you know,
Speaker 2: has done here.
Speaker 6: We've got new comments here from Trump on the Air
Speaker 6: Force one about sort of his larger plans or thoughts
Speaker 6: on on TV networks in general. Let's let's take a
Speaker 6: listen for him on Air Force one for a second.
Speaker 11: That's something that you'd be talking about for licensing too.
Speaker 11: When you have a network and you have evening shows
Speaker 11: and all they do is it Trump. It's all they do.
Speaker 12: You go back.
Speaker 11: I guess I haven't had a concerput going in years
Speaker 11: or something.
Speaker 4: Somebody said when you.
Speaker 11: Go back kick a Look, Well they do is job.
Speaker 13: Ye're license, They're not allowed.
Speaker 9: To do that.
Speaker 11: They're an arm of the Democrat parties.
Speaker 13: Thank you.
Speaker 11: Everybody fly safely. You know why to say that, because
Speaker 11: I'm on the flight I want to get Otherwise.
Speaker 8: I wouldn't care he's on the flight, or otherwise he
Speaker 8: wouldn't care.
Speaker 7: That would be a good joke. We know we know
Speaker 7: he's on the flight because he's standing right there. And
Speaker 7: so it kind of he stepped on his own punchline
Speaker 7: with his own presence. He otherwise that's funny.
Speaker 5: He also keeps saying from his first post to just
Speaker 5: that like he's absolutely convinced that Kimmel has been fired
Speaker 5: and that is not what any of the reporting suggests
Speaker 5: right now, and it wasn't when any of the reportings
Speaker 5: suggests when he fired off is true social at one
Speaker 5: thirty in the morning UK time. So I don't know
Speaker 5: if if he knows something or if he's trying to manifest.
Speaker 7: Well, maybe maybe they should just not just bring him
Speaker 7: back and not announce it. And you know what, actually
Speaker 7: Chop would never notice.
Speaker 4: He might not ever know.
Speaker 5: And what might solve the entire problem is if they
Speaker 5: give Trump Kimmel's late night spot and then Trump isn't
Speaker 5: president anymore.
Speaker 4: He would love that job.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but couldn't he do a five minute monologue or
Speaker 7: is it just the whole show just going to be
Speaker 7: his monologue?
Speaker 4: I see that? Could he contain himself to all?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 4: Sometimes?
Speaker 7: You know, if he was not president, I would watch that.
Speaker 2: I would make that du remember that time on the
Speaker 2: campaign trail, he like they just like stood in silence
Speaker 2: and swayed to ave Marie or something like that.
Speaker 7: That was great stuff, that was amazing.
Speaker 3: Some real's a realist content.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you call that, but I do
Speaker 2: want to focus in on what he said there, which
Speaker 2: he specifically said, they hit Trump every night.
Speaker 3: That's not allowed.
Speaker 2: It's like, literally in America, you are allowed to criticize
Speaker 2: the president of the United States. That's like kind of
Speaker 2: the whole deal here, Like that's a big part of
Speaker 2: what we're all about. And as I said before, makes
Speaker 2: it plain not only that the real problem he had
Speaker 2: wasn't you know something he said about Charlie Kirk's killer.
Speaker 2: It was about the criticism of him, which is why
Speaker 2: he had previously said, hey, Jimmy Kimmel's next had been
Speaker 2: calling for his ouster. And also why you've now got
Speaker 2: you know, Brendan and and he said, who did he
Speaker 2: say is next?
Speaker 3: Jimmy Fallon or Steven.
Speaker 4: Gilmer and and Seth Meyer.
Speaker 2: And Seth Meyer and then and then you have Brendan
Speaker 2: Carr coming after the view and you know, putting them
Speaker 2: in the in the spotlight and the view notably and
Speaker 2: this is like pretty shameful. They didn't talk about this
Speaker 2: topic yesterday on their show at all. So and that's
Speaker 2: the point. The point isn't just to get a scalp
Speaker 2: in terms of Jimmy Kimmel. The point is to send
Speaker 2: the message out to everyone that you better watch it,
Speaker 2: you better be careful, because you step over wherever that
Speaker 2: invisible line is, you get a little bit of a
Speaker 2: you know, online conservative backlash going.
Speaker 3: And that's it.
Speaker 2: Your companies, your corporate executives, they're not going to have
Speaker 2: your back.
Speaker 3: They are not going to have your back. You are
Speaker 3: on your own.
Speaker 2: And that message, whether or not Kimmel comes back at
Speaker 2: some point or doesn't come back, whatever, that message has
Speaker 2: been sent. And the fact that the view said nothing
Speaker 2: about this yesterday, I think shows you the chill that
Speaker 2: has already been instilled, at least in you know, in
Speaker 2: many journalists, personalities, comedians across the board, the.
Speaker 6: Minions across the board will go for it. Emily, why
Speaker 6: I pull this clip up? I do a Colbert clip
Speaker 6: I want to pull up next.
Speaker 5: I was saying, if if I were Democrats right now,
Speaker 5: I would like immediately be looking at ways to defang
Speaker 5: the FCC and force Republicans to defend the power of
Speaker 5: the FCC, because the FCC gives what's called like news exemptions.
Speaker 5: Howard Stern, for example, got his quote news exemption. So
Speaker 5: this is like it goes years and years, and it's
Speaker 5: been used in ways that we've become accustomed to because
Speaker 5: like many things before, we had this crazy moment ten
Speaker 5: plus years ago. I guess now in the US we
Speaker 5: didn't think about the tools, or we hadn't thought about
Speaker 5: the tools in this way for like twenty thirty years,
Speaker 5: and now Republicans haven't watched the media, especially with Trump.
Speaker 5: But like saying, going back over the last whatever thirty years,
Speaker 5: the way that conservatives were covered are saying, well, hey,
Speaker 5: there's this public interest tool in the FCC's toolkit, and
Speaker 5: that's there. So while all of these levers are being pulled,
Speaker 5: why not take a look at the public interest part
Speaker 5: of it. Why not say, why not take away the
Speaker 5: quote news exemption from some of these these broadcasters and
Speaker 5: make it so that they do have to do equal
Speaker 5: time because what Trump said there where he was like,
Speaker 5: you have to it's not allowed to just bash Trump
Speaker 5: night after night. If they if they have their news exemption,
Speaker 5: maybe the FCC takes that away and then says, actually
Speaker 5: it's not allowed. You have to do equal time, and
Speaker 5: all of that was like as a business model, doesn't
Speaker 5: really even make sense anymore. So if I were Democrats,
Speaker 5: I would make Republicans start defending the new Deal FCC
Speaker 5: because that would get I honestly think it's pretty good
Speaker 5: case for abolishing the FCC, the way that we licensed
Speaker 5: broadcaster wives and all of that.
Speaker 4: But anyway, beside the point, well, I.
Speaker 6: Mean, got feld needs equal time, get me out.
Speaker 4: That doesn't count because it's cable, but like the broadcast.
Speaker 6: Okay, gotcha, gotcha, but which most people I don't think
Speaker 6: distinguish a difference between, Like the average person just views
Speaker 6: this as just like a freedom of speech thing without
Speaker 6: the intricacies like all that that's broadcast.
Speaker 8: This is cable, like, you know.
Speaker 7: The The problem there is that this isn't really on
Speaker 7: the up and up. It's not as if they have
Speaker 7: a genuine concern about public interest and they're going to
Speaker 7: use the remedies existing around the public interest rule. What
Speaker 7: they're saying is we don't like what you said, and
Speaker 7: we're going to connect it to this other thing, this
Speaker 7: merger that you want that your parent company wants, and
Speaker 7: We're going to use the threat of blocking this merger,
Speaker 7: not because we think it's anti competitive, not because we
Speaker 7: don't like the merger on the merits, but as power
Speaker 7: to get you to do what we want. So looking
Speaker 7: at the rules implies that this is being done on
Speaker 7: the up and up through the rule book, and it's
Speaker 7: and it's not. It's just being done with with raw power.
Speaker 6: So many people are saying, what are Jimmy Kimmel's colleagues
Speaker 6: going to say? What is John Stewart, What is John
Speaker 6: Oliver going to say? So We've got a clip here
Speaker 6: from Stephen Colbert that we like to play here. See
Speaker 6: if it met the moment.
Speaker 13: I'm your host, Stephen Colbert. But tonight we are all
Speaker 13: Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 11: I am.
Speaker 8: I still have a show though.
Speaker 14: Right yesterday, after threats from Trump's FCC chair, ABC yanked
Speaker 14: Kimmel off the air indefinitely.
Speaker 13: That is blatant censorship. And it always starts small.
Speaker 14: You know, remember like in week one of his presidency,
Speaker 14: helf of America, call it Gulf of America. Sure seems harmless,
Speaker 14: but with an autocrat you cannot give an inch.
Speaker 13: And if ABC thinks, if ABC thinks that this is
Speaker 13: going to satisfy the regime.
Speaker 14: They are woefully naive and clearly they've never read the
Speaker 14: children's book.
Speaker 13: If you give a mouse a Kimmel and and and
Speaker 13: to Jimmy and to Jimmy, just let me say, I
Speaker 13: stand with you and your staff one hundred percent. And
Speaker 13: also you couldn't let me enjoy this for like one week?
Speaker 8: All right, if you give him mouse?
Speaker 6: Kim ol Ryan loved that one. That there's the key demo, folks,
Speaker 6: there's the.
Speaker 3: Jen X enough.
Speaker 7: I'm sort I think I'm in the demo.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 7: I need to start watching these late night shows.
Speaker 6: So did you guys watch these late night reactions? Do
Speaker 6: do we find that this met the moment? Because I
Speaker 6: was struck by these feeling very similar to other just
Speaker 6: Trump takedowns in terms of tone and energy.
Speaker 8: What did you guys make of it? So?
Speaker 3: I think what they were lacking.
Speaker 2: I mean, on the one hand, I'm sympathetic because it's
Speaker 2: hard to make comedy about something that, you know, like
Speaker 2: to have a topic and be like, I'm going to
Speaker 2: make a joke about this. And yet they're mandate on
Speaker 2: the show obviously is not just to do political commentary,
Speaker 2: but to make it funny, and it's a difficult thing
Speaker 2: to be able to nail sympathetic there. It's certainly not
Speaker 2: something I could pull off. I think what they were
Speaker 2: all lacking is some.
Speaker 3: Sort of a call to action.
Speaker 2: It's like, Okay, you don't like it, and you're saying, oh,
Speaker 2: this won't affect my performance, and maybe it will, maybe
Speaker 2: it won't.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't even.
Speaker 2: Think like, as an individual human being, you're not even
Speaker 2: really fully equipped to assess your own ability to withstand
Speaker 2: that pressure, cause you don't know the way things are
Speaker 2: subtly influencing you, If that makes sense, which is why
Speaker 2: you have to why we've worked hard to insulate ourselves
Speaker 2: from different pressures that are we can't anticipate. But there
Speaker 2: was no like, Okay, that's why we need to That's
Speaker 2: why we need to boycott.
Speaker 3: That's why we're going on strike.
Speaker 2: That's why you know, that's why Democrats need to break
Speaker 2: up these giant conglomerates. Like maybe it's too much to
Speaker 2: put that on them, but I think people are looking
Speaker 2: at them for like some sort of leadership, since this
Speaker 2: is their industry and these are really influential, powerful wealthy
Speaker 2: people at this point and there was none of that.
Speaker 2: It's just sort of like, you know, Republicans are hypocrites. Okay,
Speaker 2: we can see that. You know, we're not happy about
Speaker 2: what happened with Kimmel. That's obvious. And I think the
Speaker 2: other thing that's always difficult with Trump is because we've
Speaker 2: had this is far from the first threat to the
Speaker 2: First Amendment from this administration, even literally in this week.
Speaker 2: So when you've talked about these things before, it also
Speaker 2: becomes difficult to separate from previous concerns from this moment
Speaker 2: and to really sort of like put a pin in
Speaker 2: what makes this particular action different, more extraordinary, more troubling, darker,
Speaker 2: more sinister than previous things that we've thought about and
Speaker 2: talked about with Trump.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert are really awful free
Speaker 5: speech martyrs for like the left in these cases, because
Speaker 5: they're at heart corporate Dems who have coasted on really
Speaker 5: lazy comedy and started driving some of these formats like
Speaker 5: into the ground unnecessarily show, unnecessarily so, and it's like
Speaker 5: hard to I think it's hard for people like rally.
Speaker 4: Around these I agree, Emily and like company men.
Speaker 6: I agree only because also It's like liberals have a
Speaker 6: lot of times turned the blind eye to other freedom
Speaker 6: of speech issues over the last two years. I mean, like,
Speaker 6: had they covered the crackdowns from both Biden and Trump
Speaker 6: on Palestine protest freedom of speech? Like I see so
Speaker 6: many people in LA have Colbert.
Speaker 4: And Kimmel talked about that.
Speaker 6: That's a really I mean, I mean maybe, yeah, Stewart
Speaker 6: has for sure, But I don't know. I am a
Speaker 6: little struck by, like a lot of liberals that I
Speaker 6: see online coming out for the first time about freedom
Speaker 6: of speech after two years of disastrous freedom of speech.
Speaker 6: But it's like, oh, when it's like a multi millionaire
Speaker 6: like white host of the Late Night Show, that's when
Speaker 6: it matters. Obviously, it's he's a more famous person, it's
Speaker 6: gonna make a bigger impact. But yeah, if you haven't
Speaker 6: been talking about freedom of speech in a lot of
Speaker 6: other areas, and let's say a lot of these were
Speaker 6: front page news stories, you like to miss Mahmoud Khalil,
Speaker 6: that's a front page story, Like that's not like, oh, sorry,
Speaker 6: I didn't turn to the third page to see that.
Speaker 2: Let me defend not you know, Colbert and these people
Speaker 2: who I haven't watched, I genuinely don't know. I don't
Speaker 2: suspect that they said anything about that, but I don't
Speaker 2: actually know for sure. But let me defend the Libs
Speaker 2: a little bit here, which is to say, number one,
Speaker 2: Democrats overwhelmingly, you know, oppose what's happening in Gaza, have
Speaker 2: opposed the crackdown on you know, on speech on campus.
Speaker 2: Like that movement comes from the left, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's most more leftists, but also left liberal.
Speaker 3: So there's that.
Speaker 2: The other thing I would say is, again like I was,
Speaker 2: and Ryan was at odds with a lot of liberals
Speaker 2: in terms of their you know, ignoring an acceptance and
Speaker 2: pushing actively cancel culture and trampling out her speech and
Speaker 2: censorship and in all of that.
Speaker 3: Right, So I wasn't on the same page with them there.
Speaker 2: However, I will say, both in terms of the substance
Speaker 2: and in terms of the state mechanisms, this is different. Right,
Speaker 2: Like with the Twitter file stuff, what the Biden administration
Speaker 2: was messaging to you know, these social media companies about
Speaker 2: was COVID misinformation that they felt like genuinely was going
Speaker 2: to cause people to lose their lives. Right, So now
Speaker 2: we all felt like Okay, First of all, a lot
Speaker 2: of these accounts are tiny accounts, Like it's not going
Speaker 2: to make that big of a difriends. You guys have
Speaker 2: been wrong about a bunch of stuff with COVID. We
Speaker 2: don't want a ministry of truth. Just by sending these
Speaker 2: messages and having these meetings, you're exerting extraordinary pressure pressure.
Speaker 2: But I don't want to pretend like the COVID misinformation
Speaker 2: and this like lame comment from Jimmy Kimmel are remotely
Speaker 2: the same, because they're not right. So the content is different.
Speaker 2: And then, as Ryan was laying out before, the government
Speaker 2: action is different as well. So here you have an
Speaker 2: explicit threat and it comes in the context of a
Speaker 2: Trump administration that has used every opportunity, real and imagined
Speaker 2: crises to crush descent, crack down, grab power, and has truly,
Speaker 2: I mean that truly is an authoritarian threat to the
Speaker 2: country and to democracy. So I even as I again
Speaker 2: was not on the same page as the liberals, you
Speaker 2: can go and back and look at my support of
Speaker 2: the Harper's letter and coverage of the Twitter.
Speaker 3: Files and all of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even though I wasn't on their side there, Like
Speaker 2: I think it is fair to say this administration, what
Speaker 2: they're doing now is genuinely different than what anything we
Speaker 2: saw under the Biden administration. I don't think it even
Speaker 2: came close. And that's before we even talk about like
Speaker 2: scrubbing people's social media and you know, for whether or
Speaker 2: not they can have a visa and deporting them without
Speaker 2: due process, and you know the massive crackdown over speech
Speaker 2: on Palestine, et cetera. So that's what I would say
Speaker 2: in defense of the libs its the I.
Speaker 5: Think you always have to take what Trump is saying,
Speaker 5: even if he doesn't mean it literally, you have to
Speaker 5: take it seriously because when you have the President of
Speaker 5: the United States threatening broadcast licenses, and even if it's
Speaker 5: just quote jaw boning, I think you do have to
Speaker 5: take it seriously, especially when it comes with threats from
Speaker 5: the FCC and when you see compliance. So I actually
Speaker 5: think the way that Trent talks about broadcast licenses is insane.
Speaker 2: And when they have a track record of weaponizing the
Speaker 2: government to punish universities, law firms, immigrants, students, anyone that
Speaker 2: they don't like. When he's coming out and issuing a
Speaker 2: you know, statement saying hey, we're going to make ANTIFO,
Speaker 2: which is like, you know, an ideology a terrorist organization
Speaker 2: and threatening people who are just pro Palestine with being
Speaker 2: providing material support to terrorism. Like that's the record of
Speaker 2: this administration, So it's not an idle threat. We all
Speaker 2: know that they have weaponized the entire federal government in
Speaker 2: every way that they can think of in order to
Speaker 2: coerce and crush dissent and consolidate power. So that is
Speaker 2: a very different landscape than what we've dealt with before.
Speaker 5: The other thing I was to say is I do
Speaker 5: think some moves from Dems and the Biden administration, and
Speaker 5: this doesn't have to become a tip for tap thing.
Speaker 5: I do think things like the Global Engagement Center, which
Speaker 5: it's hypocritical for Marko Ruby to shut it down and
Speaker 5: like he's a champion of a free speech obviously given
Speaker 5: what's happened with Visas and other students. But in that case,
Speaker 5: the State Department was funding blacklists of conservative media outlets,
Speaker 5: and not even just conservative media outlets, but like literally
Speaker 5: Unheard found its way onto a global disinformation index that
Speaker 5: was funded by the State Department.
Speaker 4: The Equality Act.
Speaker 5: Which almost every Democrat supports, would have serious ramifications for
Speaker 5: free speech because of the way that it reads gender
Speaker 5: identity into sex, and the same thing was true of
Speaker 5: the way the Obama administrations in the Bible Biden administrations
Speaker 5: wielded Title nine. So it's some of that stuff I
Speaker 5: think was enormously significant in ways that it's frustrating because
Speaker 5: the Colbert you know, who's now a free speech martyr
Speaker 5: and Kimmel is a free speech martyr, don't give a
Speaker 5: damn about They don't care, and some of the people
Speaker 5: who are supporting them don't care and never did. The
Speaker 5: media barely covered the Global Engagement Center story like it
Speaker 5: wasn't really anything, And there are other examples that we
Speaker 5: could point to I actually I agree.
Speaker 4: I don't think the COVID one is apples to apples.
Speaker 4: I think it's apples to oranges.
Speaker 5: But I do think there were other ones where we
Speaker 5: saw both the Obama and buy An administrations weaponizing their
Speaker 5: power to go after journalists and you know, or not
Speaker 5: not just journalists, but to go after speech. Actually, Ryan
Speaker 5: the James Rising case from the Obama administration and the
Speaker 5: James Rosen case from the Obama administration are examples of
Speaker 5: that too, But in those cases, most of the media
Speaker 5: was pretty defensive of Rising, if I'm remembering correctly.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And Risen started late Bush and then went into Obama.
Speaker 7: And so it was this bipartisan attempt to get He
Speaker 7: was a New York Times reporter who had exposed some
Speaker 7: of the NSA's spying reporting that was then later confirmed
Speaker 7: by Edward Snowden's leaks, and they were threatening to put
Speaker 7: him in prison in order to get him to reveal
Speaker 7: his sources. And eventually Obama backed off because he was
Speaker 7: you know, he was the kind of person that elites
Speaker 7: could pressure and say, your constitutional scholar, bro, like your
Speaker 7: law professor, like what are you doing?
Speaker 8: All right? Fine?
Speaker 7: And and so he never ended up going to prison.
Speaker 7: But you know, A Chrystal and I both warned, you know,
Speaker 7: throughout the teens and early twenties that what the left
Speaker 7: was doing might be constitutional because it's private stuff. You know,
Speaker 7: you're just bull you're bullying, you're the mob is bullying
Speaker 7: some company to fire a person or get rid of them.
Speaker 7: But that it was still a roade, you know, it
Speaker 7: was still e roding of the First Amendment. That the
Speaker 7: First Amendment is is has a letter and it has
Speaker 7: a spirit. And while it might not have been violating
Speaker 7: the letter of it, it was violating the spirit of it.
Speaker 7: And amendments that are on the books but that aren't
Speaker 7: respected by the cultural spirit aren't worth what they're written on.
Speaker 7: Look at the Fourth Amendment, no illegal search and seizure, Well,
Speaker 7: how's that. How's that working out for us? It's still
Speaker 7: written there, but because spiritually we kind of abandon it,
Speaker 7: then nobody follows it anymore. And so that's why people
Speaker 7: like Glenn and Crystal and I were all saying, no,
Speaker 7: you've got to draw the line here and protect it
Speaker 7: in spirit, not just in letter, because you're not always
Speaker 7: going to be in power, and in a lot of
Speaker 7: cases like Trump was president at the time, and when
Speaker 7: you fully lose power, look, you know it's it's going
Speaker 7: to ratchet further. The most hopeful thing I've seen, which
Speaker 7: is probably too hopeful, is that the right is going
Speaker 7: to have its outrageous spasm of cancel culture. It's going
Speaker 7: to use the tools and the power of government to
Speaker 7: censor speech, taking cancel culture on to the next level.
Speaker 7: But it's going to fall apart because the American people
Speaker 7: when they vote in elections. A lot of the political
Speaker 7: science says they're not really actually moved by what the
Speaker 7: media and what commercials say, Like that's just that's a
Speaker 7: that's a fraction of how people vote. What they vote
Speaker 7: on is the underlying material conditions of their lives, which
Speaker 7: are rapidly deteriorating under Trump. So his effort to like
Speaker 7: do a Turkey air Towan or Hungarian like consolidation of
Speaker 7: the media to hold on to power may not work
Speaker 7: because we're so federalized, and because people vote based on
Speaker 7: how they you know, and Democratic Party is the oldest
Speaker 7: political party in the world history, so people know that
Speaker 7: they don't know what it stands for, but they know
Speaker 7: what exists, and so if they're not happy with the
Speaker 7: conditions that they're living in, they know that they can
Speaker 7: vote for this other party. What is that party going
Speaker 7: to do? God only knows. They're not telling us, but
Speaker 7: at least they're not the party in power, so that
Speaker 7: could still happen. And then at that point, maybe both
Speaker 7: the left and the right are like, Okay, we're wrong,
Speaker 7: let's do an amnesty and a truce on this cancel
Speaker 7: culture stuff.
Speaker 2: No I mean no, I mean let me well, and
Speaker 2: we yeah, right, we don't pretend like cancel culture started
Speaker 2: with like you know, liberals in the like Hillary Clinton era,
Speaker 2: and that's just not true.
Speaker 3: Like think back to the two post two thousand and.
Speaker 2: One, I mean, and yeah, go back to McCarthy even
Speaker 2: the early nineties, like all the little moral panics about
Speaker 2: rap lyrics and stuff like that.
Speaker 7: Like there was John Adams throwing French aligned people.
Speaker 8: Oh so true.
Speaker 2: As original sin on on First Amendment there, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's actually Jesus yep, there you.
Speaker 8: Go, original podcaster.
Speaker 2: But I mean, so, I like, I have to tell
Speaker 2: you guys, I feel I don't feel scared or angry.
Speaker 2: I actually just feel depressed because I like, let's play
Speaker 2: this sound a little bit, okay, and let's keep in
Speaker 2: mind you guys, Ryan and em only you guys covered
Speaker 2: this week. Also this consolidation of media institutions in the
Speaker 2: hands of Trump aligned figures and Zionists, the Ellison's you
Speaker 2: know there, So you're going to have CBS, potentially CNN, HBO.
Speaker 2: You know Twitter is already owned by Elon TikTok coming
Speaker 2: under that umbrella too.
Speaker 8: So yeah, you have got a breakdown of view of
Speaker 8: these crystal for you while you're talking.
Speaker 2: Okay, if you want to throw that up on the screen.
Speaker 2: And so you talk about orbon, I mean this is orbon.
Speaker 2: This is like a speed run of Orbonism, which from
Speaker 2: my study, took longer to consolidate than you know this
Speaker 2: has in the second Trump administration. And then what do
Speaker 2: you do with the remaining mainstream, you know, establishment institutions.
Speaker 2: You do what you did with Jimmy Kimmel. You said
Speaker 2: down the message, listen, you better not cross me, or
Speaker 2: else there are going to be consequences. And the corporate executives.
Speaker 2: You know, as a leftist, I never expected the capitalists
Speaker 2: to fight back up against fascism. But they certainly aren't
Speaker 2: rising to the occasion, There's no doubt about that.
Speaker 7: And so that message to hurt feelings, don't don't hurt
Speaker 7: feelings with the app.
Speaker 2: So that goes out, you know, that goes out too
Speaker 2: to everybody who works there, like they're not going to
Speaker 2: They don't have my back, nobody has solidarity with me.
Speaker 2: I am just out here on my own And do
Speaker 2: I personally have any ability to stand up to the
Speaker 2: entirety of the United States government?
Speaker 3: Of course not.
Speaker 2: And neither does independent quote unquote independent media either, Like
Speaker 2: if Disney can be crushed like a bug.
Speaker 3: What do you think we are?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 2: So you have, I mean you have, so you have.
Speaker 2: That's the media landscape. Okay, and then okay, we have elections, right,
Speaker 2: we have mid terms. We already know Trump is trying
Speaker 2: to like Jerry, rig the maps to make it as
Speaker 2: favorable as possible, cast out on mail in ballots, They're
Speaker 2: monkeying around that, the voter rules, like all this stuff
Speaker 2: that they're going to try to do. Not to mention,
Speaker 2: we've got National Guard already in the streets in multiple cities.
Speaker 2: Are they going to be there intimidating voters on election day?
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a crazy thing to suggest. Then
Speaker 2: let's say that Democrats overcome that it's too big to rig,
Speaker 2: they win a majority in the House, they do well
Speaker 2: on the Senate. Whatever you think this man is going
Speaker 2: to accept those election results. Of course he's not. Of
Speaker 2: course he's not. We already know his playbook. He's already
Speaker 2: projecting what he's going to do when he's casting doubt
Speaker 2: on elections and mail in ballots and saying, you know,
Speaker 2: I wish we had the recourse of the ballot box,
Speaker 2: but you know, the ballot box in many cases is
Speaker 2: rigged and it's not sufficient. He's going to go out
Speaker 2: and say, no, these election results are not legitimate. Democrats
Speaker 2: did not win these seats. They're incapable of winning these seats,
Speaker 2: and his base will believe him. So at that point,
Speaker 2: you have a media ecosystem that is completely compromised, that's
Speaker 2: terrified to tell the truth about the nature of the elections.
Speaker 2: You've got you know, roughly half of at least of
Speaker 2: the voting public that is going along with, you know,
Speaker 2: his view that this is all rigged and sham.
Speaker 3: Like, where are we then, Because the whole.
Speaker 2: Thing, to Ryan's point about like, you know, it's all
Speaker 2: written down on paper, but it's as good as the
Speaker 2: paper it's written on. If we don't all sort of
Speaker 2: like buy into the spirit of the project, the whole
Speaker 2: thing falls apart. If you don't have most of the
Speaker 2: population sort of routinely just like accepting, okay, these results
Speaker 2: are more or less correct, going to move forward with
Speaker 2: what we get. So that's where we're headed, and this
Speaker 2: media consolidation piece is an important part of it, because
Speaker 2: they need to be scared to tell the truth going
Speaker 2: you know, when and if that happens, about what actually occurred.
Speaker 2: And so that's why I'm feeling very depressed, because I
Speaker 2: don't see what institution exists or what power structure exists
Speaker 2: that is capable of like rolling back or resisting any
Speaker 2: of this. It's certainly not the corporations. It hasn't in
Speaker 2: the universities, wasn't the law firms. You know, it's labor
Speaker 2: has already long been defenestrated long ago. They're irrelevant to
Speaker 2: the conversation, which is sad and pathetic. The court system,
Speaker 2: like Trump has realized that number one, there's this loophole
Speaker 2: in liberal democracy where if you just do a bunch
Speaker 2: of shit, it takes a while for the courts to
Speaker 2: catch up. And number two, the Supreme Court's given him
Speaker 2: everything he wants anyway when it gets there. So I
Speaker 2: don't know, guys, that's where we are. It's pretty ugly.
Speaker 6: And they're already on Fox News being like, oh, well,
Speaker 6: the First Amendment. I don't know if Charlie really would
Speaker 6: have believed in that now I think Trump said that,
Speaker 6: And then someone else on Fox News was like, I
Speaker 6: don't know if we really I don't know if we
Speaker 6: can deal with the First Amendment anymore. I'm not sure,
Speaker 6: if that's as important as these other things we're dealing with.
Speaker 5: Literally every lib said during the Biden administration that sent
Speaker 5: conservatives through the roof. Not every lib, of course, but
Speaker 5: it was like all of the disinformation libs who were
Speaker 5: complaining about the First Amendment scope being too broad in
Speaker 5: the way that it I mean, it is, like she said,
Speaker 5: the thing that was sending all of the right onto
Speaker 5: their moral high horse, and again like in a good way, right,
Speaker 5: like we should all be against the government saying well,
Speaker 5: maybe that whole First Amendment thing is a little outdated.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean, I.
Speaker 7: Emily, I'm curious for your take on crystal scenario because
Speaker 7: it seems pretty dystopian but also so fairly realistic. The
Speaker 7: only thing I would say could change that arc would
Speaker 7: be a financial crisis, which we do seem like. I
Speaker 7: think that's a matter more of of when rather than
Speaker 7: if that could That basically just flips the table. But
Speaker 7: outside of that, where do you see holes in the
Speaker 7: kind of arc that she sketched out there?
Speaker 5: I don't, I mean, I don't, I think you know.
Speaker 5: For me, it was also depressing when the Hunter Biden
Speaker 5: like laptop case broke and I saw the way the
Speaker 5: media had treated the like Russia collusion thing for years,
Speaker 5: And of course I like, I remember not being able
Speaker 5: to DM that story after the Politico broke that fifty
Speaker 5: one former intelligence people coming out and saying it had
Speaker 5: all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. I remember not being
Speaker 5: able to send it over a DM in private comp
Speaker 5: So that was like I felt really similarly then, And
Speaker 5: I think probably the most important reservation that people should
Speaker 5: have about Trump, even if you're a conservative, even if
Speaker 5: you are ideologically maga, but you're not like full Curtis
Speaker 5: Jarvin and want just like a monarchy or an American
Speaker 5: CEO instead of a president. The biggest reservation people should
Speaker 5: still have is fake claims, a fraud in election because
Speaker 5: in elections, because that is the hallmark of Banana Republicanism,
Speaker 5: and we've seen there's precedent for it. So I don't
Speaker 5: think like I actually think a lot of conservatives, if
Speaker 5: you laid out what Chrystal just said, would be like,
Speaker 5: oh haha, But no, I think it's completely serious because
Speaker 5: again we have precedent for it. So I've got I've
Speaker 5: got nothing in response to that.
Speaker 7: Let me ask you guys something too about this York
Speaker 7: County shooting of there was an Pennsylvania in Pennsylvania, five
Speaker 7: cops were ambushed, three killed, two others wounded. And I'm
Speaker 7: curious if you think that the climate that we're in
Speaker 7: explains some of the lack of attention that the media
Speaker 7: is paying to this. Uh, the guy's Matthew Ruth was
Speaker 7: the is the killer he was he was he was
Speaker 7: killed or he took his own life. It's there's there's
Speaker 7: very little information about about this. He was stalking his uh,
Speaker 7: his girlfriend, his ex girlfriend. She called the police, they
Speaker 7: suspected an ambush and still got ambushed from a cornfield.
Speaker 7: And he's he's a registered libertarian, I believe, white guy.
Speaker 7: Like it's what people call demographically inconvenient. But even given
Speaker 7: all those facts, the killing of the shooting of five
Speaker 7: police officers and the killing of three usually makes national news,
Speaker 7: even if the shooter is demographically inconvenient. Yeah, there's barely
Speaker 7: been a blip. I wonder if the political climate the
Speaker 7: media is under right now is influencing decisions by broadcasters
Speaker 7: to say, you know what, do we let's not touch this?
Speaker 7: This is like this is just this looks this looks
Speaker 7: like trouble I.
Speaker 2: Mean, the innocent explanation would be there's just so much
Speaker 2: else going on, you know, with Charlie Kirk just being
Speaker 2: assassinated and that being the investigation of that being ongoing,
Speaker 2: and the Kimmel censorship and all of those things right
Speaker 2: and to presidence in the UK, like all these things
Speaker 2: that are going on that it just couldn't quite break through.
Speaker 2: But what I would say, Ryan, is if the shooter
Speaker 2: were trans and just murdered three cops, everyone in the
Speaker 2: fucking country would know about it and it would be
Speaker 2: wall to wall coverage. So I think there's no doubt
Speaker 2: that the demographic inconvenience of the shooter is a big
Speaker 2: part of the reason why networks society, you know, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of other stories to cover, we're just not
Speaker 2: going to touch this. We're just going to put this
Speaker 2: one on the back burner and we're not going to
Speaker 2: particularly touch it.
Speaker 3: Now. I will say that's nothing new, of course.
Speaker 2: You know, how many stories do we have of like
Speaker 2: adorable little white girls who get murdered and kidnapped or
Speaker 2: horrible things and they become national names and stories, and
Speaker 2: same thing happens to an adorable little black girl and
Speaker 2: nobody ever knows her name, Like, this is not a
Speaker 2: new thing in terms of American media presentation, but I
Speaker 2: think you are correctly touching on the particular political valance
Speaker 2: that could be influencing, you know, the lack of coverage,
Speaker 2: lack of details, the lack of curiosity around this one.
Speaker 2: Because when I saw this break, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 2: what the hell is going on here? And I'm still
Speaker 2: in the place of Wow, what the hell is going
Speaker 2: on here? Because there hasn't been much of any significant,
Speaker 2: like journalistic inquiry into what exactly unfolded, what the circumstances were.
Speaker 8: So Ryan was asking crazy.
Speaker 6: Ryan was searching for hope earlier in this episode, and
Speaker 6: we were also searching for people that were meeting the moment.
Speaker 6: And a lot of people have been saying, oh, what
Speaker 6: about all these center right, right wing podcasters who made
Speaker 6: free speech and cancel culture a core part of their message,
Speaker 6: a core part of why they voted for Trump, why
Speaker 6: they supported Trump and the vibe shift, and people were
Speaker 6: a lot of people on the left were saying, Oh,
Speaker 6: these guys are going to duck their heads not meet
Speaker 6: the moment, and so let's see what that side of
Speaker 6: podcasting has been saying first here, I've got a few
Speaker 6: different ones. This one hears from Tim Dillon. This is
Speaker 6: an Instagram story for those just listening, it says on
Speaker 6: his Instagram stories, sc commissioner threatening to revoke broadcasting licenses
Speaker 6: has chilling effect on free speech. Ag threatening to go
Speaker 6: after hate speech is a bad sign. When someone has
Speaker 6: a weapon, everyone will use it. I continue to unconditionally
Speaker 6: support Israel and all its actions now and forever. It's
Speaker 6: nice to cover your bases there.
Speaker 7: And he also announced that I couldn't even tell if
Speaker 7: he was joking that he'd been fired from the Saudi.
Speaker 4: Comedy circuit.
Speaker 2: So I's a separate issue that might be keeping the
Speaker 2: down payment, because he did I looked at their website
Speaker 2: and for the coffee, and I don't see him there anymore.
Speaker 2: So I think that might have actually been true, because
Speaker 2: he did his whole monologue where which I Coverden did
Speaker 2: monologue about where he was like, you know, they're paying
Speaker 2: me enough to look away.
Speaker 3: But then he said in.
Speaker 2: The model like if someone's being beaten next to me,
Speaker 2: I'm going to look away. If there's slave labor, I'm
Speaker 2: going to look away. So we sort of named the
Speaker 2: things that Saudi Arabia is doing so I can't. I
Speaker 2: couldn't totally he was joking, but I think he may.
Speaker 2: I think he may have been canceled from the comedy.
Speaker 6: Funniest thing to do is take the down payment and
Speaker 6: get fired. Getting fired is the funniest thing you can do,
Speaker 6: always as a comedian. And that's why I like Tim
Speaker 6: has been unafraid to kind of like poke all sides,
Speaker 6: including like his friends, Like, I mean, he's ripped RFK,
Speaker 6: he rips Barry all the time. He used to get
Speaker 6: invited to dinners there.
Speaker 7: So he also he also joked I'll be taking the
Speaker 7: down payment and donating it to a foundation that supports
Speaker 7: He's like, I'm just kidding. I'm gonna buy a car.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Another see you in Montecito.
Speaker 6: But this one I thought was even more interesting. This
Speaker 6: comes from a barstool of sports podcast Now. The CEO,
Speaker 6: Dave Portnoy, seemed to support the decision, was kind of
Speaker 6: gaslighting people and saying it's not really a big deal.
Speaker 6: It's all about a business decision. But here's one of
Speaker 6: the podcasts under his arm and what they had to say,
Speaker 6: No right now.
Speaker 12: In twenty five at ten oh six on September eighteenth,
Speaker 12: The extreme right are the biggest group of pussies that
Speaker 12: has ever existed for America, A bunch of because people
Speaker 12: with green hair at Starbucks. Because once in a while
Speaker 12: a fucking guy swam against girl.
Speaker 8: You fucking pussies have broken in half.
Speaker 12: When in consequence culture Portnoy, who is just waving his
Speaker 12: arms at the right to like him again after the
Speaker 12: thing last week he said it was Trump's fault privately
Speaker 12: publicly that Charlie Kirk died. Now he's like, I gotta
Speaker 12: get them back. I gotta get them back.
Speaker 8: I get them back. I will say it's the Try profile.
Speaker 8: So yeah, and is he getting that?
Speaker 7: Is he just getting anti?
Speaker 2: Just getting anti at the very Yeah, the try profile
Speaker 2: that's still on barstool.
Speaker 8: All right, let's let's we'll look into this. Well, we're
Speaker 8: gonna look.
Speaker 4: I thought he got into it.
Speaker 3: He had me until the end there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, talk about not sticking the landing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know Jewish, Yes he's Jewish, Yes he's Jewish.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So he just wraps it up with some blatant anti Semitism.
Speaker 7: But he's talking about Portnite and he.
Speaker 2: Says, typical member of the tribe he's just basically saying
Speaker 2: like typical jew.
Speaker 8: So yeah, yeah, all right, so we we lost that one.
Speaker 6: Tim. Tim destuck the landing far better by hailing Israel.
Speaker 6: So we're showing the right way all the wrong way
Speaker 6: of doing this.
Speaker 5: We've smoked out the true anti Semite on breaking points,
Speaker 5: and we all know it's not Griffin.
Speaker 7: Griffin.
Speaker 6: Okay, what this is the free half of the show.
Speaker 6: This is the half the Fox News producers watch, Emily.
Speaker 6: This is not okay, they.
Speaker 7: Watched the whole thing that they absolutely watched the whole thing.
Speaker 7: They share one premium sub im.
Speaker 6: I'm a defender. I'm a defender of Jewish people all
Speaker 6: around the world.
Speaker 7: So check the ips of their login. See how many
Speaker 7: people they didn't name drop. Starbucks though, and we I
Speaker 7: had to throw this up here. There's an update here
Speaker 7: from Starbucks. Update Starbucks employees must write Charlie Kirk's name.
Speaker 8: No matter what your names exactly.
Speaker 6: In response to some conversations on social media, Starbucks shared
Speaker 6: the following there are no restrictions on customers using Charlie
Speaker 6: Kirk's name on their order, and we are following up
Speaker 6: with our team, which I just think is such a
Speaker 6: great example, it's like this is the world that they're envisioning,
Speaker 6: like that they need a safe space at Starbucks so
Speaker 6: that there was so lib coded the trans barista can
Speaker 6: write Charlie Kirk on it, like, I don't know, I do, I.
Speaker 4: Want to say go ahead.
Speaker 2: I just I when before Starbucks made this decision or whatever,
Speaker 2: I felt really bad for these baristas who are trying
Speaker 2: to navigate like this corporate policy against writing anything political
Speaker 2: on the cups and these customers coming in and like
Speaker 2: berating them and recording them and putting them on.
Speaker 3: Blasts the world. Like I felt, I felt very bad.
Speaker 7: For the barisa that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, how do you navigate that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Like your boss is telling you to do one thing,
Speaker 2: and then you've got this customer who like wants to
Speaker 2: make a social media moment of it, and then Lives
Speaker 2: of Talk is gonna is going to send it out
Speaker 2: to the world and make it like you're some evil
Speaker 2: like pro murder lefty or whatever.
Speaker 3: So I yeah, the whole thing was.
Speaker 7: And Portnoy fired uh some intern from barstool because he
Speaker 7: posted condolences to Charlie Kirk on like the Barstool Texas
Speaker 7: account or something, and he fired him, saying that you're
Speaker 7: not allowed to do politics, doesn't matter what.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you see this, Yeah, I didn't see that either.
Speaker 4: I didn't see that. That seems weird.
Speaker 7: And Portnoy said, I always hated this kid. He knows
Speaker 7: you're not supposed to do politics on the account. It's
Speaker 7: not about what he said, it's these are these are accounts,
Speaker 7: it's not his personal account. It's not supposed to do politics.
Speaker 7: He had the kid had posted like basically thoughts and
Speaker 7: prayers for Charlie Kirk from the Texas barstool account. So,
Speaker 7: but they have a very strict rule no politics from
Speaker 7: the account. So to Chrystal's point, if you're bar Easton
Speaker 7: and they say no politics on the cup and somebody
Speaker 7: asked you to do put a political gesture on the cup,
Speaker 7: you say no, then you get filmed and now you're
Speaker 7: on limbs of TikTok, and so, yeah, Starbucks kind of
Speaker 7: put them in a bad situation. I agree with you there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I also just want to say, because
Speaker 5: I genuinely think this is important that when something happens
Speaker 5: to somebody who's in the media space, I think as
Speaker 5: Probabilia also explains why Dean Weathers, for example, had such
Speaker 5: a visceral reaction after but really though different, like after
Speaker 5: it happened, did you see Wethers vase?
Speaker 6: For those don't know, Dean Withers is like Dean Withers
Speaker 6: is a very young zoomer liberal TikTok debater, and he was.
Speaker 7: I mean, it was, oh there, it is okay, yeah.
Speaker 5: But anyway, what I was gonna say is for me,
Speaker 5: like as someone who did not know Charlie Kirk nearly,
Speaker 5: as well as a lot of people who are in
Speaker 5: the media who were very very close with him, like
Speaker 5: in right wing media who are like very very very
Speaker 5: close with him, were This is just all I'm trying
Speaker 5: to say here is not defending any like censoriousness or whatever,
Speaker 5: but just to say that I have been trying to
Speaker 5: extend a lot of grace to people, and hopefully that
Speaker 5: people have extended some grace to me, because that was
Speaker 5: like a collective trauma for people on the right who
Speaker 5: are really close to Charlie Kirk and are now the
Speaker 5: ones that find themselves in positions to be like in
Speaker 5: the public space discussing it.
Speaker 4: So I hope that some of this dies down. I
Speaker 4: don't think all of it will die down.
Speaker 5: But I did just want to say that, like, if
Speaker 5: something God forbid happened to like someone on the left,
Speaker 5: I do think we would also be seeing some of
Speaker 5: this like deep visceral anger that's like feels really raw.
Speaker 5: And again I'm not saying that's going to go away.
Speaker 5: I don't think it is, but I do just want
Speaker 5: to say, like I just knowing some of these guys,
Speaker 5: what this did to them psychologically was incredibly hard and
Speaker 5: I can't imagine. Again, I wasn't like a close personal
Speaker 5: friend of Charlie Kirks, but a lot of people that
Speaker 5: I am close friends with were.
Speaker 4: And it's just.
Speaker 5: So anyway, just a word to say, I think some
Speaker 5: of it will go away. I don't think all of
Speaker 5: it will go away. And it's just been crazy.
Speaker 3: I think that's a fair point.
Speaker 2: I don't extend that point to the President of the
Speaker 2: United States, though, And that's who that's fair, you know.
Speaker 7: Is because because he showed that he had no emotional.
Speaker 3: Reaction, that he doesn't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, he was not. How are you
Speaker 2: doing I'm doing great, I'm doing great. My renovation is
Speaker 2: going fantastic, you know. So you know, and I don't
Speaker 2: know how capable he is of human emotions on the
Speaker 2: best of days, but whatever, I mean, And so that's
Speaker 2: that's like, it's one thing, okay, a cultural phenomenal, random influencers.
Speaker 2: You know, I still think you're a person with a platform,
Speaker 2: you still have responsibility. Certainly, I don't think grace would
Speaker 2: be applied in their direction. Not that that should dictate
Speaker 2: what you do whatever, But that's one thing.
Speaker 4: The Presidente's a good example.
Speaker 2: The President of the United States is using this as
Speaker 2: a chance to crack down right in any number of
Speaker 2: ways on media figures, media outlets he doesn't like, on
Speaker 2: left wing groups. You've got Steven Miller, who's like basically
Speaker 2: the real president of the United States, who is out
Speaker 2: there are vertly like, we are going to use this
Speaker 2: aggressively to go after all of our political enemies, and
Speaker 2: they will. I mean, that's I I believe them when
Speaker 2: they when they say that, and they are already taking
Speaker 2: steps in that direction. So you know, my, my, my
Speaker 2: grace said, I can extend to individuals who who directly
Speaker 2: knew Charlie and are impacted by this on a personal level,
Speaker 2: does not extend to the President of the United States,
Speaker 2: who was supposed to represent all of us and is
Speaker 2: probably the worst person I could possibly imagine to be
Speaker 2: the president at a moment such as this.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and before we go to the premium, one other point,
Speaker 7: I think I think the audience correctly sussed out that
Speaker 7: that that the trauma that Emily is talking about having
Speaker 7: hit people close to him, but also people in the
Speaker 7: broad kind of ecosystem also does you know, bleed out
Speaker 7: into people on the progressive side too, like you and
Speaker 7: I think that just you know, psychically, psychologically, people like
Speaker 7: me in Crystal and Hassan and anybody who's kind of
Speaker 7: like a public figure, you know, saw themselves in that.
Speaker 7: And I and I then I and I think the
Speaker 7: audience is right to you'll kind of be to be
Speaker 7: worry of the of that fact, like understand that we're
Speaker 7: that our analysis flows out of out of that bias
Speaker 7: and so that that I but I don't think there's
Speaker 7: you'd have to be just this you know, stone cold,
Speaker 7: non not human person for it to be any different,
Speaker 7: and that's not who we are any either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 6: Well, on that note, folks, we are going to get
Speaker 6: into a lot of other fun stuff here in the
Speaker 6: second half, we're gonna be analyzing breaking down the Candice
Speaker 6: Owens new released photo of the shooter, Tyler Robinson alleged shooter,
Speaker 6: and we're gonna be getting to a few other stories.
Speaker 6: If you want to see all that and ask us
Speaker 6: questions in the AMA, you can sign up at breakingpoints
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Speaker 6: the second half.