David Letterman on the Threats to Late-Night Hosts

11 Labs powers AI voices that don't sound like AI voices, like this one.

11 Labs voice agents are used to handle everything from customer support queries to appointment scheduling.

Get started for free at 11labs.io slash Atlantic.

Wish you could become a morning person?

You know the type of before the sun, early morning runs, first one to the office with donuts and a smile?

How do they do it?

Easy.

With the new Galaxy Watch 8, sleep tracking and personalized insights from Samsung Health help you improve so you can wake up to a whole new you.

One who, dare I say it, skips the snooze?

It's possible.

Train your sleep with Galaxy Watch 8.

Learn more at Samsung.com.

Requires compatible Samsung Galaxy phone, Samsung Health app, and Samsung account.

The FCC has historically acted as a kind of enforcer of community standards.

They've doled out fines for saying the F-word, for example, or wardrobe malfunctions.

Factual mistakes, errors in judgment, bad jokes, that has not traditionally been part of their job.

Until this week.

As you may have already heard, comedian Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show was suspended by ABC for comments he made on the show about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Here's the timing of events, which is important.

Kimmel says something inaccurate about the guy who killed Charlie Kirk.

Shortly after, the chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, gets on a right-wing podcast and suggests that ABC and its affiliates take steps against Kimmel, saying, quote, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.

The network, which relies on stations carrying their programming, wasted little time.

That same day, they pulled Kimmel's show off the air air indefinitely.

Here's what Trump said when a reporter asked him about it on Air Force One.

And

if they're 97% against, they give me holy bed publicity or press.

I mean, they're getting a license.

I would think maybe their license should be taken away.

It would be up to Brendan Kerr.

I'm Hannah Rosen.

This is Radio Atlantic.

On Thursday, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg sat down with exactly the person you want to hear from about what it means that the government is weighing in on whether comedians who do political comedy can make a slightly wrong, mediocre joke.

Retired late show host David Letterman may have very well invented or at least perfected the genre of pushing the political envelope for late night television.

They spoke at the Atlantic Festival on the heels of a conversation with playwright Ayod Akhtar about art and AI.

Here are Goldberg and Letterman.

Just so you understand,

so as you know, David Letterman was coming to do an interview here, but given the events of the last 18 hours or so, we asked him if he would come out a little bit early and talk to me about the events of the last night.

So David Letterman is going to come out, and Ayod is going to switch places with him.

Thank you, Aod.

Ladies and gentlemen, David Letterman.

How you doing?

Thanks for meeting you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Wait a minute.

I was hoping there'd be a second wave.

You're all right.

Nice to see you.

Yeah, yeah.

Thanks for doing this.

I was going to talk about the playwright in the age of AI.

What the hell?

Yeah, I know, I know.

We totally flipped the script on you.

I'm sorry.

I'm just going to stay out here for a few minutes and talk to you about it, and then you're going to interview your guest.

But look.

We saw what happened last night.

It follows what happened to Colbert.

You're the

godfather of the genre.

Yes, I am.

Yeah, you're the godfather of the genre.

The great-grandfather.

Tell us, I wasn't going there.

Tell us what you think about what happened last night to Jimmy Kimmel.

Well, this is a misery.

And

in the world of somebody who is an authoritarian, maybe a dictatorship, sooner or later, everyone is going to be touched.

But this is me.

For 30 years, I did this for a living.

So I see this happen.

They took care of Colbert.

That was rude.

That was inexcusable.

The man deserves a great deal of credit.

He's in the Hall of Fame nine times.

And to be manipulated like that because

the Ellison family didn't want to trouble Donald Trump with this move, so they got rid of him.

Not only got rid of him, got rid of the whole franchise.

You're not going to have to worry about anything, Larry.

It's all gone.

It's fine.

Good night.

And then my good friend Jimmy Kimmel.

I just

feel bad about this because

we all see where this is going, correct?

It's managed media, and it's no good, it's silly, it's ridiculous.

And you can't go around firing somebody because you're fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office.

That's just not how this works.

Ten years ago, I was smart enough to cancel myself.

But the other thing is, the FCC, this guy,

Connor,

Brendan Carr, yes.

So this guy, the FCC, is we can do things the easy way, we can do things the hard way.

Who is hiring these goons?

Mario Puzzo?

The FCC, we're not happy until you're not happy, for God's sakes.

When I was a kid, I was like 20 years old, and I wanted to work at a radio station, so I went to Chicago to the FCC.

You take a test, you pass the test, you have your third phone radio broadcasting license.

That's what the FCC does.

If you're a 50,000-watt clear-channel radio station, once a year they'll come and check your dials to make sure you're not broadcasting at 55,000 watts, and God forbid you are, then you get an $8 fine.

That is the FCC.

I don't know what is going on here.

Well, let me ask you this.

You worked through five or six presidential elections.

Oh, my God.

And yes, this one, a whole list.

It started with Jimmy Carter.

Your first show in the Carter era.

Yes, that's right.

And then all the way right up through Barack Obama.

And was there one after that that I worked for?

When did I leave?

Possibly.

I don't know personally.

When did you...

Ten years ago, you said.

Hang on, I got a list.

Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George Bush II, Barack Barack Obama.

Yeah.

And

attacked these men mercilessly, never once.

Well, Jimmy Carter, not so much, because what can you say about Jimmy Carter?

He was just a sweet guy.

But everybody else, we really went to work on.

And I can remember Bill Clinton we really went to work on.

And then it got so, it was like, whoa, this is a gift.

What are we going to do?

Bill Clinton.

He's out of office after eight years of Bill Clinton.

And then George Bush came along, and it was easy motoring after that.

But the point is, beating up on these people, rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately, in the name of comedy, not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency, let alone the dreaded FCC.

Republican, Democrat, never a well I will say we probably went easy on Barack Obama because I kind of like the guy.

But never a call from the White House, never an intimation.

No, we we never, because everybody sort of understood, in the name of humor, in the name of commenting on what's going on in the world, cultural events, why not?

And by the way, the institution of the President of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show.

You know, it just, it really ought to be bigger.

Well, it was really interesting.

Last night, late at night,

Trump is tweeting, or truth socialing, from Windsor Castle after a state dinner hosted by the King of England about his, in doing his late-night television show Critique.

I mean, it's what do you

it feels like we're living in a simulation when you think about that.

Well, it would be hilarious if it wasn't all leading to something that's from which we won't recover.

Well,

what do you think it's leading to?

I think it's easily,

first of all, here's the thing that's up my nose these days.

By God, we've got to get to work on those midterms.

Well, I think the midterm elections will be elections in name only.

I'm sorry.

The Republicans have raised untold billions of dollars.

The Democrats, I think, are staggering a bit behind in terms of fundraising.

Let me ask you about the actual joke or commentary that Jimmy Kimmel made the other night.

It actually was inaccurate.

I mean, recognizing that he's a comedian, not a Democratic.

Yes, exactly right.

We all make mistakes.

I mean, good Lord.

And by the way, the condition of the United States of America has not been perfect from the time I was born to this very day and before that.

We know that.

The goal is not perfection.

Mistakes are going to be made.

Hopefully it will improve.

I think, sadly, it's not going to improve.

I'm not exactly in full mind understanding of what Jimmy said, what he was trying to say, and what mistake was made.

This is something that was predicted by our president right after Stephen Colbert.

Colbert got walked off.

So you're telling me that this isn't premeditated at some level.

Well, I mean, he also announced that Jimmy Fallon Fallon and Steph Meyer were next.

And Jimmy Fallon, this is my own view, is not quite as sharp-tongued as

and why is that, Jeff?

Why do you think that is?

No, but.

That has something to do with IQ, is that what you're saying?

He is a different personality.

He's just a different kind of community.

By the way, isn't this guy great on Friday nights?

Look at that.

Thank you very much.

Me and my grandparents really loved him.

I told him he's way too young to watch Washington Wee of the Atlantic.

But this was, you know, when this thing happened last night, and by the way, I have heard from Jimmy.

He was nice enough to text me this morning, and he's sitting up in bed taking nourishment.

He's going to be fine.

But I said to my wife, I said, I don't know what to think or say about this situation.

I wish in the world, and this is what's great about New York, I wish in the world I could talk to Jeff Goldberg.

Here I am am talking to Jeff Goldberg.

I mean, honest to God, isn't it amazing how these things work?

It's all serendipity here.

But talk,

keep going on this theme of this dissent.

Because one of the things I think a lot of us are wondering about,

I'm surprised at the number of

hardcore moves that this administration has made in many, many different directions at once, including dismantling the CDC

as just one example, dismantling USAID.

In every case,

you don't like the labor numbers, you fire the person.

So the question is, it does seem, and I just want your analysis of this, it does seem that there's a kind of passivity in the country about these things.

People are saying, well, Jimmy Kimmel did.

I mean, I have to ask you that question, but Jimmy Kimmel did get it wrong.

So the company, we heard Mike Pence earlier say, well, look, it's a private company.

Jimmy Kimmel doesn't doesn't have a First Amendment right to work for that company.

He didn't exactly deal with the question of the pressure put on by the FCC.

But

what is your diagnosis?

What is the red line for the American people who I've believed

like having a First Amendment?

Historically.

Oh, really?

And today.

No, I mean, I've always operated the assumption that people think it's pretty good that you can get to say what you want in America.

Yes, yes.

So what is going on here?

Well, I would ask you, what are the determining landmarks here?

Authoritarianism, how is that different from a dictatorship?

Does authoritarianism breed dictators?

Is dictator a special category?

Where are we on that progress?

Because I think we're inexorably headed in that direction.

So, I need you to tell me something encouraging that I can take home that will settle down my wife.

You're not, this is not rhetorical.

You're at.

I'm asking you.

Oh, you're at shit.

He said shit.

Oh, my God.

The Atlantic Monthly guy said shit.

Yes.

There's your First Amendment, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

As I said to Ayad,

we don't worry about the FCC.

Look, we don't worry.

I mean, and I have to say this in all seriousness to a group of people who subscribe to the Atlantic and read The Atlantic.

Look, you know, there's only two ways to approach.

I'm not trying to sound like self-righteous or whatever, but I'm not.

There's only two ways to approach this moment.

Either you stay true to your mission and just say what you think is true, what you know to be true, or you don't.

I'm personally very surprised at the large numbers of companies that don't have to fold.

It's just about money.

I mean, nobody yet is threatening to send them to the gulag,

but the pursuit of money

has distorted the reactions of the people who know better, including the people who employ Jimmy Kimmel and and Stephen Colbert, and, by the way, a newspaper that's based in Washington that we can talk about at another time.

What happened to that rag?

There are only two kinds of owners, I mean, we happen to have a good one, but there's two kinds of owners, and they're the owners who

don't realize that their one responsibility is to protect the journalists, to allow them to say exactly what they do.

The whole country is built on this premise.

This is exactly what I'm alluding to.

There were these two standards of journalism in the United States, the Post and the Times.

And one could think, okay, these will stabilize.

These are people who represent the truth.

And if they get it wrong, they apologize and will make changes.

And now

one is gone.

I have family members who live in the Washington, D.C.

area, and you're lucky if you get the crossword and weather, you know, out of the Washington Post.

To answer your question briefly,

there is no answer.

What is the bright line between soft authoritarianism and preemptive authoritarianism?

By the way,

the analogy of the boiling frog is actually incorrect.

Frogs do try to hop out of water, it turns out.

But

finally, we've learned something here.

We go, we go slow.

But

every day brings this almost cognitive assault.

How do people, you think, okay, I'm still okay.

I can still have breakfast.

I still have a big screen TV, so things are okay.

At what point do people who should be affected by this as early on,

and the people that,

and again, things were not good for a huge part of this country, and they're not going to get better for that same group.

So at what point do the doors open in the mind of average Americans, and they're petrified?

As long, you know, this is the problem is as long as there are an abundance of cheap calories, reasonably priced gasoline, and endless video diversion, it's very hard to imagine this country right now sort of saying, wait a second, having a functioning CDC, FDA, USAID, National Weather Service, et cetera.

I don't, this is the main question that I ask, and I think a lot of our journalists of the Atlantic ask, is like,

when is this going to penetrate?

When is the idea that,

like, we've always believed that vaccination was a settled issue in America since the time of George Washington, as I mentioned earlier.

It turns out that it's not settled.

That doesn't seem to upset people enough.

I know, this is the great mystery.

Why aren't people upset by this or a half a dozen other things that are upset?

You know what?

It's like, it's maybe it's like, and I'm not comparing any one country to another country, but maybe it's like Takhir Square in Cairo in 2011.

Nobody thought that it was going to happen until it happened.

And I don't know what the thing is.

This is the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring.

I don't know what the thing is.

You know, you would think that it's when the government fires the people who track Ebola, which is not a partisan issue.

You would think that many people would say, you know what, it's probably better to know where the Ebola is.

And that hasn't happened.

So we're all waiting to see what the reaction is.

But we also understand that people in the Trump administration.

Okay, so let's just say there is an awareness.

By the way, I know that we have to bring out your actual guests.

I'm calling the shots here, pal.

All right.

But let's just say there is an actual awareness beyond what you and I believe and can imagine.

Let's see everybody is aware.

What do we do?

Well, look, we have

still have a free media.

I mean, we get to say.

Well,

large swaths of it.

Yeah, yeah.

The world's biggest newspaper, the New York Times, is independent of what's happening in Washington.

How many times has the president sued them?

I understand that they're under pressure, but again, it comes back to the...

Well, look at what happened to the Washington Post.

No, exactly.

No, no, I'm not saying that.

I'm not saying that

for your magazine.

Thank God.

Yes.

That is worthy of a pause.

But and look, we have an independent judiciary.

What we don't have right now is a legislative branch that is functioning according to the demands of the Constitution.

That is the biggest...

troublesome fact.

But we do have an independent judiciary.

Will you agree that checks and balances have

they're pretty anemic now?

I agree that everything is under pressure right now.

And ultimately, and look, coming back to

the Mike Pence interview before, you know, and I hear a lot of things about Mike Pence, and I understand there are a lot of people who disagree with Mike Pence and his worldview.

I would say this, you know, sometimes

a person's whole life can be judged by what they do in one single moment of their life.

Mike Pence said on that terrible day, nope, this election,

this was a free and fair election.

The results should be ratified.

I don't care that the person who made me vice president wants to kill me.

I'm going to do my constitutional duty.

And I have this hope, and I think you do too.

Maybe you don't.

Well, all right.

No, sorry.

I have this hope that there are many, many more people like Mike Pence in the world.

We haven't seen enough of them in the current manifestation of the world.

What are they waiting on?

That's the question.

That's the question.

By the way, I'll speak for everybody in this room who has kids.

I don't so much care about me.

I've had my fun.

I got a 21-year-old son.

I'm worried about him and his family.

And that's completely degenerate.

And I am now,

I'm going to leave you so you can do.

It's been fun, though, right?

No, it's been great.

I appreciate it.

Thank you for coming to the land.

This is a great pleasure to meet you.

It's good.

It's great.

It's great.

And now you're going to introduce Sergette.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye.

This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Kevin Townsend.

It was edited by Claudina Bade.

Sam Fentress fact-checked, Rob Smirciak engineered, and provided original music.

Claudina Bade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

Listeners, you can watch and listen to more from the Atlantic Festival by visiting theatlantic.com slash festival.

And if you like what you hear on Radio Atlantic, you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic journalists when you subscribe to the Atlantic at theatlantic.com slash listener.

I'm Hannah Rosen.

Thank you for listening.

At L'Oreal Group, we aim to decrease the use of virgin plastic in our packaging by 50% by 2030.

This is how we create the beauty that moves the world.