Ep. 2284 - THE DAY AFTER: Kimmel Suspended, Democrats LIVID

Well, as we have all week, we'll get to the news in a moment.

All the fallout from the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, apparently, according to Left, a significantly more important event in American life than the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Truly, like the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, the sackcloth, and ashes donned by every member of the entertainment coterie in the United States, people who are the richest and most famous among us, spending all their days talking about how this is the death of the Republic.

They did not demonstrate one iota of the same concern about, you know, actual murder for free speech as they are about Jimmy Kimmel being taken off the air in sort of disputed circumstances.

We'll get to that, but I want to lead the whole week with inspirational news about Charlie and about TP USA.

So according to the Daily Wire, Erica Kirk was elected by unanimous vote on Thursday to take over her late husband's role as CEO and board chair of the college campus organization he founded, Turning Point USA.

This, of course, is exactly the right move.

Exactly the right move.

According to the Turning Point Board, quote, in Ecclesiastes, King Solomon wrote that mankind is to be tested by God.

Today, we are facing such a test, yet we also know that God has prepared us with everything we need to overcome this ordeal.

It was the honor of our lives to serve as board members at Charlie's side.

Charlie prepared all of us for a moment like this one.

He worked tirelessly to ensure Turning Point USA was built to survive even the greatest tests.

And now it is our great pride to announce Erica Kirk as the new CEO and chair of the board for Turning Point USA.

All of us at Turning Point USA have a special role in carrying Charlie Kirk's mantle and completing his vision of bringing us all closer to our Lord and fostering a prosperous country for generations to come.

As Charlie always said, we have a country to save.

We will not surrender or kneel before evil.

We will carry on.

The attempt to destroy Charlie's work will become our chance to make it more powerful and enduring than ever before.

May God bless Erica, the Kirk family, and the entire team at Turning Point USA.

That was written by TPUSA board members, Doug DeGroup, Mike Miller, Tom Sedeka, and Dave Engelhardt.

It's exactly the right move.

It's exactly the right move.

Erica, of course, is a public figure in her own right.

She has run businesses.

She has an excellent educational background.

She, of course, was involved with Charlie.

Charlie, of course, was the driving force behind Turning Point USA.

But it's not as though his wife was not involved or unaligned or something.

She was very politically active.

In fact, here is a clip of Charlie with Erica on his show just a few months ago.

My wife joins us, Erica Kirk, the beautiful legendary Erica.

I love you so much.

I love you.

You're my best friend.

Welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

We have asked the audience for questions.

You pick one.

Who is more conservative and why?

Erica.

Yes.

By far.

Not even close.

I am a moderate compared to Erica.

Andrew always jokes that once you got married to me, you got more based.

That's true.

That is true.

No, Erica is very conservative.

Do you think having kids made you more conservative?

100%.

Which I didn't think was possible.

So, Erica will be taking over as the head of the organization, which of course is precisely exactly the right move.

Erica is not only a delightful human being, she also happens to be made in Charlie's mold.

She is a fighter, and that is great for TPUSA.

Couldn't be more excited about that.

And obviously, we at Daily Wire will continue to help TPUSA the best we can.

Meanwhile, Speaker Johnson is urging a unanimous resolution for a day honoring Charlie Kirk, scheduled for his birthday, October 14th.

In moments like this, when political instability and fear are pervasive, it's incumbent upon leaders to step forward and stand in the breach and do what is right.

And so by voting for this resolution today, we're making a strong statement on behalf of the Congress.

We're telling our constituents, for one thing, that political violence, but also the glorification and celebration of that violence, are profoundly wrong, and that goes against everything we stand for as Americans.

Charlie stood for exactly the opposite.

He stood for what was good in America, what is virtuous, what is worthy of protection and preservation.

And we honor his memory by doing this simple act of passing this resolution.

I can't imagine that anyone would vote against it or vote present or pretend as though this is not exactly the right thing to do.

So I certainly hope that we can pass this resolution unanimously today, just as it should be passed.

Okay, so again, all this beautiful tribute to Charlie.

His memorial is to take place on Sunday in Arizona.

It's going to be taking place at the football stadium in Phoenix.

And we're talking like 65,000 people there.

And what I've heard from the folks over at TPUSA is that the reservations were numbering over a quarter million.

And that was a couple of days ago, as far as people who wanted to get in.

I mean, again, the outpouring of love for Charlie is an amazing, amazing thing.

And that's the thing that I think that most Americans should be focused on.

They should be focused on the good that Charlie did and the good that TPUSA, the organization that he built, will continue to to do under Erica's leadership.

Joining us on the line is our White House reporter, Mary Margaret Olihan.

Mary Margaret is going to be going to Charlie Kirk's funeral on Sunday aboard Air Force One with the President of the United States.

Mary Margaret, thanks for joining the show.

Really appreciate it.

Hey, Ben, it's great to be here.

So, obviously, it's been an incredibly tough week for an enormous number of people.

What's the attitude around the White House given the horrifying murder of our friend Charlie Kirk?

Well, Ben, it has been an an incredibly sad week.

And I think, still here at the White House, if you ask any of these officials or members of the communications team how they're doing, how things are, people respond: not great.

Charlie was a friend and colleague and even a mentor to many of these people who work here.

And so it's been incredibly crushing to see how he was killed and to, I think, experience the aftermath of a lot of this aggressively violent rhetoric directed towards a lot of members of the Trump administration.

You know, we heard only this morning, it was reported by CBS News, that Caroline Levitt now has a security detail.

Now, I asked the White House about this, they didn't comment further on it, but what I can tell you is I have a federal law enforcement source that told me you don't get a security detail unless there's a reason for it, unless there is a threat assessment done to show that you need one.

And that source also told me that there's a lot of members across the Trump administration, whether they're in higher-level positions or mid-level positions, lower-level positions that are receiving threats as well.

And whether those threats are substantiated, it doesn't really matter.

They're receiving them all across the board.

And this is really creating a culture of fear among a lot of people.

That being said, these members of the Trump administration are still determined to go to this funeral.

They're still going to show their support for their deceased friend.

And we're seeing across the board a lot of

examinations of how safe this event will be.

Obviously, President Donald Trump will be going, Vice President J.D.

Vance will be going.

Ben, I know that you'll be in attendance, and I will as well.

And so this is a very serious event, and I'm glad that they're taking security so seriously.

And it's a really sad time, but it will be beautiful for everyone to be gathered in Arizona together and to honor Charlie's memory.

So, Mary Margaret, obviously, we've seen some of the public reports.

I've talked to some of the people with TPUSA itself about what the event is going to look like.

What are you hearing from the White House's perspective about what people can expect on Sunday?

Yes, so I know that

Charlie's widow, Erica Kirk, is scheduled to speak at the funeral event.

This is going to be a massive public funeral.

I believe the President of the United States is scheduled to speak as well, as well as JD Vance and other members of the Trump administration and conservative hosts or commentators who were close with Charlie to honor his memory.

I'll be flying in with the President and other reporters, members of the White House press pool on Sunday.

And this is a massive event.

I'm seeing TPUSA commentators like my friend Alex Clark.

She's urging as many people as possible to go to this event.

The dress code is red, white, and blue, Sunday best, but red, white, and blue.

And Alex, as I saw her encouraging online, she said, even if you can't get into the event, even if it's completely full, I want you in the streets.

I want everyone in red, white, and blue.

I want this to be bigger than a Taylor Swift concert, bigger than the Super Bowl.

And so you're seeing a lot of emotion like this, support from people who worked with him, who are close with him, to encourage as many people as possible to come out and honor his memory.

And I hope we do see that.

I hope that we see the stadium packed for Charlie and that security is tight and that everyone can honor his memory as the great man who he was.

Well, it's Mary Margaret Olihan, our White House reporter.

Mary Margaret, really appreciate it.

And obviously, I'll see you on Sunday to celebrate the life and legacy of Charlie Curt.

Looking forward to it, Ben.

Okay, meanwhile, the entire media are filled with rage and anguish today, not over Charlie's murder.

I mean, let's be real, there are many who are not of my political ilk, who were very broken up over Charlie's murder.

I got calls from them, emails, texts.

I know who they are.

And honestly, obviously,

I feel the exact same way.

There are many on the left who did not feel the exact same way.

There are many on the left who felt like, you know, just another day in America, or it's just a gun violence act, or even, well, I mean, he did have some views I don't particularly like.

With that said, the outpouring for Jimmy Kimmel is overwhelming, overwhelming.

So let's start from the things that we know about Jimmy Kimmel going off the air.

Number one, Jimmy Kimmel's ratings were lower than dog bleep.

Jimmy Kimmel had horrifyingly low ratings, like truly awful ratings.

Remember, he was on network television, network TV.

He was drawing in 2025 1.6 million people viewing his show, being broadcast for free on network TV across the country.

In the advertiser-coveted demographic of adults age 25 to 54,

the decline was even more significant.

Okay, you ready for this?

Adults age 25 to 54.

What were his views?

In 2015, he had a million viewers in that age range.

By 2025,

he had, I kid you not, 261,000 people in that age range, 25 to 54, watching his show.

My show is multiple times larger than Jimmy Kimmel's show by this metric.

Like by a multiple.

The ABC late night program showed a staggering 72% of the audience that helps pays the bill over the last decade.

Compare that to Gutfeld over on Fox.

In 2025, Guttfeld averaged 3.2 million total viewers, despite the fact that it's on a cable channel.

It's not a network.

Meanwhile, when it came to that 25 to 54 demographic, Gutfeld was averaging 381,000 people compared to 261,000 for Kimmel, meaning that Guttfeld was ahead of him by 46%.

So it is quite possible, frankly, that a bunch of local affiliates were just done, that they were just done with Jimmy Kimmel.

And when Jimmy Kimmel decided that he was going to go on air and heavily suggest that the shooter of Charlie Kirk was, in fact, a mega conservative, that they'd had it.

Many of these station owners, remember the way that this works is that many of the local stations are not owned directly by ABC.

They are owned by local television networks or by consortiums like Sinclair.

So Sinclair broadcasting happens to be conservative in its orientation politically.

The ownership of Sinclair is conservative.

There's been longtime rumors of Sinclair trying to launch its own form of Fox News, essentially, with its own lineup and all the rest.

So it is perfectly plausible that Sinclair looked at what Jimmy Kimmel said and they said, you know what, we're done.

We're not interested anymore.

In fact, Sinclair said that his suspension by ABC was insufficient.

What happened is the local affiliates went to ABC, they said, we don't want him on the air.

And ABC responded by basically saying, well, I mean, if like half of our affiliates don't want you on the air, we're just going to suspend your show because what else are we going to do?

We have to provide them some programming.

Well, Sinclair announced it would yank Jimmy Kimmel live from its stations until the host apologized directly to Charlie Kirk's family and also donated to TPUSA, which, of course, is not going to happen.

The company vowed not to return Kimmel's show until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network's commitment to professionalism and accountability.

Meanwhile, Nextstar, they also were the biggest network to say that they were not interested, the network of affiliates to say they weren't interested in Jimmy Kimmel.

When this happened, apparently, Jimmy Kimmel had been planning to double down on his remarks.

The reason he was pulled abruptly is because he was planning the night after that show on doing another monologue where he ripped into MAGA.

According to the New York Post, late night host Jimmy Kimmel said he was unwilling to apologize for his remarks that blamed MAGA supporters for killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

He said he was going to double down.

on attacking President Trump's backers before he was yanked from the air, according to new reports.

Kimmel learned in a phone call from top Disney executive Dana Walden on Wednesday afternoon that his show was being removed indefinitely according to deadline.

During that call, Kimmel reportedly refused to comply with calls from critics and owners of dozens of ABC affiliate stations for him to apologize.

Kimmel felt his remarks required no apologies.

Apparently, he also claimed he was planning to call out his critics for the latest attacks on him, all while trying to clarify his comments about Kirk's death.

He says that his comments were mischaracterized.

Disney felt that if Kimmel had doubled down on his MAGA comments, the company would have been forced to go beyond suspending him and they they would just have to fire him.

It's still unclear if he's willing to return after this suspension at all.

All righty, in a moment, we will get to Jimmy Kimmel, why he was actually fired.

He was planning to double down.

Plus, we will get to the FCC.

Are they involved in over-regulation?

Is there going to be a crackdown on quote-unquote hate speech?

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Okay, so just from that fact pattern, it appears that the reason that Kimmel was taken off the air is because of organic outrage by viewers, which filtered up to affiliates.

And those affiliates went to Disney and ABC and they said, we are not interested in having Jimmy Kimmel on our air.

And he responded by saying, I'm going to double down and attack your viewers.

So as a matter of sort of organic market blowback to crap programming, totally legit.

And in fact, not unprecedented in any way, shape, or form.

This has happened many times before, many, many times times before.

It happened most prominently, actually, right after September 11th when Bill Maher was suspended from the air because Bill Maher made some comments about 9-11 that people didn't like.

And then, of course, he found his new home over on HBO.

What muddies the waters here are the words of the FCC chairman, Brendan Carr.

Because Brendan Carr went on Benny Johnson and suggested right before the affiliates apparently went to Disney and ABC, that there might be regulation, there might be punishment for affiliates for putting out the Jimmy Kimmel show.

And that raised the specter of government involvement.

As I said yesterday, as an organic matter, Jimmy Kimmel should have been kicked off the air 10 years ago.

He's an awful, awful late-night host.

He decided not to be funny.

He decided that instead of going for laughter, he was going to go for clapter, meaning like, ah, yeah, I totally agree with what you're saying.

He decided he was going to go for that a decade ago.

And he should have been basically booted for being bad at his job a long time ago.

So I shed no tears for Jimmy Kimmel.

With that said, the FCC should not be in the business of telling local affiliates what they should and should not broadcast.

So why don't we begin this discussion about what the FCC can and should do by finding out what exactly they have legal power to do?

So I asked my sponsors over at Comet, a browser by perplexity, what powers does the FCC have to regulate actual content over the airwaves?

And according to Comet, the FCC's powers to regulate actual content over the airwaves are significantly limited by the First Amendment.

It does have authority in certain areas, specifically regarding obscenity, indecency, and profanity, as well as public interest and disclosure requirements for broadcasters.

The FCC is strictly limited in censoring broadcast material and cannot impose content-based restrictions that would curb specific viewpoints.

There are some exemptions there.

Public interest requirements are about broadcast licenses.

They are awarded based on whether stations, quote, serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity, which is interpreted to include equal opportunities for political candidates, disclosure of sponsorship for political or commercial content, prohibition of lottery advertising, and rules against broadcast news distortion if it involves deliberate manipulation of significant facts.

So the case that Brendan Carr would make is that basically Jimmy Kimmel was deliberately manipulating significant facts.

And so the FCC can go after him.

The problem, of course, is that the thing that we have learned here over and over and over again is that if a left-wing person is at the head of the FCC, they will simply accuse the right wing of deliberate manipulation of significant facts.

And so what's good for the goose is good for the gander here, which is why the actual solution here would be to remove that capacity from the FCC.

How about that?

Can we get any support for that?

Will Republicans?

Will Democrats?

Will anyone support that?

Here's the beautiful thing about a government of enumerated powers.

A government of enumerated powers is a government you don't have to fear as much because if you're on the wrong side of the government, the government still can't do anything to you because it has enumerated powers.

So, if you reduce the power of government in this area entirely,

that seems to me a better solution than a race to the bottom where every prior norm gets broken.

And I fully understand the mutually assured destruction argument.

I've used it myself before.

But I think that what we're getting into now is not mutually assured destruction, but assumption that the next go-around, they will destroy you, so you should just destroy them preemptively.

And if that happens, then basically there's no reason for anybody to go weapons down.

Again, it all remains unclear as to why this actually happened.

There's a long account in the Wall Street Journal about how this happened.

The timeline goes like this.

Kimmel criticized how Trump and other Republicans responded to the shooting and suggested the shooter was, in fact, a MAGA Republican.

Brendan Carr suggested during a podcast appearance two days later, the FCC could take action against the broadcast licenses of ABC-owned stations.

Advertisers and affiliates soon called the network, expressing concern about Kimmel's show.

Executives at Sinclair and Nextstar, owners of more than 60 local ABC stations, told network leaders after Carr's remarks they would indefinitely preempt the show starting that night, moves that would hobble the program's reach.

So, again, how much was the FCC part of this conversation?

Is the big question.

Nexstar

is currently being regulated by the FCC.

They need the FCC sign-off on their $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna.

And it needs the agency to ease rules that currently limit the percentage a broadcaster can reach to 39% of the nation's TV households.

Now, Nexstar put out a statement.

They said it had nothing to do with the government.

Quote, the decision to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live was made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar.

They had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision.

Apparently,

ABC scrambled to satisfy advertisers who paid for commercials to run on episodes that were canceled.

Advertising buyers said they would likely shift ad dollars committed to Kimmel's show to other programs.

Some considered asking for their money back.

So, the question remains as to whether this was a reaction to Kimmel being bad at his job and saying bad things, or whether, in fact, this was a reaction to the FCC.

And that's the open question at this point.

FCC Commissioner Ana Gomez, she said, listen, we actually do not have the authority to retaliate against broadcasters, and so talk of us doing this is sloppy.

The thing that we need to understand is that the FCC cannot.

It does not have the authority, it does not have the ability, it does not have the constitutional right to take action against broadcasters because the administration doesn't like what they're saying, because they don't like anyone that pushes back against them.

So

what you see are just threats, but the threats are the point.

Because we don't have the authority to do this, because it's against the law, we would not be able to actually take that final action because on appeal, The FCC would be wrong on the facts and the law if in fact it retaliated against the networks, or I mean the broadcasters, the local licensees, because of what they er,

that doesn't change the math, meaning that yes, the FCC probably could not do what Brendan Carr had sort of suggested.

However, if you're Nexstar, I mean, this is just a steel man, the opposing case, if you're Nexstar and you're under the possibility of merger and you want to make sure that the merger doesn't get shut down, you want to please the FCC.

And the way to please the FCC is to do the FCC's bidding.

Now, again, it seems to me that there's a perfectly good organic case for canceling Jimmy Kimmel's show or suspending Jimmy Kimmel's show based on ratings, based on the fact that he says schmucky things all the time, based on the fact that he's bad at his job.

And that's a point that the FCC's Brendan Carr made.

He said Kimmel was losing viewers faster than Carr, who is bald, loses hair.

I think the last couple of decades you've seen the FCC really step back from enforcing the public interest standard.

And I don't think that that's a good thing.

Just look at the trust in national mainstream media.

I mean, it's just in an absolute nosedive.

And look at the ratings for people like Jimmy Kimmel.

I mean, they are going away, their audience and their viewers, faster than my hair has gone away from the top of my head.

So, you know, again, that's fine.

But when he says that he is going to go after others, now you start to build a narrative just politically.

There's two questions here.

Should the FCC get involved in this way?

And even if the FCC is not involved in this way, should they be promulgating a narrative that can be used by the left to make the claim that the Trump administration is acting irresponsibly or or in an authoritarian manner with regard to speech.

If the narrative takeaway from the murder of Charlie Kirk turns from there is a systemic left-wing threat embedded in actual ideologies,

a violent threat that emerges from the sewers of certain ideologies, and that needs to be fought both socially and insofar as it is possible with governmental power.

If it shifts from that narrative to the Trump administration is trying to shut down the view, that is is a giant fail.

It is a giant fail.

It is a counterproductive measure

because the sympathy for Charlie is nationwide.

Again, there's widespread sympathy for Charlie, obviously, for his family, and there should be.

And there's widespread outrage at the attack on free speech it represents when somebody gets shot for debating.

If somehow that narrative is turned into a narrative about the Trump administration actually shutting down free speech,

that's a fail.

That's a fail.

It's a fail for the country.

It's a fail for the administration.

It is a bad way of approaching policy.

Many things can be true at once.

Jimmy Kimmel is terrible and should be off the air.

Charlie Kirk was a warrior for free speech who was shot.

That is significantly worse than Jimmy Kimmel being taken off the air.

Also, the FCC should not be threatening various broadcasters and hosts with governmental consequences for speech.

And they shouldn't even appear to be doing that.

Even if that's not the reason why people are acting, it muddies the waters.

Again, there's an easy way to tell whether you're being ideologically coherent on this.

If the shoe were on the other foot, if a left-wing politician had been shot or a left-wing activist had been shot by somebody associated with the right, and Barack Obama were president, or Joe Biden were president, and they had activated their FCC

to go after local Fox affiliates, for example, to go after talk radio, which is also public airwaves.

Would the right sit back and say, well, you know, you know,

this is why the solution to lack of trust between the right and the left is not the use of government to effectuate more power in general.

The solution to that lack of trust is for the government to step back and effectuate less power.

I don't mean in the criminal law.

The Trump administration going after Antifa, going after the people who fund Antifa, going after the people who fund various violent groups around, that is not only,

that is only good, that is necessary, it is mandatory.

But this narrative that the left is starting to spin up is bad.

Now, again, the the left is overdoing it on its own, right?

So many things being true at once, as we'll get to, the left has decided that this is the greatest assault on American free speech in American history, which is totally crazy considering a man was shot to death for doing free speech one week ago.

And they seem to care much more about Jimmy Kimmel being taken off the air than Charlie Kirk being murdered live on TV.

But we'll get to that in a moment.

Here's the FCC's Brendan Carr saying that they will hold broadcasters accountable to the public interest.

Look, we're going to continue to hold these broadcasters accountable to the public interest.

And if broadcasters don't like that, simple solution.

They can turn their license into the FCC.

There's other things that we can do with it that would serve the national interest.

And frankly, other people would want to use this spectrum.

But we're going to continue to make clear that we're holding broadcasters accountable to the public interest.

And again, I think that's going to be a really good thing for the country.

Again, people can go on podcasts and go on cable shows like this.

You don't have a license from the FCC.

So there's a lot more they can do there.

There's no public interest obligation on those outlets.

Okay, again, the idea here should be that we should just deregulate.

The FCC actually should not have the power to do local broadcast licenses,

to regulate speech on those broadcasters.

They shouldn't.

It was one thing to say that, by the way, before the era of the internet, when basically you had a limited spectrum and the only things that got on TV were those local stations.

I'd make the case we should have deregulated long before that, but this is a vestigial organ of a broadcast television infrastructure that no longer applies to the general informational consumption of the American people.

The reason that, again, I'm objecting to this is because the narrative that you're laying out for the left, and you are, the narrative you're laying out for the left or providing the impetus to is the narrative that the Trump administration is anti-free speech in the aftermath of the murder of a free speech martyr.

To blow that opportunity is a giant fail.

The FCC's Brandon Carr said yesterday that maybe he would go after the view.

Now, listen, there is no one in America who would be happy who would be happier to watch The View go off the air than I.

The View is a bunch of shrieking harpies who are unbelievably stupid, vicious, venal, annoying, Herodins, jabbering at each other nonsensically

to the claptor.

of trained seals in the audience.

It is the worst show on TV.

That is my review.

If I were a regulator, would I be saying the view needs to go off the air because of violation of equal time rules?

I really don't think we want to play this game.

I really don't.

It was equal time rules, by the way, that restricted back in the 1980s the ability of Republicans to get out their messages via the airwaves.

Now, here is Brendan Carr with Scott Jennings talking about this.

You could make the argument that The View is a bona fide news show, but I'm not so sure about that.

And I think it's worthwhile to have the FCC

look into whether the View and some of these other programs that you have still qualify as bona fide news programs and therefore exempt from the equal opportunity regime that Congress has put in place.

Yeah, well, I mean, why are you just giving the talking point to the other side?

Why?

Well, Charlie Curt gets murdered.

Now they've taken Kimmel off the air.

And now they're taking the View off the air.

And will you be next?

And President Trump, unfortunately, threw some gasoline on the fire yesterday.

So he said one true thing.

He went off on Jimmy Kimmel, said he's a terrible host.

He went scorched earth on him.

Agree with every word from the President of the United States here.

Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else.

And he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk.

And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person.

He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago.

So, you know, you can call that free speech or not.

He was fired for lack of talent.

Okay, that totally agree with that.

And again, if that, that should be the story, right?

The story should be: Jimmy Kimmel gets fired because he's bad at his job and nobody wants him on there, yay, right?

But instead, we're now going to have a conversation about hate speech, which again, Republicans have opposed that idea for my entire lifetime because it is malleable.

Yes, of course, there is some speech that is more hateful than other speech, but that is a malleable definition that can be applied to everything.

The left was trying to say that's what Charlie was doing, hate speech and regulated out of existence.

So here's President Trump saying that maybe Brandon Carr will go after others.

Yeah,

why?

Just why?

Here was the president.

And then 97% against.

They give me holy banned 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 Carr.

I think Brendan Carr is outstanding.

He's a patriot.

He loves our country.

And he's a tough guy.

So we'll have to see.

President Trump was then on with Martha McCallum.

This is an interview that's supposed to be broadcast on Sunday.

And in one of the clips released from the interview, he started talking about hate speech.

And Martha McCallum made the quite proper point that Charlie Kirk didn't believe in the concept of hate speech because, you know, my entire lifetime, the right has not believed in the concept of hate speech, given, again, that hate speech is a malleable term that can be applied to anything you don't like.

And the president, instead of recognizing that point,

then said, well, maybe Charlie would have changed his mind given what happened to him.

Well,

no, no, he would not have.

No, he would not have.

Because the person who shot him was claiming that Charlie was quote-unquote hateful.

The very concept of hate speech is a dangerous concept because it assumes that any speech I don't like can be labeled hate and therefore regulated out of existence.

The president of the United States sat down with Martha McCallum over at Fox News and she asked him about hate speech.

Charlie said, you know, that there was no such thing as hate speech.

He obviously, you know, no one anticipated what would happen to Charlie, but you have always been.

That's the president of the United States saying he might not believe that, you know, anymore.

Here's my problem.

Like a couple of days ago, the president of the United States brought the topic of hate speech came up because Pam Bondi, the attorney general, idiotically suggested that she was going to prosecute hate speech and then sort of walked it back.

Well, the president was

heading to the UK.

This is a few days ago.

And he was asked about hate speech, and he labeled and he said that ABC News had engaged in a form of hate speech.

Now, the president of the United States sued ABC News for having selectively edited a Kamala Harris

interview.

That may be many things.

It could be a form of discrimination.

It could be a form of libel, depending on how it was cut.

Is it hate speech?

Like I really broadening out hate speech just mean things I don't like.

Like, this is a problem.

You should, it's not good.

Here we go.

You should probably go after people

Okay, and this follows upon the president filing a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, claiming that the paper is a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democratic Party.

The suit points to three articles and a malicious, defamatory, and disparaging book.

And it points to the editorial board's endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

So,

again, having looked at the lawsuit, I do not think that lawsuit's going to go very far.

But,

regardless of whether you think that it's good or bad or whatever, the bottom line is this: in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination, the murder of Charlie Kirk by a left-wing, radical, gay man in a relationship with a furry trans.

In the aftermath of that, if the narrative that comes after that is not

violent leftist groups must be found, rooted out and destroyed, that their funders must be ferreted out and prosecuted, that permission structures on the social level for violent

ideologies must be removed.

If that's not the narrative coming out of Charlie's assassination, and the narrative instead is

we need to go after using governmental power, not so, again, not social sanction, which is fine, governmental power.

We need to go after people that we don't like on the air.

That is going to be, forget about, again, whether it's good or bad morally.

It is political malpractice.

It is a mistake.

Now, the good news for the Trump administration and the Republicans is that the backlash from people on the left is so overwrought and insane in its in its size and scope that it may obliterate the very point that they are trying to make.

Truly.

Alrighty, coming up, I want to get to things the government actually should be focused on other than like Jimmy Kimmel, if that's what they're focused on.

They should be focused on, you know, violent left-wing groups actually doing acts of violence first.

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Jon Stewart did a special weekday break-in.

So he hasn't been broadcasting more than once a week.

And he decided that he was going to break into the daily show, right?

He was going to, he was going to just do a special episode.

Now, notice, no special episode from Jon Stewart last week after Charlie was actually killed, right?

No, No special episode about the importance of free speech after

a person he disagreed with was shot to death in front of 3,000 people and countless others on the internet.

No break-in for that.

But he's breaking in because his friend, Jimmy Kimmel, got suspended from the air.

He did a 23-minute monologue on this, a 23-minute monologue, suggesting that the state...

was going to come after everybody on the left.

Now, one thing I noticed about Jon Stewart is that, in fact, he is under no threat.

If he thought that he were actually under a threat, he wouldn't have done

this particular lecture.

So he showed up, and his shtick was that the background had been made up to look like a sort of Trumpian mar-a-lago.

And he was wearing a jacket and a red tie to mimic Trump and a flag pin.

So he can claim that he's operating under fear.

Now, Jon Stewart is not operating under fear.

Let's be real.

This is crocodile tears.

He is not operating under the assumption that his free speech life is over in the United States.

But this is the narrative being retailed by the left.

We have another fun, hilarious

administration-compliant show.

What are you doing?

Shut up.

So we're

coming to you tonight from a real shthole,

the crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City.

It is a tremendous disaster like no one's ever seen before.

Someone's National Guard should invade this place, am I right?

Shut the f ⁇ off.

He did this for 23 minutes for 23 minutes he did this

right for 23 minutes he did this routine the lady doth protest too much stephen colbert then came out and said we are all jimmy kimmel and what he really means is i am jimmy kimmel okay now even if jimmy kimmel if it turns out that he was taken off the air because of fcc pressure which again i think is very very doubtful just on the merits

even if that were the case Stephen Colbert was not taken off the air because of Trump administration pressure.

That's not true.

In fact, here is the ex-paramount chief Sherry Redstone pointing out that Stephen Colbert's cancellation had literally nothing to do with anything governmentally related.

I'm not going to tie any of that to regulatory approval.

I can tell you that we had been looking at late night.

It was financially not viable.

It had been that way for a long time.

We had made a decision months prior to the announcement that we were not going to be going forward with that show.

I love Stephen.

He does a great job, but we really needed to be in a financially viable business.

And you saw we did that with James Corden as well.

And in terms of DEI, I think the reasons why DEI exists matter and will always matter.

And we need to continue to fight for those issues.

But I think the way in which DEI has been executed has often led to more problems than it solved.

Okay, so as Sherry Redstone saying Colbert was not taken off the air because of some sort of evil right-wing Trumpian plot, it's because he sucked at his job.

and because he cost too much money.

Well, here was Stephen Colbert saying we are all Jimmy Kimmel.

So first of all, let me point out,

Stephen Colbert isn't even Jimmy Kimmel.

Jimmy Kimmel isn't really Jimmy Kimmel by the left's definition of what's going on here, because probably, again, he was taken off the air for being a jackhole who was bad at his job with low ratings.

I'm not Jimmy Kimmel.

I'm on the internet.

I'm not, I don't, no one has the luxury of a broadcast show.

But the left is going to get, again, try to whip up the narrative.

We'll see if it works.

It may not work at all.

You know, I think the best solution for all of this is to remove the power of the FCC to regulate content.

That would be, I think, a good solution.

But

in the absence of that,

in the absence of that, again,

the left protesting about this after spending, you know, 60 years using the FCC to crack down on its own political opposition is a little bit strained.

Here's Stephen Colbert complaining.

Welcome, one and all, to the late show.

I'm your host, Stephen Colbert.

But But tonight, we are all Jimmy Kimmel.

I still have a show, though, right?

Okay, go.

Yesterday, after threats from Trump's FCC chair, ABC yanked Kimmel off the air indefinitely.

That is blatant censorship.

And it always starts small.

You know, remember, like in week one of his presidency, Gulf of America.

Call it Gulf of America.

Sure, it seems harmless, but with an autocrat, you cannot give an inch.

And if ABC thinks,

if ABC thinks that this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive.

And clearly, they've never read the children's book, If You Give a Mouse a Kimmel.

And to Jimmy, and to Jimmy, just let me say, I stand with you and your staff 100%.

And also, you couldn't let me enjoy this for like one week.

Just

come on.

So, again, one of the great tragedies of our time, according to the left, Jimmy Kimmel being removed from the air under disputed circumstances, Mark Marron doing the same thing.

They can come for all of us.

It's basically like Kristallnacht.

Here we go.

Jimmy Kimmel has been muzzled and taken off the air by his network ABC, who are buckling to and trying to appease the Nexstar media conglomerate, who have a lot of affiliates, and they threaten to preempt him at the suggestion of the SEC chair.

This is government censorship.

This is the Trump administration coming after people who speak out against him.

This is the end of it.

If you have any concern or belief in real freedom or the Constitution

and free speech.

This is it.

This is the deciding moment.

This is what authoritarianism looks like right now in this country.

It's happening.

It's so overwrought.

Mark Maron, so overwrought.

I mean, you can hear the jack boots at the door.

They're about to break it down and arrest Mark Maron

for that absolutely anti-authoritarian diatribe.

Or maybe he's, you know, like living his normal life.

today because we actually don't live in an authoritarian country.

And by the way, a court is very likely to intervene if, in fact, there is a lawsuit and it turns out that the FCC improperly used its power against Jimmy Kimmel.

Now, again, I think there might, in fact, be a case that the FCC did not even necessarily improperly use its power on a legal level, but this is why the FCC should not have that power in the first place.

Again, I'm old enough to remember when Republicans opposed the fairness doctrine, because the fairness doctrine was an attempt to stop right-wing opinions from being disseminated.

And at a certain point,

There's a difference between saying, we need to use the rules against you the way you use them against us so that we can all stop using those rules and instead create a new system of rules.

There's a difference between that and saying, you broke the rules.

I'm going to break the rules even further.

I'm going to hit you, and you're going to hit me.

It's just a sheer power dynamic, a spiral.

David Letterman emerged from his house in the woods, where I assume he's only writing Unabomber journals, to go to the vaunted Atlantic Festival.

to talk about how this is criminal, an authoritarian administration.

Again, this is the, maybe it'll, you know, maybe it'll work for them.

It seems to me it's so overwrought it won't.

But this is the attempt.

One of the critiques I'm making here is there is no reason for the Trump administration to have even given this issue to the Democrats in any way.

It is not useful.

Nothing is gained.

In any case, here's Letterman.

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.

So this is going to be the unified Democratic claim that that's exactly what is happening, that this is a fascist authoritarian takeover.

Chris Murphy, the senator from Connecticut, who for some weird reason believes that he is going to run for president, he says that this is about Trump silencing his political opponents.

And then he actually says that people should take to the streets.

There should basically be giant protests in favor of Jimmy Kimmel.

Yeah, good luck with that one, my dude.

Donald Trump, in the wake of the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, has decided to exploit that tragedy to try to silence his political opponents.

I think Kimmel is just the beginning.

I think you're going to see a potential dizzying campaign of political repression against anyone who opposes this president.

Okay, and then he actually asked for people to take to the streets.

Call it the late night riots.

Here we go.

Understands the gravity of this moment.

This is a moment for the country to mobilize.

This is a moment for all of us to be out on the streets protesting because if you don't raise your voices right now about the assault on free speech, about Donald Trump's decision to disgustingly exploit the murder of Charlie Kirk so as to try to permanently render powerless and impotent those who politically oppose him,

there may be no democracy to save a year from now.

This is a red alert moment, man.

It feels like the red alert has been on since January, but the days are getting darker, which means the obligation on us to stand up and mobilize is getting more urgent.

Now, on a broad level, it may not work.

This kind of sort of democratic authoritarian op.

It may not work specifically because the Democrats were for, you know, solidly a couple of decades here, quite authoritarian in their approach to things like speech.

We all remember the woke revolutions, where if you didn't post the black square, then you were in danger of losing your job.

We all remember Barack Obama using the law to spy on James Rosen, the Associated Press journalist.

We remember Joe Biden using the power of the government to crack down on major social media companies in order to get them to mirror his political priors.

We all remember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling for more censorship.

It wasn't that long ago.

It was like two years ago.

Here's Alexander Ocasio-Cortez doing this.

Several members of Congress and some of my discussions have brought up media literacy because

that is a part of what happened here.

And

we're going to have to figure out

how we reign in our media environment so that you can't just spew disinformation and misinformation.

It's one thing to have differing opinions, but

it's another thing entirely to just say things that are false.

And so that's something that we're looking into.

Okay, so again, the right is saying, okay, turnabout is fair play.

And the left is saying, we never did that in the first place.

This, for the country, probably doesn't go anywhere good.

The best possible solution, once again, is for the government to spend its time on the actual things that matter.

Go after

leftist radical groups who are violent in orientation.

Go after their monetary sponsors.

Go after the leftist networks of thought on a social level that incentivize violence.

Do all of those things.

Yeah, it just, it's frustrating that

the conversation could be so clear and so unified and so easy.

It It really could.

And getting caught in these rabbit trails

is counterproductive in the extreme.

Alrighty, coming up, what Republicans should be doing, what the administration should be doing.

Well, we have some information about violent left-wing groups that obviously should be receiving serious law enforcement scrutiny.

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Well, meanwhile, thinking of things the Trump administration can do, as I've been saying, they should be focused like a laser directly on left-wing violent groups.

But the evidence tends to show in the case of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, is that the assassin was coordinated with people on Discord about what he was going to do.

That's what the evidence seems to show.

There were people who are putting out posts that they later deleted predicting that Charlie would be murdered on the day that he was murdered a month in advance.

That investigation has to be done, obviously.

And we know that there are these violent left-wing groups that have basically gone without much law enforcement scrutiny for whatever reason.

That needs to stop.

According to the Daily Wire, Luke Roziak reporting, a 10,000-member strong group called the Socialist Rifle Association has been conducting weapons training for transgender and Marxist-Leninist extremists, and its members have been linked to at least four major crimes, including the firebombing of Tesla dealerships.

A Daily Wire investigation found.

Members stuck up on assault rifles and tactical gear like gas masks and received membership cards bearing an image of Karl Marx and the quote, any attempt to disarm workers must be frustrated by force if necessary.

Videos show them preparing for engagements that look more like war than self-defense, running through the woods and hitting long-range targets.

A common logo is the transgender flag with an assault rifle and the phrase, defend equality.

SRA members say that their interest is to defend against fascists and Nazis, but according to court documents, they apply those labels loosely, citing incidents like the January 6th capital protests where guns were largely absent as a reason to prepare for war.

Apparently, the SRA has a chapter in Utah where Charlie was murdered.

It advertises, quote, inclusive firearms education with a rainbow-colored target and the tagline, women-friendly, BIPOC-friendly, queer-friendly.

One of its posters says, quote, I will die fighting for this cause, a quote attributed to John Brown, a radical abolitionist who was murdered by the capitalist slave-owning class.

On June 19th, a Utah chapter asked members to support Arturo Gamboa, an anti-racist accused of murder.

Apparently, the chapter and SRA's national headquarters told the Daily Wire that Tyler Robinson, who's been charged with murdering Charlie, was not a member, but they did not answer whether his transgender identifying boyfriend, Lance Twiggs, was citing their own confidentiality policies.

The SRA Reddit thread falsely claimed years ago that Charlie was openly calling for the lynching of transgender individuals.

After Kirk was assassinated, SRA members mocked him, expressed enthusiasm, and wished that the man who shot President Trump had similar marksmanship.

There are a number of crimes that have been linked to SRA members.

On July 4th, a group of militants allegedly swarmed law enforcement at an ICE facility in Elvarado, Texas, and opened fire at the unarmed DHS correctional officers.

One of them, Benjamin Hannell Song, is charged with shooting a police officer in the neck.

Song was a member of the SRA's Dallas-Fort Worth chapter, a fellow group member told KERA.

Of the 10 10 co-defendants charged with attempted murder of a federal officer, at least two claimed to be transgender.

Authorities recovered nine firearms in the home where one of them lived with six other transgenders.

On March 18th in Las Vegas, Paul Hyen Kim set on fire and shot up five Teslas, leaving a Molotov cocktail inside one, according to charging documents.

The court papers said that this person had an Instagram page where he followed the SRA's page.

On January 20th, the day that Donald Trump was sworn in as president, Adam Matthew Lansky allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon.

Lansky is a competitive shooter and a former member of the SRA, according to prosecutors.

In October 2021, Daniel Ellen Baker of Florida was sentenced to 44 months in prison for threats.

After the pro-Trump capital protest on January 6th, 2021, Baker offered cash rewards for information leading to the verified identification of every individual in this video.

Don't worry, I won't be going to the cops.

We have decided to handle this ourselves.

Apparently, he told prosecutors who's a member of the SRA.

Apparently, the SRA was incorporated in Kansas in 2019 by Alexander Tackett, who later began identifying as a woman named Alex Norma Tackett.

A website for a queer bookstore he owned said, quote, Lilith, it, she, and Alex Tackett, she, it, are a trans lesbian couple living in Wichita with their six-year-old son, which is just wonderful.

Its co-founder was Faye Eckler, who explained, quote, I believe firearms ownership is necessary because as a transgender socialist, half the country wants me dead and the other half is happy to watch.

Plus, the means of production won't seize themselves.

This is why we say that there are violent ideologies.

Yes, there certainly are, and they are attached to violent groups.

Meanwhile, a new report from Ryan Morrow over at Capital Research says that since 2016, George Soros's Open Society Foundations, now run with his son Alexander, has poured over $80 million into groups tied to terrorism or extremist violence.

Open Society sent millions of dollars into U.S.-based organizations that engage in quote-unquote direct actions the FBI defines as domestic terrorism.

Those groups include the Center for Third World Organizing and its militant partner, Ruckus Society, which trained activists in property destruction and sabotage during the 2020 riots, and the Sunrise Movement, which endorsed the Antifa-linked Stop Cop City campaign, in which activists currently face over 40 domestic terrorism charges and 60 racketeering indictments.

At the same time, Open Society awarded $18 million to the Movement for Black Lives, a group that co-authored a radical guide glorifying the Hamas, October 7th massacre, and instructs activists on the use of false IDs, blockades, and economic disruption.

Open Society has also funneled more than $2.3 million into Al-Haq, an NGO based in the West Bank in Israel, and long accused of ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

In September 2025, the State Department sanctioned Al-Haq, citing its role in advancing campaigns that, quote, directly engage in the ICC's illegitimate targeting of Israel.

So there are things for law enforcement to do.

There are things for law enforcement to investigate.

And that is where we should be able to find unity.

Violation of the law is where we should be looking.

Violation of the law.

And social sanction should be enough.

Jimmy Kimmel should have been fired because the people said no to Jimmy Kimmel.

That is the way to do this.

And that is the way to create a more unified response to the horrifying murder of Charlie Kirk.

Meanwhile, I got to say the left softness on crime just continues at pace.

It truly is amazing.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, the worst mayor in America, which is saying a lot.

We have some pretty bad mayors.

He's mayor of Chicago.

And yesterday, he said that law enforcement is a sickness.

I wonder why people want the National Guard in Chicago.

I can't imagine.

The fact of the matter is, we are driving violence down on this city, and we're using every single resource that's available to us.

Jails and incarceration and law enforcement is a sickness that has not led to safe communities.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Well.

You know, if you think that law enforcement is the sickness,

you might get more crime.

I'm just putting it out there.

It's possible.

It's just possible.

So,

you know,

I think that this is a little over the top.

This is a little over the top from the Democrats.

Do they just want to lose elections?

Jasmine Crockett, the

not particularly intelligent representative from Texas, who somehow has become a resistance hero, an icon.

She says, committing crimes doesn't make you a criminal.

No, literally, it does.

Literally, it does.

When people are like, oh, you know, crime is terrible.

And yes, it is, right?

Like, because when somebody goes out and commits a crime, they don't typically, you know, say, well, I'm a D or I'm an R or I'm an I.

It's not like literally like.

It's about, well, how do you fix it?

How do you make community safer?

And I do think that I'm in a unique situation because I was having the conversations with people that were going out and committing crimes.

And so I understood what was kind of pushing them there.

And so I do want people to know that just because someone has committed a crime, it doesn't make them a criminal.

That is completely different.

Being a criminal is more so about your mindset.

Committing a crime can come for a lot of different reasons.

Deep thoughts.

Deep thoughts there from Jasmine Crockett.

Well, apparently Democrats want to lose elections.

It's amazing, but apparently this is a thing they would like to do.

Speaking of suicidal Democratic policy, apparently Democrats now want to do a government shutdown, which is going to work out very poorly for them.

The Republicans are pushing forward with basically a clean CR, a seven-week continuing resolution that continues to fund the government at its current levels.

And Democrat senators say that unless Republicans scrap their plan to advance it, they don't see any option other than defeating it as a way to send a message to President Trump and then trigger a

shutdown.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has been taking flack from his left flank for his failure to go along with the government shutdown earlier this year.

One Democratic senator says, Donald Trump gave us the finger.

There is no alternative.

Well, no, actually, the alternative would be to pick ground that you can win on,

but, you know, good luck.

The party would likely need at least eight votes to help Republicans reach the 60 votes necessary to move Senate legislation forward.

Senator Rand Paul, who, of course, votes against everything, says he's going to vote against the CR.

Apparently, there are a bunch of Democratic senators who are not going to vote for the shutdown.

That includes the only sane Democratic senator left, John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire, Maggie Hassen in New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez-Masto in Nevada, Jackie Rosen in Nevada, and Angus King in Maine.

By the way, all of them in swing states, you will notice, because they understand that it is repeated, that it's poison for them to do this, politically speaking.

Meanwhile, Speaker Johnson says that they will, in fact, pass the CR.

That is the goal.

Here he was.

Republicans are going to do the responsible thing.

We will pass a CR here tomorrow out of the House.

I suspect.

Sounds like we won't have many Democrats to assist in that, and that's a really sad state of affairs.

Do you have the votes tonight, Mr.

Speaker?

I believe we have the votes to do it, yes.

We'll send it over to the Senate, and I suspect they'll be able to process that.

So

it seems to me that the Democrats are putting themselves in an unenviable political position, but this seems to ⁇

it's a bold move, Cotton.

We'll see how it works out for them.

Alrighty, as we continue here on the Ben Shapiro show, Kamala Harris' book is is coming out and we have some interesting book reviews.

Apparently, she is big mad.

Her book, 107 Days, is just filled with joy, so much joy and so much pray.

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