Brian Stelter and Jonathan V. Last: Worst Case Scenario

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Speaker 3 Hey everybody, it's Tim. We had a little change of calendar today.

Speaker 3 Had a funny lefty that I wanted to chat with that hopefully will be back on soon, you know, to bring a little balance to Joe Mansion.

Speaker 3 What a sweet. I mean, he's frustrating.
I get it, but I don't know, 78-year-old white guy wanting to go with me to knock on the door.

Speaker 3 of a guy with a confederate flag outside i'll i don't know i'll take him up on that maybe that maybe we should do tim and Joe on the road. I don't know.
We'll see how the ratings are for that.

Speaker 3 So instead, we had big news with the Jimmy Kimmel firing, chilling news. And we have a little double header for you.

Speaker 3 I wanted to get Brian Stelter on because he's the best sourced person on all this, a media reporter at CNN.

Speaker 3 So he's up first, and we're going to talk about what he's hearing from sources, as well as the implications of the Kimmel suspension. I guess right now it's an indefinite suspension.
So we'll see.

Speaker 3 And then in segment two, JVL wrote a banger of a newsletter late, late last night on this. And I want to talk to him about some of the kind of broader implications of the firing.

Speaker 3 So it is going to be a good one. Stick around for both.
Up next, Brian Stelter.

Speaker 3 Hello and welcome to the Boulder Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Delighted to welcome back to Chief Media Analyst at CNN. His books include Network of Lies and Top of the Morning.

Speaker 3 It's Brian Stelter. How you doing, Brian?

Speaker 5 Other than a lack of sleep, I'm doing well.

Speaker 3 Okay. I was wondering.

Speaker 3 So we, you know, brought you in, obviously, because of the big news yesterday with Disney folding to pressure from the administration and suspending Jimmy Kimmel and his show indefinitely over a joke that we can get into whether or not it was even factual or inappropriate at all.

Speaker 3 But just the fact that this pressure is happening, I think, is the biggest news. Yes.
Before we get into all the details, I'm just kind of wondering what your top line reactions are.

Speaker 3 What's happening in your inbox? How chilling is this to people?

Speaker 5 This feels like the worst case scenario to a lot of people.

Speaker 5 Yes, to comedians like Jimmy Kimmel, but also to other entertainers, other forms of

Speaker 5 media stars out there in the ecosystem.

Speaker 5 And then separating Kimmel, the comedian, from the free press, this is also very chilling to many journalists who work at ABC, who work at other companies, who are feeling that pressure indirectly from the Trump administration.

Speaker 5 So, you know, in some ways, Tim, I feel like we're talking about a situation, if you imagine a building, we're in an elevator. And we're going down floors.
We're going down floor by floor.

Speaker 5 And, you know, maybe back in December when ABC settled with Trump and made that lawsuit go away by paying his future presidential library, we were several floors higher than we are today.

Speaker 5 This elevator continues to move downward pretty rapidly.

Speaker 3 I want to get more into the meta stuff, but just for folks who haven't followed this minute by minute, I just want to get into the facts here of what happened.

Speaker 3 First, the joke that sparked all of this, that sparked the pushback from MAGA world, that sparked the pushback from the head of the FCC, Brendan Carr, was Jimmy Kim on Monday night talking about the MAGA reaction to the Kirk assassination.

Speaker 3 I just want to play a clip from it.

Speaker 8 We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

Speaker 8 In between the finger pointing, there was grieving.

Speaker 7 On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism.

Speaker 8 But on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.

Speaker 9 My condulations on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 10 May I ask, sir, personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir?

Speaker 9 I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks?

Speaker 9 They've just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it's going to be a beauty.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 7 He's at the fourth stage of grief, construction.

Speaker 3 Demolition.

Speaker 3 Construction.

Speaker 7 This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend.

Speaker 8 This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.

Speaker 3 Now, what you see from Carr and from a bunch of others on the right is them claiming that Kimmel was blaming the assassination on MAGA or saying that the shooter was MAGA.

Speaker 3 I don't really hear it that way.

Speaker 3 And also, again, it's important to say this came out Monday night, so it was before the text messages had come out that kind of gave us a little bit more insight into what the shooter's motivations are.

Speaker 3 I've been very anti-people putting out false information about what we know about Utah. I don't even really think this qualifies as that.

Speaker 3 What did you make of just like the actual merits of the complaint?

Speaker 5 The video clip also sounds different than the text. So, if you read the words that are, you know, in an article, you might think that Kimmel was out on a limb a little bit.

Speaker 5 When you listen to the clip that you just played, it's pretty clear that he was making a straightforward observation about the political environment.

Speaker 5 It is true that MAGA media figures were out there in recent days basically saying, he's not one of us. He's not one of us.
That's true. And the facts have also pointed toward that reality.

Speaker 5 Although Kimmel was speaking on Monday night before the documents came out and the text messages came out on Tuesday. So there's a lot to that, but I almost think that's beside the point.

Speaker 3 Yeah, same.

Speaker 5 This is not actually about anything Kimmel said about Charlie Kirk's alleged killer.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And frankly, even if it was a lie, like

Speaker 3 even was a lie, right? Like Like the government should not be in the business of bullying corporations into firing people because they said something non-factual about their boss.

Speaker 3 I mean, like, there's been plenty of examples of this

Speaker 3 throughout history. Plenty of the right.
It's not as if there's no right-wing. It's not like Greg Guttfeld has never said something inaccurate about Joe Biden or about Barack Obama, right?

Speaker 3 If the inverse was true,

Speaker 3 there would be outrage

Speaker 3 if they were pressuring him to fire him. So I want to go through, I think, the other fact pattern here that's important,

Speaker 3 which is

Speaker 3 like the underlying corruption angle here and like what the real motivations are here, to your point.

Speaker 3 I mean, obviously, Trump has been on his high horse about going after these late night comedians because he's 79 years old.

Speaker 3 So, he's in the demographic of caring about what the late night network comedians say. He's been going after all of them for a while now.

Speaker 3 And then, in addition to that, there has also been another merger case. This is very similar to what we saw with CBS.
I'm going to run through this.

Speaker 3 This breakdown actually came from your colleague Jake Tapper. So shout out to Jake.

Speaker 3 But the Nexstar Media Group, which is the owner of the local TV stations, owner of a bunch of local TV stations that air ABC, they have an intention to purchase their biggest rival, Tegna, which owns a bunch of other local stations.

Speaker 3 It's a $6.2 billion deal. The problem is there's a cap on the percentage of stations that one company can own, right? And this would take them over the cap.

Speaker 3 Carr had said the FCC had said they'd be open to approve the merger, even though it's over the cap.

Speaker 3 And then yesterday, head of the FCC, Brendan Carr, went on Benny Johnson's show and criticized Kimmel's comments about the Kirk assassination. Let's play that.

Speaker 11 I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.

Speaker 11 These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC.

Speaker 11 Again, there's actions that we can take on licensed broadcasters.

Speaker 11 And frankly, I think that it's really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, listen, we are going to preempt.

Speaker 11 We are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we, we, licensed broadcasters, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.

Speaker 3 All right. So there he is.
He's laying it all out. He's saying that these local individual stations should speak out.
Next star did that hours later.

Speaker 3 Then ABC suspends Kimmel and then Brendan Carr emails you with a gif celebrating. So like that's the rundown.
When you play it out like that, it's very clear what is happening here.

Speaker 3 This is the government pressuring, once again, just like the CBS case, the government pressuring a corporation that wants a merger approved to stifle any opposition speech in order to get in the good graces of the leader.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 5 And this is easier and cleaner than, let's say, the Stephen Colbert cancellation.

Speaker 5 You know, know, because over the summer, when CBS canceled the late show, it said there were financial pressures and it wasn't about political pressure.

Speaker 5 A lot of Colbert fans doubt that, and they're right to be skeptical. But, you know, there was a real backstory about the financial situation of late night TV.

Speaker 5 And there wasn't something so explicit and so sudden. from the FCC chairman.

Speaker 5 But in this case, because we have Carr on tape saying we can do this the easy way or the hard way, and then within a matter of hours, ABC doing the easy thing and pulling Kimmel's show, it is a very clear case.

Speaker 5 It's a little bit of an Occam's razor situation.

Speaker 5 We can make it more complex and talk about more of the backstory, but I think as Americans read about this and they process it, the fact pattern is what it is.

Speaker 5 And that's what maybe makes this so newsworthy and so notable to so many people.

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Speaker 3 Let's talk about Brendan Carr.

Speaker 3 He had been a big advocate for free speech, like people on the right, and criticized the Biden administration and other administrations for pressuring social media networks, for cracking down on misinformation, things like this.

Speaker 3 You know, he had been a critic of Trump after January 6th. And like many of these other guys, he gets in there.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I think that he's trying to show fealty to the boss by throwing bombs, going after his enemies. Not that different from Bill Pulte going after the Fed board member, for example.

Speaker 3 So I guess you're on an email relationship with him. If he's sending you GIFs of office space,

Speaker 3 them doing the raise the roof. The office.
and the office

Speaker 5 every time i have like a millennial brain uh warp where i always invert those things on this fucking show anyway and the office he sends you uh them doing the raise the roof thing so you've got a gif relationship talk talk talk to us about this guy yeah i'll go back in time a little bit that's that's the you know what i love about being able to talk with you and have more than just a few minutes of tv air time to break this down i've known carr for about a year i i met him at a dinner we exchanged numbers he was just the you know the lonely conservative on the FCC during the Biden administration when Jessica Rosenwurzel was the FCC chairwoman.

Speaker 5 And, you know, Rosenwurzel, just like all of her, you know, predecessors, she ran the FCC talking about net neutrality and open internet and trying to erase digital divide and expand broadband.

Speaker 5 You know, that's the FCC's focus normally. But once Trump was re-elected and Carr was handpicked by Trump as the chairman, Carr really changed.
He became a very clear clear MAGA media star.

Speaker 5 He signaled that he wanted to use the FCC's power in new ways.

Speaker 5 He basically aligned himself with Trump's anti-media rhetoric and has repeatedly used the powers of the FCC, which are quite limited, but use the powers of the FCC to investigate, to probe, to some would say even harass media companies that Trump doesn't like.

Speaker 5 Now, of course, he would frame it very differently, and he has said this to me. It's about the public interest.

Speaker 5 He is trying to use the FCC's powers to review the public airwaves and make sure stations are operating in the public interest. That's his framing.

Speaker 5 But I want to take you back to last December because last December is when ABC settled with Trump, right? The $15 million payment.

Speaker 5 That was arguably the first example of media capitulation and all the rest has followed since. You know, that settlement was the sign of what was going to come.

Speaker 3 And then a week later, what did Carr do?

Speaker 5 It was right before Christmas. And I remember he called me.
or he texted me, one or the other, and he had a letter that he wanted to share with me. It was a letter to Disney Disney CEO Bob Iger.

Speaker 5 He had decided he wanted to put some pressure on Iger over, I'm looking at the article now because I don't remember exactly what it was about.

Speaker 5 It was about a battle between the ABC network and some of its affiliates.

Speaker 5 And he wanted to use that very narrow battle to advance some broad points about the state of the industry and to signal that he was going to wield a heavy hand. So think about this, right?

Speaker 5 He's not only sending the letter to Iger, he's also leaking it basically to CNN, making sure that it gets publicity.

Speaker 5 And I want to recognize, you know, the role of media reporters like yours truly in this.

Speaker 5 He is trying to use the press in this battle against the press. And he's done that very effectively.

Speaker 5 He's done that repeatedly by publicizing his letters, by launching probes and then telling Newsmax about the probes. You know, this has continued to happen over and over again.

Speaker 5 And when it comes to his gift from the office, you know, he was texting me about Nexstar, the big station group, deciding to yank Kimmel. And I said, well, you know, ABC has yanked him nationwide now.

Speaker 5 And so his response was to send that gift from the office.

Speaker 3 And you've dealt with a lot of government officials in these sorts of stories as a media reporter, regulators, et cetera, over the years.

Speaker 3 And he's tweeting yesterday, Jimmy Blackface Kimmel's behavior is the problem. And he's sending you razor roof gifts.
And it's like, he is not really, I don't think, even trying

Speaker 3 to.

Speaker 3 A lot of times in the past, you know, if you had government officials that were going after organizations that were of different political ideologies, right, organizations that were against what an administration, you know, might put forth, they would cloak it in some kind of like broader principle, you know, or some ideological motivation.

Speaker 3 He doesn't really even seem to be doing that. I mean, like, this is just pure power politics.
And he's trying to intimidate.

Speaker 5 I think he would say, you know, just to play devil's advocate, just for fun.

Speaker 3 No, please. No, please.

Speaker 5 Let me read his post from, you know, from Thursday morning here, from this morning. He said, I'm glad to see that many broadcasters are responding to their viewers as intended.

Speaker 5 Broadcasters have always had the right to not air national programs they believe are inconsistent with the public interest. So he is using government language.

Speaker 5 He's dressing up Trump's war with Jimmy Kimmel

Speaker 5 in government legalese and saying, well, we're the FCC. We license local stations to be in the public interest.
So

Speaker 5 he is cloaking it at least in a way that sounds like a government regulator. And maybe that's what makes him so effective.

Speaker 5 You know, President Trump just posts on True Social about hating Comcast and wanting its licenses revoked. Comcast doesn't actually have most of the NBC's Asian licenses.

Speaker 5 They're owned by other companies. Brendan Carr gets all the nuance.
He gets how the system actually works.

Speaker 3 And he sounds kind of like a Chinese government regulator when he's talking about that a little bit, like cracking down on Winnie, you know, on images of Chairman Chi as Winnie the Pooh or something.

Speaker 3 But it is a big change. Another, you know, we've been following Sinclair for quite a while, but I'm sure some listeners are familiar with that.

Speaker 3 But if you're not, Sinclair is another one of these owners of a lot of local networks. Their response to this yesterday was truly like that shit insane, as like from another planet.

Speaker 3 Sinclair puts out a press release saying that Kimmel's suspension is not enough. They called upon Kimmel to issue a direct apology to the Kirk family.

Speaker 3 They called on Kimmel to make a meaningful personal donation to the family and to Turning Point USA.

Speaker 3 They announced that during the Jimmy Kimmel time slot, they're going to air a special remembrance of Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 this is batshit.

Speaker 3 I mean, they have dozens of stations across the country. And if you have Nexstar, one of the other biggest local TV affiliates,

Speaker 3 clearly sidling up to the administration, and then you have Sinclair doing like Newsmac style propaganda.

Speaker 3 This is a pretty alarming state of affairs as far as local TV news is concerned.

Speaker 5 It's also Red America's TV news versus Blue America's TV news. You know, Sinclair has been well known to have conservative owners, to have Republican owners.
You know, that's always been clear.

Speaker 5 Back to my days growing up, going to school in Baltimore at Towson University. Sinclair was right up the road.

Speaker 5 And there was a controversy 20 years ago about what Sinclair was or was not airing on its local stations about the war in Iraq.

Speaker 5 So this does go way back. Back in 2016, I remember Sinclair's chairman had a meeting with Trump, and he says, he said to Trump then, we are here to deliver your message.

Speaker 5 So that infamous quote kind of, you know, betrays Sinclair's agenda.

Speaker 5 Yes, it does have a pro-Trump bent, even though there's lots of journalists working at local Sinclair stations just trying to report the news.

Speaker 5 I think it is fair for listeners and viewers to wonder about the objectivity of Sinclair stations and Nexstar stations, given what we are seeing play out in real time.

Speaker 5 But, you know, these are mostly stations that operate, that exist in smaller communities, in smaller cities.

Speaker 5 Most of the bigger markets, the big cities in the U.S., the bluer areas, you know, they are stations that are actually owned by Disney or Comcast or other bigger companies.

Speaker 5 So I do think we're seeing this red-blue divide in some of the reactions here in terms of how the station owners are reacting.

Speaker 5 But most importantly, Tim, this does have to do with Sinclair and Nexstar having business before the government, right?

Speaker 5 Nextar, as we talked about, as you described from Tapper's Thread, Nextstar is desperate to get a deal done with Tegna. It needs Brendan Carr's blessing.

Speaker 5 It actually needs Brendan Carr to rewrite the regulations altogether to allow it to grow as big as it wants to grow. This is no ordinary mega merger.
This requires the SEC to rewrite the rules.

Speaker 5 So it seems to me, as an observer, Nexstar and Sinclair are almost competing about who can slather more affection onto Trump and Carr right now. It's like they're trying to one-up each other.

Speaker 5 Next star was the first to announce that it condemned Kimmel. Then Sinclair said, that's not enough.
We want Kimmel to donate money to TPUSA. You know, it's almost like a game of one-upsmanship.

Speaker 5 Who can curry the most favor with Trump and Carr?

Speaker 3 I mean, we're just, I guess we're on a space race to see who can be Sputnik, the TV channel, faster in Russia. I mean, like, really?

Speaker 3 I mean, covering the Charlie Kirk funeral, sure, of course, it's a news event.

Speaker 3 Like, do airing a tribute to Charlie Kirk in place of normal programming to like troll Jimmy Kimmel and to troll the left. And that is that is crazy.
Like, that is just straight propaganda.

Speaker 5 I don't think Ariana tributed Kirk is crazy. I think putting it in Kimmel's time slot on a Friday night is the troll.

Speaker 5 That is the tell. That's the tell right there.
Replacing Kimmel's show with the tribute is the tell.

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Speaker 26 See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 33 Let's do the 60-second savings challenge. Step one, download Rocket Money.
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Speaker 3 Let's talk about where we are in the elevator because

Speaker 3 despite the fact that I'm about as dark as you can get in the podcaster space, sometimes some of our listeners are even darker.

Speaker 3 And I want to kind of like just sort of regulate like where exactly we are. You know, I I had some texts in my inbox.

Speaker 3 I don't know about you of people like sending me the Russia flag, you know, about where, where we are at this point with the level of speech stifling.

Speaker 3 And I think that there are some Russia parallels, but I don't.

Speaker 3 I think to be actually particularly clear about where we are and what you've been talking about, about these companies trying to merge, like this is a corruption kleptocracy oligarchy story first.

Speaker 3 And it is also a free speech story. But, you know, Jimmy Kimmel, if he wanted to, to, would be able to re-emerge on some other platforms and be able to talk, right?

Speaker 3 Like, Jimmy Kimmel is not getting pushed out of a window, right? And

Speaker 3 maybe the only silver lining here is the decline of television

Speaker 3 at such a point that, like, we're not at the, it's not like there's three networks, right? And you're taking somebody off one of the three options people have. People have unlimited options.

Speaker 3 And so you wrote this morning about how this is similar to Orebanism. And this is similar to what Oregon did in Hungary.
And I just kind of want you to sort of contextualize this for people.

Speaker 3 Like, how is it similar to Hungary? You know, where do you think we are in the threat scale?

Speaker 5 Well, first, what's different? The U.S. is a much bigger, more prosperous country than Hungary.
You know, we're not a landlocked Eastern European country.

Speaker 5 But that said, when Viktor Orban came to power in 2010, he consolidated control over the media in Hungary. He muzzled independent media voices.

Speaker 5 He started, and I've talked with scholars who lived at firsthand.

Speaker 5 I talked with a member of the Hungarian parliament about this in order to understand what the playbook was, because I think it's very similar to what we're seeing now in the U.S.

Speaker 5 And it started with weakening public broadcasting. Of course, we know PBS and NPR have been defunded here in the US.
So the parallels start right there.

Speaker 5 First, go after public broadcasting, take the teeth out of public broadcasting.

Speaker 5 But beyond that, there was an effort in Hungary to weaponize the levers of government for party gain, to pressure privately owned media companies to toe the line, in some cases to take over those privately owned media companies, to have friends and allies of Orban become the owners of those companies, and then to punish the owners who still resisted with investigations, with tax

Speaker 5 penalties, etc.

Speaker 5 At the same time, you reward the ones who acquiesce, and that's a big part of what we've seen in the U.S.

Speaker 5 Celebrating and cheering for Fox News, for example, putting lots of guests onto Fox and giving Fox every advantage is something we've seen out of the Trump White House. So the parallels...

Speaker 5 They are plentiful. And frankly, there's more of them as time goes on.
There are more parallels here between Hungary and the U.S. and the media control than there were three or six months ago.

Speaker 5 You know, I talked to a Hungarian member of parliament, former member of parliament overnight, and he said, personally targeted campaigns and character assassinations were the lifeblood of Orban's regime.

Speaker 5 They demonstratively raised the cost of speaking up and speaking out. Now, what does that sound like?

Speaker 5 That sounds like targeting Jimmy Kimmel, hoping he would be fired, everything President Trump has on true social is the kind of behavior we saw out of this strongman in Hungary.

Speaker 5 Now, we know what happened in Hungary, democratic backsliding, a much more authoritarian form of government. But I think we should also recognize how incredibly free the American media is.

Speaker 5 Like here we are, you know, talking in these new platforms. And here's what my gut says, Tim.
And I admit I'm only on a few hours of sleep. I have not fully processed the Kimmel news yet.

Speaker 3 Great. Let's do it.
Let's do it.

Speaker 5 If these old-fashioned old-line media companies cannot stand a bit of pressure from the president, then talent's going to leave. Journalists are going to go launch startups.

Speaker 5 They're going to create more sub stacks and they're going to start more YouTube live streams.

Speaker 5 You know, the likes of Jimmy Kimmel are going to go out and probably become even wealthier and more popular with new products. And that's thanks to the miracle of the internet.

Speaker 5 You know, right now, we do not see, we are not in an environment where what you and I are doing right now is threatened. What we do see threatened are broadcast stations.
We see the threats are real.

Speaker 5 I'm not claiming they're not real.

Speaker 5 President Trump's suing the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. There are real threats against these old line media companies, companies, including the one I work for.

Speaker 5 But I'm struck by the amount of energy that exists in that startup world on the live streams, in the podcasting space.

Speaker 5 And I think for every moment like a Kimmel suspension, more of that energy moves to new platforms. Do you think I'm wrong?

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 it's funny you say that because I was thinking this last night and I was like, I have a strange optimism. I mean, look, I'll just do the dark first.

Speaker 3 Gary Kasparov on the Russia flags out of things tweeted, an early Putin sign of despotism was having the puppet show Kookley shut down.

Speaker 3 So, you know, it's not as if there isn't some precedent for this. And I think that I like you, the threats are real.
It is

Speaker 3 aspiring fascism and authoritarianism. I just do wonder, like the backlash, one of my friends sent me a flyer that was being posted around LA.

Speaker 3 There's a picture of Jimmy Kimmel in kind of like one of the old Doge meme formats with like the little

Speaker 3 quotes around him where it's like, really this guy, like the guy with the corny dad jokes you're scared of him you know and i don't i don't know and we'll see kind of what happens in bro podcaster world but this is so mockable and i think it's really it's scary the sinclair stuff really scares me the ability to crack down on local media really scares me but i i do kind of think that there's going to be a backlash to this i really do and it's so hackish and i think that there is a little bit of a silver lining here and and like you said these big media companies might just be speedrunning their own decline which is already happening.

Speaker 3 And, you know, we're right here. We're not scared.
I'm not scared. Plenty of people are not scared.
You can subscribe right here on our very YouTube feed. And right and for now, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I think that you can see the pushback forming for sure.

Speaker 5 I was really struck by something that LA Times media reporter Stephen Battaglio said on Arison Cooper's show last night.

Speaker 5 He said, maybe these media companies are just going to have to get out of the broadcast TV business. And at first, I was like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 5 And then I thought, oh, that is exactly the right take at this moment.

Speaker 5 Because if you're Disney and you own theme parks and cruise lines and all the rest of it and your future is disney plus not your local stations sell it then if you're facing this pressure from the trump administration spin it up get out of the broadcast business and i i won't be shocked if we see more of those moves if you look if you view this it's helpful to view this from the desk of bob iger right the disney ceo who once wanted to run for president who would have run as a democrat he's not a trumper

Speaker 5 what is he thinking why did he do this right why why is abc doing this? Well, he does have short-term business considerations, obviously. He's trying to find a path forward.

Speaker 5 I don't know if he can find it to bring Kimmel back. We'll see.
But there is a logic to what he's done here, given the,

Speaker 5 you know, the monstrosity that is Disney. I mean, by the way, I'm planning my next Disney trip.
You know, like most people, I have an affection for the brand, but I'm looking at this and I'm thinking,

Speaker 5 what are the upsides to owning ABC station?

Speaker 5 Oh, I am.

Speaker 3 I actually really want to go on a cruise.

Speaker 3 Oh, no. That is my hell.
The hell is a Disney cruise.

Speaker 3 I'm trying to repent and be a good person in life so that in death I don't have to be on an eternal Disney cruise. Okay, just really quick.

Speaker 3 On the Iger thing, and then I have one other thing out, and I know you're just so busy right now, but

Speaker 3 I hear you

Speaker 3 on what an executive perspective is here. And it's like, maybe, maybe fuck, maybe we get out of the news business altogether.
The problem is, man, this Trump administration, they're creeping into it.

Speaker 3 They got tentacles going into all of your business, right? And like they're in Intel's business on chips.

Speaker 3 If I'm Disney and you're like, okay, we're moving to Disney Plus, what if we launch a new Disney Plus show that has a Trump spoof or has a black non-binary mermaid or whatever, you know, whatever it could be that would get the administration upset.

Speaker 3 That is why, to me, I just think it's such a short-term thinking to fold on something this stupid, right? Because they could come for something.

Speaker 3 Is that voice anywhere in media circles? You know, when you're talking, when you're talking to executive sources or is anybody saying like, man, I feel like

Speaker 3 we're being too cowardly here and

Speaker 3 it's opening, it's showing weakness and it's opening the door to even more pain.

Speaker 5 Those sources are all over the place. Those executives are, you know, all over the place.
They are privately

Speaker 5 struggling with this,

Speaker 5 although ultimately it's only a handful of people making the final decision.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And that makes me think about Paramount, right? It makes me think about the CBS settlement by Sherry Redstone's Paramount and now David Ellison's control of the new Paramount Skydance.

Speaker 5 You know, what's been airing on Paramount that annoys President Trump? It's South Park. South Park.
You know, South Park was supposed to air last night.

Speaker 5 It's going to be pushed back a week, but that says it's apparently the show's decision. They're running late getting the show episode ready.
But David Ellison told me he loves South Park.

Speaker 5 He loves the show. He loves the creators.

Speaker 5 And so here's a guy who has been accused of capitulating to the president already, who may or may may not have struck a secret side deal with Trump for public service announcements.

Speaker 5 And yet his network and streaming service continues to air South Park, which is some of the most biting satire of Trump anywhere in America. So

Speaker 5 these are the push and pulls that exists. And I think all eyes are on figures like Ellison and Iger now.
It really is a handful of these men, and they are mostly men who are making these calls.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, and Ellison hired a ombudsman who has no history in the media, who is a Trump, nominated to be the Trump ambassador. I just, it's very concerning.

Speaker 3 And I guess this is my last question for you because I think that

Speaker 3 there was a tweet from Julia Yaffe yesterday, and it was a story about a Moscow newspaper. And it was like, where's the line here? And

Speaker 3 they had a meeting early in the Putin era. And they're like, how do we know what the line is? And how do we know how to avoid the line?

Speaker 3 And in the meeting, somebody said to the editor, the line zigzags. So you don't know where it is.
And the zigzagging line leads to this chilling effect, right? Where

Speaker 3 people don't know what to do or say, and they start to,

Speaker 3 you know, they start to fold maybe, you know, before pressure is even applied. And I just am wondering what your sense is on that whole,

Speaker 3 how widespread that chilling effect is now. Because like one thing that comes to mind is like, I feel this way when I'm going on cable.
I know you do.

Speaker 3 I see more now of reporters and anchors and people doing caveats that they don't really need to do. You know, like Trump's name is in the Epstein files.

Speaker 3 And then they say something like, no, that doesn't mean there's any wrongdoing. And I'm like, would they have said that a year or two ago? Or is that a CYA caveat, right?

Speaker 3 Because Trump has been accused of wrongdoing in the Epstein files. It doesn't mean he did it, but he has been accused, right? And to me, I just, I feel like I see a chilling effect across the board.

Speaker 3 And I'm wondering if you're seeing that.

Speaker 5 I think the temperature, the air temperature has changed, but it has not changed so dramatically that we suddenly need to put on a coat. You know, I think it's a change of degrees.

Speaker 5 It's not, thankfully, as dramatic as that, at least not yet. Yes, I do notice some of the same behavior that you do.

Speaker 5 At the same time, precision is valuable, and especially for journalists on television, being fair-minded is critical. But as long as we see tough-minded coverage as well, then

Speaker 5 we're still delivering what the audience needs and expects. And ultimately, this is about the audience, Tim.

Speaker 5 The audience has an expectation.

Speaker 5 And obviously, Sean Hannity's fans have a different expectation than yours, but the majority of the country wants to actually be informed about what's going on with the administration.

Speaker 5 They want to actually be informed and not just spun. So I come down on a day like today to that old line about how we've got to use your rights or you lose your rights.
That's where we are.

Speaker 5 That's where guys like Kimmel are right now. You use your rights or you lose your rights.
I doubt he'll be back on ABC,

Speaker 5 but I'm hopeful that there will be many other possible homes for him. Hopeful, but I'm not sure.
I mean, that's one of the questions I asked in my newsletter this morning.

Speaker 5 Will streamers like Netflix take a risk on someone like Colbert or Kimmel in this political environment? And my gut says yes, but I don't know. I don't think any of us know.

Speaker 3 Well, Jimmy, I can't pay Disney money, but you're welcome on the Bulwark YouTube anytime. All right, so give me a call.
It is.

Speaker 3 A couple of your friends got my number. Brian Stelter, you got to go to TV.
Thank you for jumping on on a busy morning. Appreciate it.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Thanks.

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Speaker 3 Hey, everybody, we are back with a Bulwark editor, author of the Triad newsletter, JVL.

Speaker 3 Sign up for his fucking newsletter if you haven't. My God, go to the bulwark.com slash subscribe.
It's the best one in the business. And he wrote one last night, late night.
I was in bed.

Speaker 3 I'm an hour behind you, and I was already asleep before it published. So, you know, you were just working burning the midnight oil.
It's titled First They Came for Jimmy Kimmel.

Speaker 3 You posted onto Substack notes, this is a bigger deal than people realize. We just kind of went through all of the particulars with Brian Stelter, but give us, contextualize this for us.

Speaker 3 Why is this a bigger deal than people realize in your view? Well, this is, you know, somebody on one of the social platforms, just a couple of days after Trump.

Speaker 3 was sworn in said, you know, a pretty good barometer of our slide will be whether or not late night comedians who are critical of Trump are still still on the air.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 3 well, two of the three are down.

Speaker 3 We're nine months done, and two of the three.

Speaker 3 I've done some blue sky slander on this very podcast over the weeks and months. So, credit where due.
Shout out to anonymous blue sky user for nailing it. Center bullseye.

Speaker 3 So, although I suppose you could say that's only half because there are still both Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon left.

Speaker 3 So, maybe it's only 50%

Speaker 3 and Greg Guthel.

Speaker 3 So that's not great. The key point of this is

Speaker 3 governmental coercion.

Speaker 3 And that is what, you know, I would say during the great cancel culture freak out,

Speaker 3 you were typically, I would think, on the like, you know, hey, free speech, we got to stop this. You didn't like this.
And I was just like, I don't know. This is like social shame stuff happening.

Speaker 3 And like. We love social shame.
See, this is the difference between us and our status as Catholics. You know, both cradle Catholics.

Speaker 3 You stuck around a little longer than I did because the shame part appeals. I get it.
I love it. It's one of my kinks.
And I like a little social stigma. It's just went a little overboard for me.

Speaker 3 Balance in all things for me. Right.

Speaker 3 But so, so, you know, here you have the FCC literally, as you and Sam pointed out last night, you know, the head of the FCC going out and telling people who have mergers before his board

Speaker 3 what they will have to do. You know, say, we want the people who are the affiliates, the local affiliates, which sounds like a mom-and-pop franchise, but isn't, but are large corporations.

Speaker 3 We want them to act in this way, telling ABC that they could either do this the easy way or the hard way, which again is just a crazy thing

Speaker 3 to say out loud. David Fromm put this, I think, quite well last night, to your point, that a lot of people are out there talking about it as this cancel culture.

Speaker 3 Like the barstool guy was talking about, this isn't really, it isn't, right? It's not, it's not compared. We shouldn't be comparing it to cancel culture, regardless of what your views were on this.

Speaker 3 From put it this way, this is not cancel culture because it's not culture, it's state repression. It's an order from the government.
Yeah. And that's really, and that, I guess, is the stakes here.

Speaker 3 Here's the other thing. It's an open order.
It's none of this is being done behind closed doors, right?

Speaker 3 It's not as if the FCC is saying, we are totally fair and balanced, and we are not going to put our thumbs in then quietly saying, fire kimmel, fire, kimmel, fire, kimmel, fire, kimmel. kimmel.

Speaker 3 That's not happening.

Speaker 3 It's just open, which in a way is helpful to us, I think, but also shows how much further down the path we are.

Speaker 3 And that's why I said I think this is pretty dark stuff because like I just, I don't know how you wind up going back from this sort of thing.

Speaker 3 We'll get to that at the end on whether we can go back from it or not.

Speaker 3 The other thing you got into in your newsletter is the asymmetry, one of your favorite topics, and the different standards that are being set and whether you should even take critics

Speaker 3 coming from the MAGA right on this sort of stuff in good faith at all, like whether we should even consider their arguments, right? And I got into this with Brian, but like in this case in particular,

Speaker 3 even on the merits, like he didn't, he didn't even say anything untrue. Like, I wouldn't even say that he said anything inappropriate, actually.

Speaker 3 I should bring this up. I didn't have time to get to it, but I just, I do want to read this for folks.
Here was Kimmel the night after the Kirk assassination.

Speaker 3 He said, This: I've seen a lot of extraordinarily vile responses to this from both sides of the political spectrum. Some people are cheering this, which is something I won't ever understand.

Speaker 3 We had another school shooting yesterday in Colorado, the 100th one of the year.

Speaker 3 With all these terrible things happening, you would think that our president would at least make an attempt to bring us together. It's like when he was doing his earnest bit, that's where he was.

Speaker 3 He was doing exactly what the

Speaker 3 right-wing shamers wanted people to do, right? Which is tamp down

Speaker 3 the rhetoric. And then, in this joke,

Speaker 3 he's kind of technically accurate, right? I mean,

Speaker 3 so in this case, obviously it's not good faith, but you make the point that even in the other efforts to try to tamp down speech around Kirk, even in the cases where the person did say something wrong, it's like, why should we listen to these critics based on what how MAGA has acted and how the president and the vice president have acted?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, so the legal system is grappling with the fact that regular order has broken down, which means that basically if you are a judge and a lawyer who is an officer of the court represents something to you, you can take their word for it because they're a sworn officer of the court.

Speaker 3 They can't walk into your chambers and say, sir, yes, we got your order and we complied with it. when they secretly haven't complied with it, right?

Speaker 3 Because and the reason you have regular order is because if the judge has to independently verify every representation made to him by both counsels, every case would take a million years, right?

Speaker 3 So, regular order is breaking down because the government can no longer be trusted.

Speaker 3 And this has happened a bunch of times in a bunch of different cases, most famously in Kilmar Obrego-Garcia case, where the government has come in and said one thing to be true, and it's just been a lie.

Speaker 3 A knowing lie. A knowing lie.
A knowing lie, right? Not a mistake. And that's the difference, right? It isn't like, you know, oh, the government said something, but was wrong.

Speaker 3 They said we filed it, but then they forgot to file it.

Speaker 3 That's not what we're talking about. So that same thing has happened in the media and the media doesn't understand it.

Speaker 3 Like regular order has broken down. And so, you know, the places like CNN and NBC, they're just like, you know, and here's J.D.
Vance says X

Speaker 3 as if you can. trust what J.D.
Vance says. And I just don't understand that.

Speaker 3 I went back, I got real torqued up about this last night because I was thinking about the eating of the cats and the dogs in Springfield. And if you remember, it's almost exactly a year ago, actually.

Speaker 3 This all happened in September of 2024. That cannot be true.
Yeah. It's only been a year?

Speaker 3 A year and a week.

Speaker 3 A year and a half.

Speaker 3 Literally a year and a week.

Speaker 3 Okay. So, you know, so Trump is at the debate with Kamala Harris.

Speaker 3 And he is by the moderator, David Moir, he is asked to basically set up like, hey, you said this thing about people eating cats and dogs and it's not true. Do you want to do cleanup on it?

Speaker 3 And Trump, of course, just doubles down because that's what he does. And then Moir fact checks him.
Then we got all that. And then a week later, we get JD Vance, who sits down with Dana Bash on CNN.

Speaker 3 And he is asked about this. And he's like, this isn't.
I got the audio, actually. Oh, you do?

Speaker 3 Let's hear. Let's hear our vice president.

Speaker 34 The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.

Speaker 3 If I have to

Speaker 34 create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 3 So, like, I don't understand why this isn't the critical context for every single thing out of this guy's mouth.

Speaker 3 He said it. He admitted it.
He said that he created stories and he is willing to create stories and that's what he's going to do.

Speaker 3 So, like, this is what I don't understand, right?

Speaker 3 If you are, if you are NBC or Politico or anybody else who's, who's running a story and you include something by JD Vance talking about, you know, the terrible things that are happening, isn't the necessary context?

Speaker 3 Oh, and this is a guy who has created false lies knowingly and has admitted to doing such and promised to do it again in the future. So we should all recognize that he's doing it again.

Speaker 3 In order to work you, in order to work the refs, in order to work the media. Like that was his rationale for doing it, right? Like I'm going to make up stories to manipulate you.

Speaker 3 And so if you are on the side that he's stated that he's trying to manipulate, you know, you feel like you might need to at least not just accept the manipulation.

Speaker 3 You might need to, you know, point that into conversation. You think, but that's not a lot happening.
Again, this is everybody's continuing to act as if regular order is still in effect.

Speaker 3 And it's just not. And you see it with what he said yesterday.
Right. So this, yeah, I have this too.

Speaker 3 So this is the prime example of this when it comes to creating stories and in the context of Kirk, right?

Speaker 3 And thinking about the fact that Kimmel is fired for this joke about the way that Mag has reacted to Kirk.

Speaker 3 It's like technically accurate, maybe contextually wasn't as clear as it could have been, but like it was a joke.

Speaker 3 Then you have the vice president going on to Fox News in an interview with Jesse Waters talking about

Speaker 3 the Kirk assassination and similar fallout.

Speaker 3 And I'm about to play this clip, but I think the important thing that I just want to bring up to your point of how we're not in regular order and how people are being manipulated.

Speaker 3 This clip we're about to play,

Speaker 3 our guys who are working their ass off behind the scenes, by the way, Brenda and Jared at the Bulwark, who are doing a lot of rapid response stuff for us and providing videos, they caught this and posted it.

Speaker 3 I haven't seen anybody else post it. And when you put it in the newsletter and I went back and looked at it, it had like 18 retweets.

Speaker 3 Like this, this is the vice president makes this statement about to play. It has no attention as compared to the...

Speaker 3 this whirlwind around the Jimmy Kimmel joke. No one is talking about this.
Let's play it.

Speaker 35 We know Joe Biden's FBI was investigating Charlie Kirk. Maybe they should have been investigating the networks that motivated, inspired, and maybe even funded Charlie Kirk's murder.

Speaker 35 If they had, Charlie Kirk might be alive today.

Speaker 3 Charlie Kirk might be alive.

Speaker 3 If Joe Biden's FBI had investigated the networks that inspired and maybe even funded his murder. I mean, there is no evidence for this.

Speaker 3 this is a created story, like the Haitian cats and dogs. He's creating a story.

Speaker 3 This is pulled out of thin air. Like the idea that somebody maybe even funded Charlie Kirk's murder, like, that doesn't even make any sense.

Speaker 3 Like, this guy is living in a small town in Utah with his transgender girlfriend roommate in an apartment. Like, where is the money? Like, what you guys is using a single bolt action rifle.

Speaker 3 Like, what are you even talking about? Somebody funded this murder. It's, if this is a single person, like, you, and you have the evidence, you're the vice president, you guys have the investigation.

Speaker 3 You're just fabricating a story to create division and to get people upset and to get people and to make an excuse for going after your political foes. That's what you're doing.

Speaker 3 You're doing it on a news program. And that is like not even, it is so much worse, exponentially worse than what we saw out of Jimmy Kimmel.
And it's happening from the vice president. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And here's the thing. I want to parse these things very, very finely, right? Nothing Jimmy Kimmel said was factually untrue.

Speaker 3 You just go back and go word by word. Like it, you know, it may have been misleading.
It may not have been fully, you know, transparently

Speaker 3 context or

Speaker 3 theologically, contextually accurate, right? But whatever, like it was just true

Speaker 3 if you're reading it like, you know, black letter.

Speaker 3 Here,

Speaker 3 JD Vance, he does say maybe even funded. So he has given him some wiggle, right? He's just asking questions.
But he does say the networks that motivated and inspired.

Speaker 3 So he is stating as fact that there are networks, which presumably he can identify then, which did motivate and inspire

Speaker 3 the killer. That's just a lie.

Speaker 3 That isn't even like him making inferences to try to guide people. That's not like seeding conspiracy theories in the way that maybe even funded is.

Speaker 3 He is stating as fact that there are specific networks that motivated and inspired the guy. Okay, where are those? A lot of those in Utah? Right.

Speaker 3 At his

Speaker 3 technical college?

Speaker 3 There are a lot of St. George, you know, liberal bastions.
In the video game Discords? Was that those? The PR chat that apparently he was in for like 2,600 hours last year?

Speaker 3 So, again,

Speaker 3 the vice president of the United States

Speaker 3 is

Speaker 3 doing the actual thing

Speaker 3 that MAGA and all the other people are insisting that everybody else is doing, right? They're doing the lying and making up. This is, I mean,

Speaker 3 it's not blood libel, but

Speaker 3 it's pretty bad. I mean, it's near incitement.
It's definitely incitement. Is it near incitement?

Speaker 3 I don't know. Incitement's a legal term.
There's probably a legal definition for it. I mean, he's trying.
Okay, maybe

Speaker 3 let's get the word right. I mean, he is trying

Speaker 3 to create a rationale

Speaker 3 for going after political foes

Speaker 3 right like that's what he's doing he's trying to he's trying to he's trying to create a story he's making he's fabricating a story to create a rationale to target political foes based on charlie kirk's assassination that's what he's doing which is kind of which is kind of by the way what what jimmy kimmel was was making a joke that mega was doing honestly like he's doing it anyway true yeah two things i don't understand the first is so when i talk about asymmetry how republicans are allowed to get away with certain things and democrats aren't allowed when i say by allow like who's doing the allowing

Speaker 3 and the the answer is two groups but the most important of which is voters like just your normal people who are not partisans like that soft 30 in the middle they don't punish Republicans for any of like the this sort of thing.

Speaker 3 They don't punish Republicans for eating the cats and dogs or you ought to inject yourself with bleach or any of that stuff.

Speaker 3 But they absolutely punish Democrats for so-and-so on blue sky said this terrible thing and they're a liberal. So I guess liberal cancel culture is really dangerous.

Speaker 3 Like these are just the beliefs that are out there in the world.

Speaker 3 But you can't change. Like, I don't know how to change that.
I don't know how to address that. Like that just seems to be a fact of the world we live in.

Speaker 3 But the other is like the elites who are supposedly calling balls and strikes,

Speaker 3 you know, like just normal, normal actors in the media, they have really given in on all this stuff where just like, well, I mean, Republicans,

Speaker 3 that's just what they are. Right.
You know, they're, that's like, that's like complaining about a tornado. The tornado doesn't care.
I mean, I'm not going to, it is what it is.

Speaker 3 Everybody understands that. That's, you know, tornado is going to tornado.
But boy, you know, why, why have Democrats have been doing some terrible things?

Speaker 3 Look at these array of screenshots from random people with names we can't identify from Twitter

Speaker 3 saying horrible, vile things about Charlie Kirk. It's like, you know, the media is treating all this shit as if it's the same.
Worse.

Speaker 3 Here's the thing.

Speaker 3 Giving more attention to the rando lefties than to what the vice president is saying. Like I said, I mean, maybe.

Speaker 3 Challenge me. Somebody could send this in.
Maybe somebody covered this clip somewhere on the nightly news.

Speaker 3 But like, I don't understand why this isn't a massive news news story like why there people aren't giving this more attention and the vice president of the united states fabricated a rationale for the assassination of charlie kirk

Speaker 3 with the intent of creating a pretext for going after his political foes. Like, that's what he did.
It's just, it's as clear as day.

Speaker 3 Like, he just created a fake story about what the motivations were of this assassination. And I don't think anybody knows that.
And he has, I gotta say, he previously admitted that he creates stories.

Speaker 3 That's the other, like, you know, again, if he hadn't already said, yeah, I created stories and I'll do it again.

Speaker 3 Like, then you could say, like, well, we're just trying to prove that he knowingly created, you know, then you could say, like, oh, but we are caught in a world where he has admitted to it.

Speaker 3 He's already copped to it.

Speaker 3 And nobody cares. I care.
Nobody cares. I care.
You, you see, people

Speaker 3 are. I think people need to be bullied in to cover this.

Speaker 3 You need to bully. You tell me if you see anybody anywhere else in the media mentioning J.D.
Vance's quote about

Speaker 3 if I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.

Speaker 3 You tell me if you see that quote anywhere else, anywhere in the media today. Or the quote about how he suggested the killer of Charlie Kirk might be funded by the left.

Speaker 3 And there is no lefty politician that has said anything to that effect, right? Like, I think about the widespread outrage about, and by the way, I want the truth to be out there.

Speaker 3 So, like, we did this on the next level. I'm among the people who are like saying to like lefty influencers, please stop saying that this person, that these texts are fake or this person is managed.

Speaker 3 Like, that is not true. And that's fine to say that that is not true.
But, but he is what J.D. Vance is saying is more irresponsible than the most crazed left-wing influencer out there.

Speaker 3 He's literally from the power and from the perch of the vice presidency

Speaker 3 suggesting that this assassin was part, was a cog in some, in some scheme by, by progressive groups. Do you want to go to the bad place? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 Because I'm going to end in the good place. Okay.
So

Speaker 3 I sort of said this on the next level yesterday, and I was like, I have some dark thoughts, but we were running out of time. Yeah, great.

Speaker 3 There's some of our fans had messaged me about this. They were upset.
They wanted a follow-up. So let's just do it for them.
Okay. Well, here it is.

Speaker 3 I agree that we ought to be doing truthful things and saying the true things. That's what I do.
That's how I want the world to work. But as an analytical matter,

Speaker 3 are we certain that it is politically advantageous to operate in that way? Which is to say,

Speaker 3 if a bunch of people are running around doing false flag theories and creating their own conspiracy theories and muddying the water, what if that's actually helpful politically?

Speaker 3 Again, not advocating.

Speaker 3 I'm just trying to look at it from an analytical perspective and say, what if the world we are living in right now actually punishes the side who is trying to like be real strict about blah blah blah

Speaker 3 and helps the side that has people in it who are muddying the waters and creating conspiracy theories. I hear that.
If we're going to go here, like I have a lot of thoughts about this.

Speaker 3 So I'm with you. I know you're just throwing that out there because,

Speaker 3 and there are various different layers. Like on the one hand, I just, from a personal level, I'm in the like, let the lie into the world, but not through me.

Speaker 3 So, I need that for like sleeping at night. All right.
And I, the reason that I am doing what I'm doing is because of this. We already ranted about this.
And I just,

Speaker 3 it's very important to me. So, like, I'm not going to do it.
It's not. Yeah.
If you were going to live that way, you just would have gone MAGA. I would have just gone MAGA.

Speaker 3 It would have been a lot easier. I'd have a boat by now, you know, or at least a beach house.
I'm not going to do it. And I just, my little insides are too,

Speaker 3 you know, are wound a little too tight on all this stuff. Okay.
So that's me. Now to the broader question.

Speaker 3 I was on a democracy panel in Florida recently. Like, you know, one of these, like, what does the pro-democracy movement do now? And like, this topic came up.
This like very topic came up.

Speaker 3 And I was kind of making the point you were making that like there's some benefit to playing asymmetric warfare back at them. Now,

Speaker 3 I also think we have to be judicious about that a little bit, right? Like the case I was making was, I think this was happening right after the airplane crashed at Reagan.

Speaker 3 And I was like, why not blame Sean Duffy for that? That's not like really a direct lie. That's just like playing their game, right?

Speaker 3 That it's like, okay, anything the bad happened during the Biden administration, Biden got blamed for by Trump.

Speaker 3 So why doesn't anything the bad happened in the world during this time Trump get blamed for? I think that is defensible and probably smart politics, frankly.

Speaker 3 I think that

Speaker 3 you reach a point where there is potential blowback, right?

Speaker 3 Like, I think that because Trump narrowly won this last election, there's some people out there that say, like, Trump wasn't punished for any of his worst behavior. I'm open to hearing that argument.

Speaker 3 I don't really strategically believe that. Like, I think that Trump benefited from some of his bad behavior.
And I think that some of Trump's bad behavior actually cost him.

Speaker 3 And that, given how terrible Joe Biden's approval ratings were, and like the state of what we see throughout the world with challenging parties and the fact that he lost in 2020, like, I think he did some self-sabotage.

Speaker 3 Like, I don't know. I think that, that, like, if there were certain ways where Trump had made himself more acceptable to polite society, like just on the edges, they might have 56 senators right now.

Speaker 3 I mean, like, you know what I mean? Like, they could have won, he could have won even bigger, right?

Speaker 3 I think that, like, he lost some ground from some gettable people in the suburbs from some of his behavior, I guess I would say. And so I do, so I think that in certain cases.

Speaker 3 I do think a little self-policing is important because if you just sort of let everybody's darkest angels loose, you know, you end up, well, both darkening your soul and also potentially doing yourself strategic harm.

Speaker 3 And I saw some of that around some of the Kirk reaction, to be frank. So, anyway,

Speaker 3 it's a layered reaction, personal, strategic, and then not being not going so far into the dark place that you become counter-strategic. What do you think of all that? I can see that.

Speaker 3 And again,

Speaker 3 I'm where you are. I'm not going to do any of this myself, but I do,

Speaker 3 honestly, it does make me feel like,

Speaker 3 I don't know, should I personally, I'm not going to lie about any of this stuff. I'm going to be truth.
I'm not going to do conspiracy theories, but should I get really torqued up

Speaker 3 over

Speaker 3 people who do?

Speaker 3 Because, you know, the responsible people in Manga don't get torqued up over.

Speaker 3 their president and vice president doing this sort of thing, right? And and that has been a real help to them, I think. It has been helpful to them to have both like a regular,

Speaker 3 you know, regular political warfare and asymmetric political warfare arm. I'll give you a genuine answer to that.
Should you get torqued up

Speaker 3 whether you get torqued up is a personal opinion. I think that we have, there's some obligation that we have to the, to folks that are listening, right?

Speaker 3 Like that, like, I feel this to be at least like, hey, and this is what I did.

Speaker 3 Just when we talked about the text messages yesterday, like I had a lot of people, like real people, not fucking bots, like real people in my life, like texting, like, this seems like it might be fake.

Speaker 3 Can you really trust Cash? And I felt like it is my obligation to them as somebody that is like the person providing opinions to say just bluntly, like, no.

Speaker 3 You know, I don't know what was in the mind of the shooter and his girlfriend when they were texting, but like it's real. I mean, it's not just cash fabricating this.

Speaker 3 Like, I actually got a DM after we taped this from somebody. I don't want to expose them, but like, they know a person that works for the county attorney in that county.

Speaker 3 And like that person had to put their name on, you know, and that person, I'm not going to say anything about what their politics are, but you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 Like, like there's a practical element to this that you should, I don't want to put the gas pedal and send other people into the crazy place. So that's why I

Speaker 3 get a little,

Speaker 3 that's why I care about this, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you and I are aligned on this, but I guess what I'm saying is like you don't want to go out there going like this, bad, but, you know, I ain't going to put on the hair shirt for you.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I hear that.

Speaker 3 You know, like and i sure am not gonna do it while the vice president of the united states is out there creating stories as he has admitted he has done in the past and promised to do in the future you know like if i will say all the true things and uh i want you know my mission is always with our audiences i try to help people be smarter and see around corners like that's what i'm here to do

Speaker 3 so i'm not going to swallow the whistle or anything but i'm also not going to not gonna lose my mind and descend into finger wagging. You know, like, okay, totally.
I get it.

Speaker 3 You know, that's a thing that's happening. Great.

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Speaker 3 All right, let's close with this. For me, it's good news.
I assume you're going to put a dark spin on it because that's just the nature. So I'm playing the role of Sarah here.

Speaker 3 And you can play the JVL role. I saw a clip right before you came on.
And it's from one of these,

Speaker 3 I've been spending more time in the Manosphere. Okay, just because I'm curious, like, what's happening? Like, what the reactions are this? Are they ignoring it? Are they swallowing the whistle?

Speaker 3 Are they, whatever? And there's a show on Barstool, Kirk Minahane show.

Speaker 3 And I forget what the topic was, but I started following it more closely because dude is obviously a conservative dude, just in temperament and some of his like

Speaker 3 terminology he uses. Let's just put it like that.
But he went at Trump over something. I forget what it was.
And so I started following. Then I saw it again today.

Speaker 3 And this clip, and I said this to Stelter, I'm like, I do wonder if some of the stuff is so clownish that there's a backlash that people are just like, come on, like, Jimmy Kimmel. Like, really?

Speaker 3 Like, this is the threat. And here was the Kirk Minahane show from this morning.
Let's play.

Speaker 3 I always do the left. No, right now, in 2025, at 10.06 on September 18th, the extreme right are the biggest group of pussies that has ever existed in America.
A bunch of, because people with...

Speaker 3 green hair at Starbucks and because once in a while a fucking guy swam against girls, you fucking pussies have broken in half.

Speaker 3 He goes on to go and get into some internal

Speaker 3 inter-barstool strife that is not relevant for the podcast, but he's writing that in context.

Speaker 3 The Starbucks Cup is in the context of like some people were mad because they were going to Starbucks saying, write Charlie Kirk's name on the cup and they wouldn't do it.

Speaker 3 And he's also talking about the Kimmel stuff. And I don't know.

Speaker 3 I don't know. Is that there's maybe something, some salience there?

Speaker 3 Maybe?

Speaker 3 I got to say, I'm pretty shocked by that.

Speaker 3 I am really shocked by that. And that would be, yeah, pleasantly,

Speaker 3 because that's obviously the case.

Speaker 3 And the fact that some, some of the non-politically aligned, but only sort of culturally aligned people, like the, you know, the guys who want to be able to watch porn and,

Speaker 3 you know, and want to be able to say pussy and all that stuff, and who thought that they were with the Republicans, the fact that some of them are like, geez, that's not what I'm into.

Speaker 3 That's a

Speaker 3 reasonably positive indicator. A reasonably positive.
Let's stop right there. That's the end of the podcast.

Speaker 3 A reasonably positive indicator. That's Jonathan V.
Las. We'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast.
We'll see you all then. Peace.
I hope they cancel me.

Speaker 3 So I can go be with my family.

Speaker 3 So I can quit wearing this mask, though.

Speaker 3 Telling people to kiss my dog.

Speaker 3 I hope they crucify me.

Speaker 3 I hope they put me down. I hope they euthanize me.
I hope I never ever have to go on TV.

Speaker 3 Jimmy Kimmel does not wanna meet me. I told my manager, no more parties at Los Angeles.
Last night, I fell deeper than Brock Campbell down a rabbit hole. Did so much I won't ever find my appetite.

Speaker 3 On my way home, I crashed into a satellite. That's why my phone was obsolete for half the night.
That's why my dome is ringing, baby. As of right now.
My job is to lie down.

Speaker 3 I hope they cancel me

Speaker 3 so I can go be with my family.

Speaker 3 So I can quit wearing this man though.

Speaker 3 Tell the people kiss my door.

Speaker 3 I hope they cancel me.

Speaker 3 So I can go be with my family.

Speaker 3 So I can quit wearing this man though.

Speaker 3 Tell the people kiss my door.

Speaker 3 Look, after tour, I broke up with my girlfriend. To pick a bunch of bunches that I couldn't back then.
And yeah, that was cool. But now I'm empty as my room.
I guess my insta keep me busy.

Speaker 3 I got plenty of things to do. But I told Reed,

Speaker 3 no more to sell a

Speaker 3 last night keeps flashing and I can't take it. One sec, shut that phone up before I break it.
Hold up, take me home before I say it. I hope they banish me.
I miss my family tree.

Speaker 3 I was a family man, and now I'm just a man to see if you can't pay your rent or be responsible financially. They need you.
I hope I get me too.

Speaker 3 I hope they cancel me

Speaker 3 so I can go be with my family.

Speaker 3 So I can quit wearing this mask, though.

Speaker 3 Tell the people kiss my dog.

Speaker 3 I hope they cancel me.

Speaker 3 So I can go be with my family.

Speaker 3 So I can quit wearing this mask, though.

Speaker 3 Tell the people kiss my dog.

Speaker 3 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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Speaker 27 Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today.

Speaker 29 Toyota, let's go places.

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