Trump’s Big Flip on Ukraine, and a Defiant Jimmy Kimmel

This is a real good story about Drew, a real United Airlines customer.

After almost four years of treatments, I was finally cancer-free.

My mom's like, Where do you want to go to celebrate?

I'm like, Let's go somewhere tropical.

And then a pilot hopped in the intercom and started talking about me.

And I was like, What is going on here?

My wife be cancer too, and I wanted to celebrate his special moment.

That's Bill, a real United pilot.

We brought him drinks and donuts.

We all signed a card.

I was smiling ear to ear.

Best flight ever for sure.

That's how good leads the way.

From the New York Times, it's the headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today's Wednesday, September 24th.

Here's what we're covering.

This is Katie Edmondson reporting from Washington.

And right now, we are days away from a government shutdown, barring any major changes here on Capitol Hill.

By refusing to even sit down with Democrats, Donald Trump is causing the shutdown.

This is a Trump shutdown.

Work, if the government is shut down, it will solely be blamed on Democrats because we're not playing politics with this at all.

This probably sounds pretty familiar to you because we were in a similar situation back in March, but it feels very different this time.

My colleague Katie Edmondson says the standoff between Republicans and Democrats has escalated with no solution in sight about how to keep the government running.

If they don't reach an agreement, funding is set to run out on Tuesday.

In the latest setback for any negotiations, President Trump canceled a planned meeting this week at the White House, where he was supposed to talk with top Democratic leaders.

Republicans need their votes to pass a spending bill.

Katie says, while Democrats decided back in March that it was worth it to compromise to avoid the chaos and hardship of a shutdown, this time they're standing their ground.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, has made the case that they're in a very different position now.

He's made the case that voters have seen what Republicans' agenda is.

They're seeing the impacts of that so-called big beautiful bill and that voters don't like it and want Democrats to push back and fight for them on things like health care.

Democrats are saying if you want our votes, you have to sit down and negotiate with us.

The big demand Democrats are making in exchange for their cooperation is to reverse cuts to Medicaid and other health programs that Republicans made over the summer.

They also say Congress must extend health insurance subsidies that are part of Obamacare.

Without that extension, millions of Americans' premiums will go up next year.

Some could even double.

At the United Nations yesterday, the Assembly will hear an address by His Excellency Donald Trump, President of the United States of America.

President Trump addressed the UN General Assembly in a scathing and meandering speech that went on nearly four times longer than his allotted speaking slot.

All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that, on the way up, stopped right in the middle.

If the First Lady wasn't in great shape, she would have fallen.

From the get-go, Trump aired a list of grievances from complaining about an escalator that shut down and his malfunctioning teleprompter to ripping the U.N.'s efforts to address climate change.

The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions.

Trump also told the gathering of world leaders that their countries were, quote, going to hell and falling apart because of their immigration policies.

And he falsely claimed that Muslim leaders in the West were planning to institute Sharia law.

Proud nations must be allowed to protect their communities and prevent their societies from being overwhelmed by people.

they have never seen before with different

customs, religions, with different everything.

Trump's speech underscored the hostile approach his administration has taken towards the UN, pulling the U.S.

out of the organization's Human Rights Council and clawing back a billion dollars in funding.

But despite his open digs at the UN and at many member countries, after his speech, a number of world leaders rushed to try and get one-on-one meetings with Trump.

One of those meetings was with Ukrainian President Vlodymir Zelensky, who said even he wasn't expecting the major pivot Trump made on Ukraine.

You You know, I know your staff read the post from President Trump after your meeting, but in part he said this.

I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form.

Are you surprised to hear that?

A little bit.

In a dramatic 180, after months of insisting that Ukraine would have to give up land to Russia as part of a peace deal, Trump suddenly shifted, saying, without any explanation that he thought the country could retake its territory.

My colleague David Sanger, a Times White House correspondent, has been talking to Ukraine's allies about what the shift could mean.

It's hard to know how permanent this policy change is.

The Europeans, on the one hand, welcome the fact that the president isn't about to go force President Zelensky to give up territory.

But they do wonder about the president's motives.

Some of them think he simply wants to wash his hands of the entire war and say, I tried to bring peace, I can't bring peace, you guys go fight it out.

In fact, at the end of his True Social, he said, I wish you both well.

Some believe that, in fact, what he wants to do is back away enough to say that he's basically a neutral player here and try to reopen relations with Russia.

We don't know if that's his long-term plan, but certainly the Europeans believe it is.

Welcome back to Jimmy Kimmel Live.

We are still on the air in most of the country, except ironically for Washington, D.C., where we have been preempted.

We are off the air in Nashville, New Orleans, Portland.

Jimmy Kimmel made a highly anticipated return to TV last night with his late-night show's first episode back since since it was paused by network executives a week ago.

Notably, the show still didn't air on about 20% of local ABC stations, including those run by the conservative media giant Sinclair.

But I do want to make something clear because it's important to me as a human, and that is you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.

In a sometimes emotional monologue, Kimmel said he understood why his comments about the suspect and the killing of Charlie Kirk were, quote, ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both.

But he spoke out forcefully against what he said was an attempt by the Trump administration, in particular the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, to censor him.

Look, I never imagined I would be in a situation like this.

I barely paid attention in school.

The one thing I did learn from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern is that a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn't like is anti-American.

That's anti-morality.

Even with Jimmy Kimmel's return to the airwaves, Brendan Carr is feeling resolute and emboldened.

My colleague Cecilia Kong says despite intense criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans that Carr was threatening free speech, Carr is not backing down.

He feels like this is all part of a long strategy he's had to try to correct imbalances that he sees in the mainstream media and specifically broadcast television with programming that comes from networks that are, in his view, liberal.

He has suggested that ABC's daytime talk show, The View, should be investigated for being too biased.

And he has been on various cable shows and radio shows defending his actions and saying that really he's not going anywhere and that there's more to come.

In Florida, the man who plotted to kill President Trump last year and was discovered hiding in the bushes near one of his golf courses with a semi-automatic rifle was found guilty yesterday of attempted assassination.

He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Ryan Ruth chose to represent himself, which turned the rare trial of a would-be presidential assassin into even more of a spectacle.

At one point, the judge tried to explain certain rules of evidence, and Ruth said, I have no clue what that means.

Ruth was a building contractor who moved around a lot.

According to prosecutors, he lived out of his car for weeks while he cased Trump's golf course and looked up his schedule of campaign events online.

He left a note with his friend that said,

Dear world, this was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but I failed you.

He was arrested just two months after another attempt on Trump's life in Pennsylvania, where a bullet grazed his ear.

The back-to-back close calls raised questions about the performance of the Secret Service.

And finally.

Recently in San Francisco, a crowd poured in on a Friday night, clamoring for a spot around an underground boxing ring.

It cost $100 just to get in the door.

The audience was roaring.

The referee was slapping the mat.

The contestants, who were kind of lurching around the ring, were robots.

The organized robot fight featured humanoid robots about the size of a third grader and with about the same amount of coordination and dexterity.

The face-off, which we'll repeat this weekend, is the latest in a surge of live events in San Francisco aimed at drawing in the city's very young, very techie crowds.

The Bay Area has always been a tech mecca, but young people who work in AI and robotics specifically are now pouring in, and event organizers hope they need a break from their screens every once in a while.

In case you feel like you're missing out, there are videos of the robot fight club from inside the cage match at nytimes.com.

Those are the headlines today on the daily: how the president and his inner circle are making millions through business deals that intersect with America's national security interests.

You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

We'll be back tomorrow.

This podcast is supported by CARE, a global humanitarian organization that turns care into action in over 100 countries.

If you're listening to this program, you probably care about what's happening in the world.

CARE, a global humanitarian organization, turns that care into action.

Your support helps care restore clean water, deliver medical supplies, keep girls in school, feed families through famine, and rebuild after disaster.

Go to care.org slash New York Times to say I care.

Together, we are care, always there.