Silencing Kimmel

Speaker 1 If you are worried you'd never hear another late-night host mock the president again, it's gonna be okay.

Speaker 1 Jon Stewart decked his set out in gold.

Speaker 5 Is Donald Trump stifling free speech?

Speaker 6 Of course not, John. Americans are free to express any opinion we want.

Speaker 7 Seth Meyers knows Trump's threatening him personally.

Speaker 8 If you've ever seen me say anything negative about him, that's just AI.

Speaker 9 Jimmy Fallon got dubbed during the trip protesters managed to project images onto the sides of windsor castle of trump standing next to his good friend jeff gold colbert at this point has nothing to lose remember like in week one of his presidency gulf of america call it gulf of america sure seems harmless but with an autocrat you cannot give an inch and jimmy kimmel

Speaker 1 Still hasn't said a thing.

Speaker 7 Silencing Kimmel. Coming up on Today Explained.

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Speaker 15 Now your host for Today Explained, Jimmy.

Speaker 6 Steve, I mean, Sean Robinsfirm.

Speaker 1 Margaret Hartman is here. She's a senior editor at Intelligencer.
Margaret, how long have you been aware of the comedian Jimmy Kimmel?

Speaker 15 Oh, I've been aware of Jimmy Kimmel since I was in high school. I was a man show reviewer, a little bit surprisingly.

Speaker 2 Good to remember that Jimmy Kimmel was once the co-host of The Man Show. Can you remind people what The Man Show was for people who don't remember?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 15 The Man Show was a sketch comedy show on Comedy Central, and it was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla.

Speaker 15 The theme was kind of men pushing back against the scourge of feminism.

Speaker 8 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, pioneers in the field of bitching, moaning, and complaining.

Speaker 8 Men feel intimidated by a woman who can beat them at a sport.

Speaker 18 We wouldn't know.

Speaker 6 That's never happened.

Speaker 15 The famous ending to the show was girls jumping on trampolines. Because, of course, this is what all men really want to see.

Speaker 2 Did you ever think, man, that guy one day is going to be the leader of the resistance?

Speaker 15 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about how Jimmy Kimmel goes from that guy to

Speaker 19 a political awokening, maybe?

Speaker 15 Yeah, he became much more political in the Trump years.

Speaker 15 He's hosted his late night show, I think, since the early 2000s. And,

Speaker 15 well, about five months into Trump's first term, the Republicans were trying to repeal Obamacare.

Speaker 15 And Kimmel gave this incredible 13-minute monologue where he talked about how passionate he was about protecting people with pre-existing conditions.

Speaker 13 I have a story to tell about something that happened to our family last week.

Speaker 20 I'm sorry.

Speaker 17 I try not to get emotional, but it was a scary story.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 15 he opened up about his son, Billy, who was born with a heart condition, and talked about how pre-Obamacare,

Speaker 15 someone with a condition like Billy's probably

Speaker 15 might not have been able to get life-saving care if they didn't have wealthy parents.

Speaker 22 If your baby is going to die, and it doesn't have to, it shouldn't matter how much money you make.

Speaker 22 I think that's something that, whether whether you're a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right? I mean, we do.

Speaker 15 The tide was already kind of turning against the GOP's Obamacare repeal push at that point, but that was seen as like the final bloke. It got so much media attention.

Speaker 15 It was such a viral moment, and it's unusual to see a late-night host tearing up about

Speaker 15 the importance of children having health insurance. So it really struck a chord with the public.

Speaker 2 How does Trump respond?

Speaker 15 About six months later, we actually didn't know this at the time, but in early 2018, Trump had people at the White House reach out to Disney executives and try to censor Kimmel.

Speaker 15 So we only found this out in 2023 from a Rolling Stone report.

Speaker 15 Talked about how multiple people knew about it at the time, that Trump said something about how Kimmel was doing very dishonest things that he would have once sued him over if he wasn't president.

Speaker 15 It's possible that Trump also reached out to executives at other companies and tried to censor them as well. You know, he did something similar with Saturday Night Live,

Speaker 15 but it does seem that he was particularly irritated with Jimmy Kimmel just one year into his presidency.

Speaker 2 And that's partly because Jimmy Kimmel didn't just stop at this Obamacare repeal, right?

Speaker 15 That's right. He continued speaking out about Trump policies.
He gave a similar monologue after the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Parkland, Florida. And he spoke to Trump directly.

Speaker 21 He was begging him to do something, saying, Now, and don't you dare let anyone say it's too soon to be talking about it because he said it after Vegas. He said it after Sandy Hook.

Speaker 21 You say that after every one of these eight now fatal school shootings we had in this country this year, children are being murdered.

Speaker 15 Every late night host targets the president a bit, whoever they are, and certainly they haven't gone easy on Trump.

Speaker 15 They've probably gone harder on Trump, but Kimmel in particular had a few of these viral moments where he

Speaker 15 really articulated the case against certain Trump policies.

Speaker 2 And beyond teary-eyed monologues, he also just likes to roast the president, right?

Speaker 15 Yes. So one of their most notable moments actually happened once Trump Trump was out of office at the 2024 Academy Awards.

Speaker 15 Toward the end of the show, right before Best Picture was announced, Kimmel starts speaking. He says, oh, we just got a review.

Speaker 8 It says, Has there ever been a worse host than Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars?

Speaker 8 His opening was that of a less than average person trying too hard to be something which he is not and never can be.

Speaker 15 The commenter used the term George Slopadopoulos, and I knew, oh no, that's truth social, that's Trump.

Speaker 15 So then you have the scene of everyone in this audience of Hollywood's A-listers, Hollywood's biggest knight, just laughing at Trump.

Speaker 15 And I'm assuming that did not sit well.

Speaker 15 And Trump provided some evidence that he did not love this because six weeks later, just out of nowhere, he started posting more truths about Jimmy Kimmel, mocking him inaccurately, saying that he bungled the best picture announcement.

Speaker 15 It was actually Al Pacino.

Speaker 13 And Maria is see Oppenheimer.

Speaker 15 But he was clearly so upset about this that he was still thinking about it and lashing out at him publicly six weeks later.

Speaker 2 Of course, Kimmel isn't the first late night talk show host to lose their job, to be suspended, to be canceled. That's Stephen Colbert.
How does Kimmel respond to that?

Speaker 15 That all the late night hosts, like during the writer's strike, they had all come together and done a podcast together, Strike Force 5.

Speaker 8 Let's meet the Strike Force, starting with the former.

Speaker 15 So we're like, we're not in those 90s days of like late night wars. They were all really tight with each other.

Speaker 4 Tim, well, I talked to Molly, your wife. And

Speaker 4 what do you think was her answer? Do you remember when you fell in love?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 5 when she fell in love or when I fell in love, that's why that makes the game a little confusing.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah, yeah. You wrote these questions so bodily, Jimmy.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 15 they all spoke out against Colbert's cancellation, and Trump hit back a lot.

Speaker 15 And funnily enough, every single time he talked about Colbert, he would mention in the next breath, I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Jimmy Kimmel's going to go too.

Speaker 8 And I guess that wasn't enough for El Presidente because he posted the word is, and it's a strong word at that, Jimmy Kimmel is next to go in the untalented late-night sweepstakes, which is alarming

Speaker 18 because I don't know if you know this, Jimmy Kimmel is me.

Speaker 15 Sometimes he would mention other people. He's called out Fallon, he's called out Seth Meyers, but no one as consistently or as angrily as Jimmy Kimmel.

Speaker 17 And shortly thereafter, Fallon will be gone.

Speaker 18 These are people with absolutely no talent who are paid millions of dollars for, in all cases, destroying what used to be great television.

Speaker 23 It's really good to see them go, and I hope I played a major part in it.

Speaker 21 Oh, you delicate, chubby little teacup.

Speaker 20 You did we hurt your

Speaker 2 Which brings us to this week where the prophecy is realized. What happened to Jimmy Kimmel?

Speaker 15 ABC announced that they were suspending his show indefinitely over comments that he made during Monday's show about the Charlie Kirk assassination.

Speaker 15 He made a comment that got attention on the right with Benny Johnson, who was interviewing FCC chair Brendan Carr.

Speaker 15 And I believe on Wednesday, he was saying, look at these horrible comments that Jimmy Kimmel made. And Carr said that they need to look at remedies to that.
And

Speaker 15 the broadcasting groups pushed back and said they did not want to air Kimmel's show and were going to air Kirk tributes instead.

Speaker 15 Now Kimmel is

Speaker 15 on suspension, though.

Speaker 15 Trump has announced incorrectly that Kimmel was canceled, which isn't the case. He also said Kimmel was fired, but right now we're just kind of in a limbo state with him being suspended.

Speaker 15 And as of Friday morning, Kimmel hasn't said anything.

Speaker 2 What exactly did Kimmel say that got him suspended? Because I was trying to watch the clip on Wednesday night that apparently got him in trouble that was played on this Benny Johnson show.

Speaker 2 And I was like, eh,

Speaker 15 not terribly inflammatory stuff here.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's definitely not the most extreme thing anyone has said after this tragedy.

Speaker 15 Kimmel said.

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 15 So, MAGA World objected to him characterizing the views of Tyler Robinson, the suspect in Charlie Kirk's murder, as being one of of them.

Speaker 2 And when we think about Kimmel and Fallon and Colbert, the narrative seems to be that people aren't watching these shows as much as they used to.

Speaker 19 The audience is getting older.

Speaker 2 They're really reliant on YouTube for views, but it's not bringing enough revenue. Why is Trump so interested in late night?

Speaker 15 Well, Trump's an old school guy, and when he was coming up and becoming famous, late night was huge. huge.

Speaker 15 We had the late night wars between Letterman and Leno, and that's very much when Trump was becoming a celebrity. And if you could appear on Carson, you'd made it.
You were a star.

Speaker 15 So I think in Trump's mind, these guys maybe have a bit more cultural power than they actually do if you talk to some random Gen Z kid.

Speaker 15 who maybe only sees a Kimmel clip once in a while on TikTok if that.

Speaker 15 So he sees all these celebrities, all these TV guys disrespecting him. And I think that may be what's fueling the anger a little bit.

Speaker 6 But also,

Speaker 1 kind of the American way.

Speaker 15 That's true. Free speech, First Amendment.

Speaker 15 Maybe some people in the administration should look it up.

Speaker 1 Margaret Margaret Hartman, intelligencer at New York Magazine. You can subscribe at nymag.com.

Speaker 7 Coming up next, what in the FCC is Brendan Carr doing?

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Speaker 25 Now, a spot announcement.

Speaker 25 Thank you, Spot. Here we go.

Speaker 6 Explained.

Speaker 24 I'm Lily Loofborough, and I am the TV critic for the Washington Post.

Speaker 7 The FCC chair Brendan Carr has been all over the television talking about Jimmy Kimmel. What's he been saying?

Speaker 24 Well, he's been saying a lot of things, not all of which hang together particularly well.

Speaker 24 But the first thing that he said was on the Benny Johnson podcast.

Speaker 26 You know, when you look at the conduct that has taken place by Jimmy Kimmel,

Speaker 26 it appears to be some of the sickest conduct possible.

Speaker 24 Where he basically built a case against Jimmy Kimmel.

Speaker 27 In what appears to be an action by Jimmy Kimmel to play into that narrative that this was somehow a MAGA or Republican motivated person.

Speaker 27 If that's what happened here with his conduct, that is really, really sick.

Speaker 24 I think he was very emphatic in that

Speaker 24 conversation that.

Speaker 26 Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel.

Speaker 26 Or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

Speaker 24 As we know, Nexstar and Sinclair both complied and pulled Kimmel's show off the airwaves. And since then, I would say that Brendan Carr's story has changed a bit.

Speaker 7 What's he saying now?

Speaker 24 Well, Wednesday on Sean Hannity's show on Fox News, he suggested that the real problem was that late night hosts had transitioned away from laugh lines to applause lines.

Speaker 25 They went from being court gestures that would make fun of everybody in power to being court clerics and enforcing a very narrow political ideology.

Speaker 25 And Nexstar, as you noted, stood up and said, look, we have the license and we don't want to run this anymore. We don't think it serves the interests of our community.
Sinclair did the same thing.

Speaker 25 So there's more work to go, but I'm very glad.

Speaker 24 So that's a very different case than the one he was originally building, which seemed to be that the American public was being actively misled in a conspiracy.

Speaker 24 This was instead a critique of late-night hosts and the increasingly political nature of the content of those monologues.

Speaker 24 Since then, he has argued a third thing, which is that late-night comedy was no longer profitable, and so this is just the free market at work.

Speaker 7 You write that Nexstar, which decided to pull Kimmel, may not have done this for reasons of the free market, but because Nextstar wants something from Brendan Carr and the FCC. What does Nexstar want?

Speaker 24 Yes, Nexstar is in the midst of finalizing a $6.2 billion deal with Tegna, which is another broadcasting company.

Speaker 24 And if that deal goes through, Nexstar's reach, which to U.S. households, would increase from 39% to 80%.
So it would be a huge jump, obviously, for Nextstar, tremendously profitable.

Speaker 24 It would massively expand their audiences and presumably their profits.

Speaker 24 However, not only are they awaiting approval from Trump's FCC, headed by Brendan Carr, They also need the FCC to change a long-standing rule about broadcasters, which holds that no company can hold, can collectively reach more than 39% of U.S.

Speaker 24 households. And so obviously they need that to change.
So there are two pretty important asks that Nexstar has for Carr specifically. One is for him to approve the merger.

Speaker 24 And two is for him to change that rule so that the merger can go through.

Speaker 7 It wasn't just Nexstar. Sinclair Broadcasting Group also pulled Kimmel.

Speaker 7 Why do you think that is?

Speaker 24 Sinclair, which is the second largest owner of TV stations in the country,

Speaker 24 has also been lobbying to raise that 39% cap. And they have also been lobbying actively for deregulation, which Brendan Carr has given every signal that he's receptive to doing.

Speaker 11 Carr says the FCC is committed to ending all of the rules and the regulations that are no longer necessary.

Speaker 12 The initiative is called Delete, Delete, Delete.

Speaker 24 So Sinclair II has specific reasons that they want to ingratiate themselves with Carr, and they accordingly not only praised Carr for his decision,

Speaker 24 really giving him credit that he himself seems not to be taking, but also in addition suggested that Jimmy Kimmel should apologize to Charlie Kirk's family, make a donation to them, and also make a donation to Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk's organization.

Speaker 24 So they're really doubling down. And in lieu of Kimmel's show, they're going to be airing a one-hour special about Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 7 How does this fit in with how Brendan Carr has been behaving in his time as chair of the FCC?

Speaker 24 Well, it's very much of a piece.

Speaker 24 Carr is the author of the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, so he has been thinking about this for some time. Ostensibly in the name of protecting free speech,

Speaker 24 he has for quite a while now been targeting various companies, including social media companies like Meta, including Comcast,

Speaker 24 and of course including ABC, NBC, and CBS.

Speaker 20 What we've seen is you've got national news media, ABC, NBC, CBS, and they're exercising more and more control over those local TV stations. I don't think that's a good thing for the country.

Speaker 20 So we're trying to reverse that.

Speaker 24 Suggesting that they are not serving the, quote, public interest by airing the content that they air.

Speaker 24 So

Speaker 24 this all seems to be very much in line with what Donald Trump has been suggesting needs to happen next.

Speaker 24 There is a kind of timeline that you can trace between what Donald Trump posts on Truth Social and the actions that Carr seems to be taking shortly thereafter. He has never made any effort to really

Speaker 24 protect the agency from charges that it's responding to the president.

Speaker 24 And in fact, he goes to some trouble to give Trump credit for things that the FCC has done, which is a surprising strategy for someone who is making a case for being a free speech warrior.

Speaker 24 But in interviews, he very much characterizes these legacy media networks as the enemy and as Trump's enemy, and himself as kind of an avenging fury who is there to put things right.

Speaker 7 President Trump was talking aboard Air Force One yesterday, essentially threatening TV networks.

Speaker 28 I would think maybe their license should be taken away. It will 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.

Speaker 28 So we'll have to see.

Speaker 7 Where does your brain go when you hear that the president suggested the FCC should revoke TV licenses for negative coverage?

Speaker 24 Well, he's already done that a number of times. So that part itself isn't new.
He's been threatening to pull ABC and NBC's licenses since the Colbert merger.

Speaker 24 But the part that does feel new is explicitly linking that threat to Brendan Carr.

Speaker 24 That gets rid of any plausible deniability that there might have been, that there was not basically collusion and coordination happening between them.

Speaker 24 You know, he just came out and said it. So I think for those of us who suspected that that was already what was happening, it's a very troubling confirmation.

Speaker 24 For those who were in denial, I don't know what they say in response to that because it is a very

Speaker 24 direct link between the FCC and the president and the president openly saying that he is using a federal agency that is supposed to be independent as a hammer to go after his critics.

Speaker 7 The FCC is supposed to be an independent agency overseen by Congress.

Speaker 7 People at the moment are genuinely worried, many people are genuinely worried about censorship and freedom of speech in this country.

Speaker 7 What does it mean for freedom of speech if the chair of the FCC is apparently going after independent media?

Speaker 15 Well, it's very chilling.

Speaker 24 They are normalizing an environment in which

Speaker 24 you need to punish the president's critics if you're a media company seeking approval from a government agency, or in some other way placate him, make him feel good, perhaps give him some money.

Speaker 24 The naked corruption of that is deeply disconcerting.

Speaker 24 And listen, that's really serious. That has implications that go way beyond late night TV, right?

Speaker 24 I mean, this is about television, and it's also about the consolidation of media companies that can reach people through television.

Speaker 24 So if this merger goes through Nextdoor, which has already said that it will not air material that it deems offensive, which at this point appears to include criticism of Trump supporters,

Speaker 24 its reach is going to extend to 80% of American households. Like they have made it clear, Nexstar has made it clear that they are willing to dictate what people have access to or be dictated to,

Speaker 24 because it's pretty obvious that they are responding to external demands coming from the president and from the FCC.

Speaker 24 That's beyond worrying.

Speaker 24 So it's, you know, it's a very dire moment.

Speaker 7 Lily Loofborough, she's a TV critic for the Washington Post. Danielle Hewitt and Denise Guerra produced today's show.

Speaker 1 Amin Al-Azadi's our senior editor. Laura Bullard's our senior researcher who checked the facts.

Speaker 7 Patrick Boyd and Adrian Lilly are our engineers.

Speaker 1 I already said my name. What's yours again?

Speaker 3 Noel.

Speaker 6 It's today

Speaker 1 explained.