Tim Pool argues the FCC should not revoke ABC's license over Jimmy Kimmel's "expectant widow" joke, asserting it lacks incitement despite contributing to a culture of political violence. He critiques Center for Strategic and International Studies data for mischaracterizing left-wing actions like Occupy Wall Street while highlighting rare right-wing attacks, dismissing claims of foreknowledge regarding Erica Kirk as mass formation psychosis fueled by social media speculation similar to the Covington Kids incident. Ultimately, Pool challenges First Amendment absolutism, suggesting rights have historically been curtailed for national security and that moral worldviews dictate speech limits. [Automatically generated summary]
The FCC is preparing to challenge the broadcast licenses of ABC following Jimmy Kimmel's joke about Melania Trump having the glow of an expectant widow.
He made this joke, which many people think was crass, just a few days before this latest assassination attempt.
And if this challenge is successful, ABC will lose its ability to broadcast through certain licenses.
This all seems to many.
Particularly petty.
I mean, listen, Jimmy Kimmel's joke was bad, but is this really going to rise to the occasion of let's remove their ability to broadcast?
Well, to be fair, many people are arguing that Jimmy Kimmel has gotten away with way worse.
He has lied about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, implying that it was a right winger who killed Charlie.
He has made shockingly offensive statements.
And if the purpose of public broadcast licenses is to serve the public interest, being hyper partisan does not do that.
More importantly, Making jokes implying the president will be killed or die is on the line.
Now, I'm going to say this, guys.
My personal opinion is that I don't think this is where we need to go because Jimmy Kimmel made a crass joke.
It's on the line, but I would not say it's over the line, but who am I?
You guys let me know what you think.
Implying that Donald Trump is about to die when he's the president, I call it on the line because he's not making a direct threat.
However, it is this rhetoric that has resulted in terror attacks.
At Tesla facilities, a massive increase in violence, political violence, coming from the left.
And at a certain point, we have to draw the line.
So, this is the challenge that I'm dealing with.
I don't think that this joke crosses that line where we would say you can't broadcast anymore.
But at a certain point, action must be taken.
Why?
If rhetoric like this continues, and it has been, we will get more assassination attempts, more political violence, and we are seeing the hard data prove it.
So, this is the moral challenge.
Do we say, finally, right now, we are putting a stop to the people who are advocating or inciting death and violence?
Well, the argument then is that this would fly in the face of the First Amendment.
But dare I say, my friends, I present an argument to all of you.
I would say there is no Constitution.
And I say that in somewhat an inflammatory way, trying to elicit an emotional response from all of you to comment and share your thoughts and ideas.
But my argument is this.
Throughout history, our rights under the bill, the amendments, the Bill of Rights, have been curtailed on whims of government agencies and leaders, particularly citing national security.
Do we tolerate this today?
It's been tolerated in the past, and certainly many on the left have argued that their version, their vision of the Constitution, is wholly at odds with those on the right.
If there are two distinct moral worldviews arguing the Constitution means different things, Well, then, how do we actually argue we can enforce a constitutional right?
I'll give you an example.
When, you know, in New York, they shut down churches during COVID, that is wholly unconstitutional, but they did it.
Nobody stopped them.
Is the left going to argue they were justified in doing all of those things?
Well, right now, if the right is arguing that for the sake of national interest, what Jimmy Kimmel did is honor over the line because it is creating an environment of death and violence against the president, some would argue he's got to stop.
Now, look.
Where this goes, maybe what they do ultimately is this challenge forces ABC to say, okay, we're going to pull back and we'll stop.
A moral argument over having force is not correct, but those that are willing to use the power they have to enforce their moral worldview will succeed.
Let's jump into the news and break down exactly what's going on.
I've got a bunch of data for you and some video clips explaining what's going on.
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Let's jump into the news from Mediaite FCC reviewing Disney's broadcast license amid Jimmy Kimmel feud.
For those that are not familiar with what's going on, Jimmy Kimmel made this crass joke.
I think I can pull it up right here.
No, that's not the right one.
Well, I got the tweet here somewhere.
Jimmy Kimmel made a crass joke where he said that Melania Trump has the glow of an expectant widow.
Their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they're together.
It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am.
It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination, and they know that.
I've been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular, but I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend is pretty stressful.
Donald Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants to say, as are you, as am I, as are all of us, because under the First Amendment, we have, as Americans, a right to free speech.
And that is actually not true, to be completely honest.
I've made this point many times, guys.
When the First Amendment was ratified, blasphemy was illegal.
We have modern interpretations of what these constitutional amendments mean, and as many people make the argument that they are textualists and originalists, no one actually is.
So I'm sorry if this is a cold splash of water, or you disagree, by all means comment and explain to me why you think I'm wrong, but I will just say it like this The original constitution of the federal government, the right to keep and bear arms, did include privateers, man o' wars, cannons.
That's right.
By today's standard, you'd be allowed to have machine guns and warships.
However, The original interpretation of the federal constitution was that it applied only to laws passed by the federal government, not the state governments.
Meaning, back then, a state could ban you from having guns.
Now, most of the states still had their own constitutions, which internally in those states guaranteed your right to keep and bear arms.
However, the federal government did not supersede these state governments.
In some areas, yes.
If you want to go by an originalist interpretation of the constitution, the federal government can't ban guns, but states can.
We don't do that today.
We go by a new interpretation.
That is, states can't ban guns.
They try to do these workarounds, but gun rights enthusiasts, gun rights advocates have continually won in this regard.
You can take a look at the 14th Amendment.
The point is this everybody has argued for their moral worldview.
And a constitution just means what is the constitution of the public?
What constitutes their moral worldview?
And my point is simply this you and I share a common worldview on what our constitution is supposed to represent, what it does.
The multicultural democracy advocates.
The left do not.
So when Jimmy Kimmel says we have a First Amendment right, you know that when it came to COVID lockdowns and shutting churches down, he did not extend that right to you.
That's my point.
Now, we do have more here.
I want to give you this.
What does it mean to challenge the license?
The FCC is preparing to challenge this.
It regulates over the air broadcast TV and radio.
This also means that when you watch online, these are extensions of these broadcast licenses.
When we went over this, Jimmy Kimmel like being pulled in certain markets because of Sinclair, This meant that you couldn't watch them in certain areas, even online.
ABC, owned by Disney, operates several owned and operated OO stations in major markets, New York, LA, Chicago, that hold FCC licenses.
Many other ABC affiliates are owned by separate companies like Nexstar and Sinclair and carry ABC programming.
The FCC does not license the national ABC network.
Licenses last eight years and are generally renewed routinely if stations meet basic obligations children's programming quotas, emergency alert.
Public file maintenance.
The FCC can consider complaints, investigations, or public interest factors during renewal.
Early or expedited review.
The FCC can direct stations to file renewals ahead of schedule for closer scrutiny.
It's described as unprecedented in recent reporting and serves as a form of pressure.
The FCC can open probes, news distortion and equal time violations, indecency, sponsorship, or DEI practices.
Third parties or the FCC itself can file petitions to deny renewal.
Actual revocation is extremely rare and usually requires clear, documented violations.
Late night host Jimmy Kimmel's recent monologue, a joke about Melania Trump, has triggered this.
The implications could be they may face more paperwork, potential hearings, fines, or operational changes.
Revocation would mean a station couldn't broadcast over the air in its market, disrupting ABC programming there, but this is unlikely without strong evidence.
For viewers, it signals regulatory pressure that can influence content decisions.
Networks can shift to cable and streaming, less regulated.
Affiliates aren't forced to carry controversial network shows.
This alleged shooter did not even make it into the room.
Now, this woman has been fired.
With UnitedHealthcare saying violence is never acceptable, and any comments that suggest otherwise are in no way consistent with our mission and values.
The person who made comments online about Saturday night's incident at a Washington event where President Trump and many other political leaders were gathered is no longer employed by this company.
Leftism4U says Alison King has officially been fired by UnitedHealthcare.
The question is this I mean, at what point do we say enough?
We've got videos of prominent leftists calling for violence, advocating for it.
And that's the persistent message.
Luigi Mangione, the accused assassin of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, is being venerated, celebrated.
He's being made into a hero and martyr.
If this persists, as many of us have long argued, you will get assassination culture.
Which I'll tell you why this video really irks me.
That when her and people like Jimmy Dore or Kyle Kalinske say it's staged, or people think it's staged, Certainly, many liberals and anti Trumpers do.
The reason why I find this so wrong is that we predicted this.
Trump does not need to stage anything.
We literally predicted all of this.
We have been talking for years now about assassination culture.
When Luigi Mangione allegedly assassinated Brian Thompson and people propped him up, what did I and many others say?
If you tell the left you will be celebrated for murder, we will get more murderers.
So, when a Kamala Harris voter, Democrat, says Trump is a pedo rapist and he's going to stop him, and then storms into a building, and their reaction is, it's fake.
I don't believe it.
It annoys me because, oh, I find it to be wrong.
Morally wrong, factually wrong.
It offends me because we told you what would happen.
It would be like laying out the mechanism, like getting on a bicycle and saying, if you ride that bicycle downhill with no brakes, you'll go really fast and crash.
And then when the person does, they say, you faked it.
The point is, we told you one plus one equaled two.
And when two was the outcome, you then say, no, it's fake.
That's annoying.
We are watching the mechanisms that create these scenarios, and we are seeing people now downplay it.
Either they celebrate the assassin, or when the dude fails, they say they wish he succeeded, but it's probably fake anyway.
Indeed.
So we've got this here.
There's more.
Libs of TikTok.
Meet Francesca Zelnick, an employee at the Friends Central School in PA.
She reportedly made multiple now deleted posts hoping for an assassination of Trump.
This is, listen, she posted, I hope it happens at the correspondence dinner tonight, then responded three hours later, well, guess someone else did too.
So when they say it's fake and staged, but we can go on Blue Sky, we can go onto threads and just see them all begging for it to happen.
At what point do you say, actually, it's probably not fake?
They're begging for it to happen.
This is why my brain just.
With the people saying, like, I don't think it's real for a second.
I think he staged it.
Bro, before this happened, I've been, guys, I told the story where I went on threads and there were random middle aged women with no followers threatening to murder Erica Kirk.
I'm like, this is getting insane.
These people have gone plumb nuts.
So when you have posts like this, do you think she's the only person who feels that way?
Do you think this is the only post calling for the assassination of Trump?
So why not?
Would this guy.
Be stay like, why would he not be motivated?
Right when Jimmy Kimmel says she has the glow of an expectant widow, what is the message?
Is he saying go murder?
No, what he is saying is that Melania is unhappy and she would be happier if Trump was dead.
Now, I would call that a grain of sand, and the question is, how many grains of sand make a heap?
In this instance, that singular instance of Jimmy Kimmel saying it doesn't matter all that much, but when you look down at the massive pile of sand, you go, That's a heap of sand.
I know most of you know what that means, but just in the event you don't, I'm not trying to be a dick.
Keep doing that, and eventually the question will be asked at what point does it become a heap of sand?
That's the issue.
The snowflake doesn't blame itself for the avalanche.
Well, here's the scary reality.
Sometimes we throw grenades on the sides of mountains to trigger an avalanche because we want to trigger it before anyone would get hurt on it.
The implication analogy there is.
Sooner or later, we will get an avalanche.
And I think we're starting to face it right now.
When Jimmy Kimmel tells people that Melania would be happy if Trump was dead, there's going to be at least one person who believes a couple of things.
First, Trump is an evil, rapist, pedophile, traitor.
Two, everybody would celebrate if he was gone.
We are seeing these posts.
And three, even his family, his own wife, would be happier without him in the picture.
Eventually, you will get at least one person who thinks these things, and the conclusion is simple to them.
They're going to say, Well, maybe someone just needs to finally do it.
And then you get these actions.
So, my point is ultimately this Jimmy Kimmel is standing atop a mountain where you can see there is a high likelihood of an avalanche, and he's chucking rocks.
Each individual rock does very little, but sooner or later, it's going to trigger that avalanche.
Do we allow him to continue, or do we finally say, Enough?
This has to stop.
Now, these people, it's, we're in trouble.
The argument under the First Amendment is that she's allowed to say she hopes it happens.
Will there be social repercussions for this?
Honestly, I don't think so.
From the Wall Street Journal, the year of the Molotov cocktail, American anti government violence hits a 30 year high.
I am always, always just deeply offended by these charts, and I'll explain why.
Because it's fake.
It is fake.
First of all, You can take a look on the right side and see the right has been responsible according to the stats, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, forever.
Going back to 1994, the right always is the dominant faction in anti government violence.
To be fair, if you go back to the 70s, you'll see it's the left, you know, like Weather Underground stuff.
Here's the issue with this this is not the right.
It's just not.
And in fact, the left is not even there.
We can take a look at Occupy Wall Street in 2011 and see not a single instance, despite the fact there were many anti government attacks.
Now, perhaps the standard they're going to use is not low tier.
They're arguing that Occupy Wall Street smashing windows, taking over buildings, and things like that, it's low level protest across the country.
We don't consider that to be a plot targeting the U.S. government.
Fair point.
The problem with all of these on the right is that they claim white supremacists are right wing and anti government itself is right wing.
There's also another category that includes anti abortion, anti Muslim, anti immigration, anti public lands.
You see, when they track these things and claim the right is violent, I point it out like this.
They would say that I am on the right.
What do I have in common as a mixed race former liberal from Chicago with a white supremacist?
Nothing.
We don't believe in the same form of government, we don't have the same goals in the end.
We don't agree on the issue of abortion.
So, what does it mean I'm right wing?
Nothing.
I have absolutely nothing in common with your typical neo Nazi or white supremacist.
When they show right and say it's violence, what they're trying to do is claim that traditional conservative Charlie Kirk was in the same league as neo Nazis.
That's what they do with this chart.
On the left, however, when you have a far left extremist who shoots up a Tesla facility, these people are in line with the Democratic Party.
Hassan Piker, who has called for people to go and murder, literally said it.
Campaigns directly with Democrat politicians.
He is a prominent, high profile, the highest profile leftist commentator.
And he campaigns with Democrats.
Don't get me wrong, some Democrats push back on this and they call him out and say, you shouldn't be advocating for it.
Then he gets interviewed by the New York Times, they prop him up, they expand his profile.
You see the difference?
They would call me right wing and I'd say, I'm a moderate, but it doesn't matter.
There's no moderate in the middle because moderates don't engage in terror attacks.
They would then claim that a neo Nazi extremist identitarian.
Is the same as a Christian conservative carpenter.
They're not.
Now, don't get me wrong.
A union working urban liberal moderate who votes Democrat is not the same as Hassan Piker, but the distinction is Hassan is platformed by these institutions at the highest levels of the left, and Democrats campaign with him.
You bring a neo Nazi to a campaign rally for Republicans, we will all cast him out.
Graham Plattner has a Totenkampf, or did he?
He got it removed, I believe.
He got covered.
He has a Nazi tattoo on his chest, I think, for like 20 years, and they defended him.
That's the difference.
When actual Nazis campaign with Democrats, they defend them.
They then try and claim other Nazis who are at odds with conservatives are right wingers.
Well, at least what I can say is they're finally recognized the far left is substantially more dangerous than the far right.
My question is this in 2025, honest question, look at how many right wing anti government attacks there were.
From who?
Well, let's read and see what they have to say.
Suffice it to say, if you want to go by this metric, fine.
We're on the verge of civil war.
They say half the incidents from the extreme left last year appear to have been aimed at immigration officers.
Violence from the extreme right also climbed.
A Democratic state lawmaker and her husband were killed in Minnesota last June.
That was not a right winger.
Sorry.
Or I'm sorry, it may have been, but it was not politically motivated.
So you see the stupid games they play?
This guy apparently had a personal issue with these people, but they claimed because he was right winger in some way, that means it was right wing violence.
It's a lie.
One police officer was killed in August if her man who had been critical of the COVID 19 vaccine fired 500 rounds outside the headquarters of the CDC.
Indeed, but.
That's right wing?
All told, three people were killed last year in attacks characterized as extreme right, while one died of an attack classed by extreme left.
You see what they're doing?
Holy crap, Jimmy Dore was critical of COVID and he's anti Trump.
So, what does anti COVID mean?
Well, many people on the right also agreed, therefore, it's right wing.
No, spare me.
Spare me your manipulations.
The CSIS data sorts attacks by political leanings where possible based on court documents and contemporaneous reporting.
The journal analyzed terrorism incidents in the U.S. compiled by the CSIS, covering 94 to 2025.
They count only premeditated incidents involving an attempt to threat, attempt or threat to kill or injure intended to reach a broader political audience.
The analysis included incidents targeting U.S. government people, places, et cetera, et cetera.
So, I want to make another point about this chart.
I describe leftist violence as blunt and right wing violence as acute.
What that means is Occupy Wall Street not being listed matters.
This was widespread, blunt political action.
Much of it was largely fine, right?
I got no problem with people blocking roadways for the most part, but there were degrees of violence.
I was in Anaheim when people were throwing rocks and bashing people in the face.
I watched them physically attack police officers and police fight back.
We call this blunt terror.
When you organize a riot, smash windows, and set fires and attack people, like you also have in 2017 with the inauguration, this is meant to terrorize, but not to cause widespread panic.
When they say something is right wing, like a white supremacist shoots up a church, they call it right wing, despite the fact it's not motivated by any conservative mainstream ideology and nobody's supporting it.
But this is what I call acute.
It is high profile, massively damaging, and substantially more rare.
The problem we have with this chart.
I'll put it like this.
If it is extremely likely that if you go out wearing a MAGA hat, you will get punched in the face, you are terrorized, you will not wear that hat.
You will not espouse your views and advocate for a change in politics.
That's terrorism.
However, if you get punched in the face for wearing a MAGA hat, it won't be national news.
No one is going to say breaking man gets punched.
It's not going to happen.
If someone storms a church with a gun, sure, it might only happen once or twice in a year, which is really bad, or maybe even less than that.
Everyone in the world will hear about it.
It's shockingly more terrifying, but almost never happens.
This means on a daily basis, you will advocate your worldview, you will vote for it, you will tell others to vote for it because you largely don't fear it happening.
As for regular people wearing Trump hats or wanting to wave Trump flags, they fear they'll be beaten.
If conservatives try to hold a rally, one of two things will happen.
Well, actually, two things happen leftists will hire fake Nazis to show up to smear the entire group, and then far leftists will come and beat the crap out of people.
That footage has now exploded across social media with users dissecting every second.
Every second of her reaction.
One user posted another clip with the caption, She was aware minutes before, a comment that intensified speculation online, though no official confirmation supports that claim.
She glances over at somebody filming, glances back, they screenshot it and they say, just before the shooting, and imply she had foreknowledge because these people are psychotic.
I'm gonna wrap it with this, my friends.
I think that we are dealing with mass formation psychosis.
It is getting to an insane degree.
I don't know if there's a solution for it.
Paramount is going to have 49.5% of the company owned by Saudis and Qataris.
I just find that interesting.
What I see here is the political space is becoming incoherent and psychotic.
People who once supported Trump are now Kirk posting and Israel posting.
By all means, there's things to criticize all of them for.
But to this degree, I think it's just mass formation psychosis.
People want to be a part of this trend, they want to believe things.
And so you take a screenshot of Erica Kirk glancing over at a camera, and then what do they do?
They say, She knew.
And here's what happens I want to take you back to the Covington kids at the Lincoln Memorial.
This is almost, what, eight years ago now?
So a video goes viral.
Showing a Native American banging a drum and a kid is seemingly standing in his face smirking.
I was sent this video by tons of people.
They told me to comment.
I said, Tim, you got to see this.
You got to see this.
And I said, What is it?
They're like, Look what the kid is doing.
And I'm like, What is he doing?
And they're like, He got in the face of this Native American and is smirking.
And I was like, All I see is a video of two people standing in front of each other and nothing's happening.
So sure enough, I did some digging.
With the assistance of my followers, we found the long form video.
And sure enough, it turns out, The Native American got in his face.
Kid didn't do anything wrong.
People told me, and many did.
You know, it was funny, it was Philip DeFranco, I think even Ben Shapiro, condemned these kids wrongly.
We are dealing now with deranged people who want to do deranged things and they want people just to agree with them.
It's an expanding mass formation psychosis.
I don't care if you watch or don't watch.
I don't care if you say, Tim, you're wrong.
I'll take a look at it.
Show me the evidence.
I will happily correct.
But if the insinuation is that Erica Kirk is an evil Mossad agent and your evidence is a compilation of things like her looking at a camera and looking away, I think you've lost the plot.
Completely.
But I think more and more people will.
And perhaps that's the intended condition.
I cite Yuri Bezmanov, as he mentioned, demoralization.
And oh boy, are we demoralized.
Former Trump supporters now think Trump is evil and wrong.
This is a fracturing.
And maybe they're right about him being wrong.
I'm just saying.
The political lines have fractured a million ways for which it's all decentralized.
There's no unified action.
The end result is going to be massive violence.
So I hope you're just prepared for whatever comes next.
Other than that, stay vigilant, pay attention, and do what you think is best for your family.
I hope you all stay safe.
I'll leave it there.
Smash the like button, share the show with everyone you know.
Thank you so much for hanging out and being members and all that good stuff.
Stick around, Timcast IRL coming up at 8 p.m., and we'll see you all then.
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