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Feb. 7, 2025 - The David Knight Show
09:38
Dictator Don's Ego Goes to War Against the First Amendment
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There was a time when Obama wanted to have the FCC oversee content of newsrooms and Remember when that happened?
And boy, all the Trump people, rightfully so, were upset about that.
Get them out of there.
They have nothing to say about content.
And now here is Dictator Don, and everybody is silent about this on the right, because it's what he wants.
Don't you dare take the side of 60 Minutes against Dictator Don.
It's more important to let Dictator Don have his way and massage his ego than to have a First Amendment protection of freedom of the press.
Trump is saying 60 Minutes should be immediately terminated.
That's his term.
Immediately terminated.
After the transcripts released.
Trump on Thursday suggested that CBS News' 60 Minutes be taken off the air after the program released a transcript of an interview that had aired last fall with Lala Harris amid a federal investigation into the broadcast.
This is an abuse of power, folks, an abuse of power against the First Amendment.
CBS and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, ever been seen before.
They 100% removed Lala's horrible election So what?
So what if they did?
Prove it.
And now the proof is out.
Shows that they didn't.
But so what if they did?
Let's say that they did what he accused them of doing.
And by the way, he has separately, besides...
Weaponizing the government.
Let's say, who did that?
Oh yeah, they accused Biden of doing it.
Biden did do that.
But now Trump is weaponizing the FCC against a news organization.
Look, I don't agree with CBS. Their bias is clear.
But only a fool would believe that...
News organizations are not biased.
They're all biased.
I've got a bias.
Everybody's got a bias.
A full, unedited transcript of the Harris interview with the FCC this week complied with this.
And a lot of people were upset about that because they said, you know, CBS News needs to just tell them to go pound dirt because you don't have any authority here.
And they don't.
The FCC should not have anything to say about content.
The federal government should not have anything to say about content.
Journalists regularly edit interviews.
They do it for time.
They do it for space.
They do it for clarity.
And making these edits, 60 Minutes is always guided by the truth and what we believe will be most informative to the viewing public, all while working within the constraints of broadcast television.
Of course, you've got a long clip of something.
You have to shorten it.
And you want to play the part of it that is relevant.
But again, this is the same type of thing he's doing to the First Amendment that he did to the Second Amendment with the bump stock.
He's going to come after this interview.
Trump and his allies at the FCC, says The Hill, have repeatedly suggested major news networks be scrutinized more heavily and even lose their broadcast licenses over coverage that he feels is unfair to him.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr acknowledged, quote, there are a lot of people in this country right now on the radical left that are upset about this investigation.
But the right is not upset.
Why is that?
Because people on the right need to understand that there is going to be a radical left.
That's why we don't want them shutting down the media.
So that's why I said the problem is when you look at what is being done with Trump, is it being done for personal revenge and for personal power?
Or is it being done for reform?
If you want to talk about weaponization of government that was done under Biden, yes, it was ridiculous.
Is Trump going to continue that?
Yes, he's going to continue it.
For his own purposes.
He's not going to get rid of, he's not going to reform this and make it honest.
And it reads a magazine that looks at the transcript.
So here's what this is.
Here's the headline.
Transcript proves that the 60-minute scandal was always fake.
Trump's complaints were always meritless, but CBS's capitulation has set a dangerous precedent for freedom of the press.
And they're exactly right.
So, what was it that happened?
The big issue.
They released a short clip to tease the interview before it actually ran.
They put in a question and they had her response to it.
And then in the actual program that followed up, they had the question and they had a different response from her.
And so...
Trump went ballistic.
And dictator Don sued him for $10 billion, and then when he became president, he stuck the FCC on him.
Well, what was it that was actually happening with that?
They said, now that you see the full clip and the full transcript, what you can see is that she gave a longer answer, and what they did was they just shortened it.
They cut out part of her longer answer and played it in one format, and played the other part in the other format.
And so in the Face the Nation clip, she was asked about Israel's ongoing war in Gaza and the Biden administration's dealings with Netanyahu.
And when Whitaker notes that it seems that Netanyahu, quote, is not listening, she responds and says, Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or as a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.
But then on the actual broadcast, in response to the same question, she said, we're not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the U.S. to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.
And so Trump said, well, that's totally illegal.
And that is election interference to have that there.
Because the shorter clip, she finally got her thoughts together.
And he said, her real answer was crazy or dumb.
He says that in all uppercase.
Projection.
Actually, they replaced it with another answer.
But when we see the transcript released, we see that what happened was that they just cut that section in half.
And the first part of that, she's kind of rambling as she's trying to get her...
And then she finally gets it together into a wrap-up, but as Reason says, her full unedited answer is a combination of what aired in primetime and what aired on Sunday morning, separated only by the interstitial phrase, and we're not going to stop doing that.
Even if the cuts had been heavier.
It is perfectly within a journalist's discretion to edit an interviewee's answers for purpose of clarity or brevity, so long as the edit does not distort the answer's intent.
She said both of those things, back-to-back.
One of them they show in one format, the other one they show in another format.
That's it.
And Trump won the election.
So what's the deal?
Why is he weaponizing the FCC? Why is he setting up a dangerous precedent against The principle of free speech?
Because he doesn't support free speech.
He doesn't support the truth.
He calls it truth social.
Neither of Harris' answers is particularly compelling.
The first part, which aired on Face the Nation, is superficial.
And her delivery is halting and it is stilted.
And the portion that played in prime time, while it is more forceful and succinct, still doesn't answer the question.
She looks bad in both of these clips.
One of them, though, she appears to know what she's saying when she doesn't say anything at all.
Yeah, you have to think about that, you know, as she would always like to say.
But to say this constitutes a scandal, much less as Trump claimed that CBS switched out one answer for another, is simply false.
Simply false.
The release of the transcript and the raw footage lays bare just how fake this controversy always was.
But the problem is that it establishes a dangerous precedent.
A dangerous precedent just like Trump did with the bump stock stuff.
Hello, it's me, Volodymyr Zelensky.
I'm so tired of wearing these same t-shirts everywhere for years.
You'd think with all the billions I've skimmed off America, I could dress better.
And I could...
If only David Knight would send me one of his beautiful grey MacGuffin hoodies or a new black t-shirt with the MacGuffin logo in blue.
But he told me to get lost.
Maybe one of you American suckers can buy me some at thedavidknightshow.com.
And David is giving a 10% discount to listeners from now until 2025. At that price, you should be able to buy me several hundred.
Those amazing sand-colored microphone hoodies are so beautiful.
I'd wear something other than green military cosplay to my various galas and social events.
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