Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstain dissect Jimmy Kimmel's return to ABC, framing the FCC's regulatory threats as a strategic failure that ironically boosted his ratings. They critique Kimmel's monologue for dishonestly splitting on the Charlie Kirk shooting while mocking MAGA supporters, contrasting this with the hypocrisy of liberals demanding free speech yet supporting net neutrality regulations that would censor podcasts. Ultimately, the hosts argue that government suppression validates censorship principles and proves that organic market forces, not state intervention, are superior for silencing unwanted voices. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Scattered Clips and One Condition00:05:34
What's up, what's up, everyone?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He, of course, is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
How are you feeling today, sir?
Pleasure to be with you.
And friendly porch reminder, St. James, not to be confused with Little St. James, but that's going to be this Thursday night in Long Island.
Then I got Omaha, which is oddly always a good show.
I wouldn't have thought that the Omaha crowds would be good crowds, but I think they just have nothing else going on.
And then Kansas City, and that's this weekend.
And you can find even more porch dates at porchtour.com.
And then, of course, you and I got some dates coming up.
Oh, yeah.
We're going to be in Dallas, Fort Worth, Detroit, Tampa, Poughkeepsie.
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I might be forgetting one in there.
Comicdavesmith.com for all of those, for the rest of our dates for the year.
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So make sure you go theporchtour.com, comicdave Smith.com, get your tickets, come on out.
All right.
Well, there's been quite a lot going on over the last few days.
I guess the thing that was dominating the conversation, it seems, yesterday and into today was the return of Jimmy Kimmel, who we all seem to, I guess we all got a little out over our skis there and thinking that he was canceled.
You know, the network said he was like indefinitely pulled and turns out indefinitely meant a few days.
Anyway, we could kind of get into this.
I found the moment and the spectacle of all of it to be kind of interesting and somewhat revealing.
But I got to say, Rob, I really think that I, you know, look, Rob, as you know, I'm used to being right about stuff.
But this is, it is remarkable how quickly my prediction came true that the FCC chairman just totally screwed over all of right-wing America.
Like it's just unbelievable.
You have this guy, Jimmy Kimmel.
And I mean, look, again, just to be clear, as I made clear on the show, I wasn't even objecting to this on moral First Amendment grounds simply because Jimmy Kimmel isn't a person and doesn't have rights.
It's a little more complicated than that, but like just strategically speaking, you just took a guy who was dying saying stupid stuff.
Nobody cared until he said something offensive.
And they made him like this free speech martyr or whatever, and probably just gave him the best ratings he's going to have in years.
Just stupid and counterproductive.
One more win for libertarians on pragmatic grounds.
But anyway, what were your thoughts?
ABC slash Disney pulled a real Donald Trump and they said that they were going to take extreme measures, got everyone all worked up, drew a whole bunch of attention and then didn't do what they said they were going to do.
So, you know, they're learning from the master himself.
Did you see, did you watch any of it?
I think I saw a couple clips where, you know, he was kind of crying and saying, obviously, I didn't mean harm on anybody else, blah, blah, blah.
I did think that it was funny that they gave him apparently one condition to return and it wasn't be funny.
I would have thought that that would have been the one thing when he went on the whole thing that they gave me one condition, but I watched scattered clips.
I didn't care to actually watch his monologue.
Here, Natalie, see if you could pull it up or pull up a couple of clips of it.
There were a couple of moments that I thought were interesting and kind of almost like worthy of a response.
I probably, I apologize.
I should have had these clips and timestamps ready to go.
But there was just, there were a few things about it that I thought were like, first of all, it was classic liberal progressive behavior.
Like there was just certain things that I found kind of revealing.
I will say this on the, I was surprised by the way he handled it.
I thought he was just going to double down.
There had been a lot of reports that part of the reason why he got pulled was because he planned on going even harder the next day on the show.
That wasn't what we got.
Most people were speculating that it was going to be like a binary option.
Either he was going to apologize or he was going to double down.
What he ended up doing was somehow trying to split the difference, like sounding almost as if he was apologizing without actually apologizing.
I'm sorry that you took it that way and that you were offended.
Of course, that's not what I meant because I'm the nice guy.
I did think, again, there was something.
Look, if you, my honest opinion, I thought there was something kind of in bad taste about just all of the, like even as, you know, like the, oh, Germany will have me here, like as if you were the victim of hardcore authoritarianism or something like that.
And it's, I think a big, you know, there was a dynamic throughout cancel culture, the reign of cancel culture that I think still continues to this day, where there is almost this fundamental premise built into liberal progressivism that you're the good guy and the other side are the bad guys.
Vandi Chips and Seed Oils00:02:03
And so there would be this thing that would happen all the time where, you know, a liberal would end up getting canceled or threatened to be canceled.
And they'd go, whoa, guys, I think we're going too far.
Cause like you've kind of got one of us now.
And there's just this like very, it's, it is wild for like people like us who have gone through, you know, have come up, literally made our careers during the reign of tech censorship and cancel culture to hear these guys talk about it, like as if this isn't just what everyone constantly deals with.
And you're one example of a guy who didn't get canceled, as it turns out.
And like, it's, I don't know, there is something I find to be in very poor taste about the whole thing.
Classic liberal playing the victim and the nice guy.
Yep.
Yep.
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Politics, Reaction, and the Shot00:15:20
All right, let's get back into the show.
There's also just something kind of funny to me about him going off about, I'm here sharing my beliefs.
And it's like, that's what we do on this show.
That's not really necessarily your job as a talk show host.
Well, right.
I mean, like, I understand if you got something in government that you object to and primarily your job is I'm supposed to go out here every night and be funny, but let's just go with the Vietnam War.
You're so opposed to the Vietnam War.
You're like, listen, I know that this isn't my lane, but I do have to say, I think what's happening is terrible.
And you know what I mean?
Like, that's that.
And then you got to make this statement two days later.
That's one thing, but he's really just going off.
Like, I understand that on this show, I just talk about my personal opinions and beliefs, which, by the way, seem to be very aligned with the left and some of the propaganda that we've had to go through over the last couple of years.
But it just kind of feels like an admission of what the show is, where you're not like, hey, there's really no reason for me to be delving into these topics and I'm here to be funny and put on a show.
He's kind of admitting that that's not what he's there to do.
Yeah.
Well, just to be just because like, look in the backdrop of all of this, right?
This is what's what else is going on is I don't know if you saw, but Jim Jordan subpoenaed like Google's top executives or whatever.
And they essentially admitted that the Biden administration pressured Google to censor Americans and remove content that did not violate YouTube's policies.
The Biden administration's censorship pressure was unacceptable and wrong.
Public debate should never come at the expense of relying on authorities and that they will going forward or they vowed to like reinstate some of the people who were kicked off for that.
And so this is years later, many years later, we've gotten a pledge from Google.
Not a small company, Rob, Google, the biggest search engine in the history of the world who has done all types of crazy things.
Like if you remember when Tulsi Gabbard was the most Googled woman in America after the Democratic primary debate, they banned her link so it wouldn't go right to her website.
How many people have been kicked off of YouTube, flagged on YouTube, demonetized on YouTube yourself, including like tons of people going through this.
And now they finally are going, they're saying, yeah, that did happen.
They're admitting that it happened, admitting that it was government pressure that led to it and saying maybe we'll rectify that situation.
Like, I guess the point like that I was making in the last episode when we were talking about it, that I think you're making here too is like, in what world am I not am I not supposed to consider that to be like that's when you should start making jokes about Germany will have us or whatever.
Like I'm I'm supposed to not care that regular Americans, actually people who were just giving their views, people who were really having an uncontrolled conversation about issues that matter, that during the biggest tyrannical period in modern American history, they stood up and told the truth about the regime's lies and their, you know, the kind of tyrannical nature of the regime's policies.
Those people get silenced, directly pressured by the government.
They get silenced, but that some, what that's like doesn't register, but a regime propagandist missed a weekend.
And so now I have to celebrate that.
It's just like in this context, you just like have no idea.
It's them, you know, whatever.
It's the dude who like sprained his ankle telling the guy in the wheelchair that we both know what it's like to be handicapped or something like that.
Like, no, you don't.
And it's really just so insulting to anyone who's been paying attention at all.
Here, let's play.
Let's play.
I think we found the part that I wanted to have to say is going to make much of a difference.
If you like me, you like me.
If you don't, you don't.
I have no illusions about changing anyone's mind, 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.
I don't.
Let's just pause it already for a second.
Okay.
Okay.
So this is what's like in a nutshell infuriating about liberals.
Like it's like, first of all, you start, you're crying, but as you're crying, it's kind of more about you.
You know, it's more about like what you were.
I don't want anyone to have the misconception that I was making fun of a 31-year-old man who got murdered.
And it's like, well, that wasn't really anyone's misconception.
No one really accused you of making fun of Charlie Kirk.
What you did was you tried to use that as an opportunity to mock MAGA and say that they were desperate to pin the shooting on anybody except one of their owns.
And this was after there had already been multiple press conferences held by law enforcement about the, there is no indication at all that it was MAGA.
Every indication is that it was a left-wing guy.
Yet you still went on there to say MAGA's desperate to pin this on anyone else and then started making fun of Donald Trump.
Now, look, either stand by that or apologize for it.
I don't care either way.
And I don't like then, and by the way, of all the things that I'd want, if you actually were looking for a heartfelt apology from Jimmy Kimmel, that wouldn't even be in the top of the list, in my opinion.
How about like apologizing for saying like that your fellow Americans who don't get the vaccine shouldn't get medical treatment and then saying they should go die while you call them wheezy?
That I think would, but anyway, if you want to apologize, fine.
If you don't want to apologize, fine.
But don't do this bullshit thing in the middle where you're like pretending people misunderstood what you said when they didn't.
And now, and you're also like, what you're brought to tears.
Because, okay, so you're brought to tears.
What are you, what are you brought to tears by right now, Jimmy Kill?
You're brought to tears by the thought of a 31-year-old man with a wife and two little kids being murdered in front of thousands of college kids.
Okay.
But you weren't.
Like you did a show after that happened and you didn't cry and you didn't have this reaction.
Your reaction was to make fun of MAGA people and then make fun of Donald Trump, which like is also fine.
You don't have to cry over that.
But it's a weird thing to come back and cry now and then go, oh, no, you guys misunderstood what I was saying when it's just not true.
We all heard what you were saying and you weren't saying this.
You actually, you didn't have a human moment until you thought your show might be ruined for it.
So what is really moving you to tears here?
Because it's not as if you're coming out here and going, listen, that was wrong.
I should have had more of a human reaction.
I was wrong for what I did.
You're going, no, I apologize if you got the wrong, if you misinterpreted what I did.
But obviously I have nothing but feeling for a 31-year-old.
It's like, yeah, but you did a show the next day.
And no, you didn't.
You didn't have any feeling for him.
We all saw that.
It's like, whatever, either apologize or stand by it.
What is this bullshit?
He's got better acting chops than we realized.
Put it on the middle of the street right here.
Yeah, Brian.
I guess over the thought that you might think that he's not a good person.
Yes, right, exactly.
That's kind of what it seems like you're really crying about.
Let's keep playing.
I posted a message on Instagram on the day he was killed, sending love to his family and asking for compassion.
And I meant it.
I still do.
Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual.
That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make.
But I understand that to some, that felt either ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both.
So just pause it.
I understand where it seemed unclear to some people.
You said MAGA is freaking out to pin this on anyone other than them.
There was nothing unclear about it.
This goes, I'm so sorry.
Did you get the interpretation that I was trying to blame that on somebody?
Yeah, you clearly were.
Again, I don't care.
I don't care what Jimmy Kimmel thinks.
This whole thing is so stupid.
He was just dying a million deaths.
He'll go back to dying anyway.
This just gave this episode a shot in the arm for no reason.
Who gives a shit what he was thinking?
What he, what he, whether he apologizes or stands by it.
But this is just such cowardly bullshit.
Like no one misinterpreted anything.
And of course, now also the other thing that happened is in this time is that he's been proven, you know, completely wrong.
And so now it doesn't go to like, like you made the comment that MAGA was freaking out to try to blame this on anybody else.
Meanwhile, what was actually going on was liberals were freaking out trying to blame this on everything else.
You were an example of that.
And now that it's, it's clear that that's the case, you go, listen, this was just a shooter.
He doesn't belong to either team.
Doesn't matter which side he was.
Like, oh, well, then what the hell was the whole point of your joke?
I don't know.
What do you think, Rob?
I mean, Weasel liberal going back to his propaganda show.
Yep.
Here, let's keep playing because there was one more moment coming up that I thought was interesting.
I get why you're upset.
If the situation was reversed, there's a good chance I'd have felt the same way.
I have many friends and family members on the other side who I love and remain close to, even though we don't agree on politics at all.
I don't think the murderer who shot Charlie Kirk represents anyone.
This was a sick person who believed violence was a solution, and it isn't.
It ever.
And also selfishly, I am a person who gets a lot of threats.
I get many ugly and scary threats against my life, my wife, my kids, my co-workers, because of what I choose to say.
And I know those threats don't come from the kind of people on the right who I know and love.
So that's what I wanted to say on that subject.
But I don't want to make this about me because, and I know this is what people say when they make things about them, but I really don't.
This show, this show is not important.
What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.
I've had the opportunity to pause it for a second.
It's just so funny because it's, and, and I know I've brought this up before on the show, but there is really good social science that backs this up.
And I know Jonathan Haidt covered this in his book.
What is it?
The Righteous Mind?
Is that it?
Rob, do you remember?
Right?
I think so.
I read that book.
Yeah, it's, but so he's, this is like very easily demonstrated.
And there's been a bunch of literature on this, but liberals like are, they are, they are really bad at seeing outside of their group.
Like they're, they are, they really struggle with giving you the other perspective.
Um, there's like, if you, if you sit a bunch of conservatives down and ask them to describe what a liberal believes, they're by and large able to do it.
But if you sit a liberal down and ask them to describe what a conservative believes, they always strawman them.
It's not always, but overwhelmingly, like it's the numbers are crazy.
Like they just cannot.
So it's like they can't remove themselves enough from like they there and and part there's there's a lot of reasons for this.
I'm not, you know, I have my own theories on it.
don't exactly know if we know for sure what the reasons are.
I do think some of it's kind of personality type, but a lot of it for sure is just that like liberals dominate the media.
They dominate the culture and have for so long that it's just, it, it's, you'd actually have to go experience conservative America to understand that culture.
Whereas like even if you're living in rural Alabama, let's say you're around our age.
and you spent your whole life living in rural Alabama, you have like, you've watched movies and sitcoms and every last one of them took place in New York or LA and featured a bunch of liberal people.
None of them were made out to be monsters.
They were the good guys and your friends.
This was Jerry Seinfeld and, you know, Ross and Rachel or something like that.
Like it's not, you know, and even shows like, say, The Office that takes place in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
It's just, it's still a show made up of people who live in Los Angeles.
You know what I mean?
Like it's just not.
Anyway.
But there is something where Jimmy Kimmel can even get up and say, you know, it's not about this show.
It's not about me.
It's about living in a country where a show like this could exist, you know?
And it's just so removed.
Like, like, what do you, what do you see yourself as here, Jimmy Kimmel?
You're like the truth-telling show.
You know, I flip through the channels and everything's the same.
And then there's Jimmy Kimmel.
And it's like, dude, if we got rid of your show, what?
We'd only have Fallon and Colbert and every other show that has the exact identical politics to you.
Identical.
All of them.
Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen A. Smith and all of the, I'm sorry, Stephen Colbert, all of them have the exact same politics.
It's just so like what the idea that we're supposed to go, oh yeah, it's really, it really represents like the freedom of exchange that we have, that we could have yet another show with the exact same views as all these other shows.
We're supposed to celebrate when in fact we all know when over the last 10 years, when there were actually voices that were different, voices that say were outside the Overton window, voices that were challenging the regime or pushing the envelope.
They all would have immediately gotten fired from corporate news or any type of corporate television show.
And they would have been facing censorship on the internet at the direction of the government.
Like that's just, anybody paying attention knows that that's the case.
And so it's just something, there's something particularly infuriating to see someone like Jimmy Kimmel, who, of course, like I'm saying with all the liberals, is just totally ignorant of all of this.
In his own mind, I'm sure, actually does conceive this as it's like the regime is Trump and we're the little guy standing up to them.
Even as he goes like, yeah, we're the little guy backed by every giant corporation in the world.
It's unbelievable.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Yeah.
And the fact that he didn't get anyone's, I celebrated Tucker being fired, celebrated, at least I'm going to say that based on your comment of that people without vaccines shouldn't get healthcare.
I'm sure that he was quite pleased.
I'm sure if we look back during COVID, he was making fun of anyone that was criticizing what was going on during COVID.
And I'm sure he would have had the perspective that if you were censored by the government, it's because you're a dangerous voice.
And so, you know, he doesn't actually believe in these principles of free speech and that we need to live in a country where you can voice your opinion, even if it's not the opinion that government doesn't want.
He's just a liberal and he wants to be able to be on the side that is doing the censoring.
Yep.
Yeah, that's right.
Here, let's keep playing.
Talk show hos from countries like Russia, countries in the Middle East who tell me they would get thrown in prison for making fun of those in power and worse than being thrown in prison.
They know how lucky we are here.
Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country.
And that's something I'm embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Steven off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air.
That's not legal.
That's not American.
That is un-American.
And it's so bad.
Please pause for a second.
Why don't you think about this?
The Stephen Colbert thing.
I think that's purely just money.
And if anything, I think Jimmy Kimmel probably got lucky here that that guy made a comment that he shouldn't have on a podcast, which, by the way, I think I think the administration's in the wrong on its comments that it's made of to censoring speech.
But I do also believe that Kimmel probably dodged a bullet here because otherwise it seems, I mean, it's debatable as to whether or not the affiliates were actually starting to get upset about lack of profits or if that's just something the administration's telling you.
So, but anyways, I mean, the Colbert points just that's that it doesn't, where's the evidence that he's being censored for Donald Trump comments when he was losing as much money as he was for as long as he was?
Yeah, no, that's that's right.
And again, like how many people, because we're using the standard here of him losing his show.
And it's just like how many shows slash social media accounts were lost from people for not doing what he won't even apologize for and like, like getting it wrong.
Stated differently, how many people get to just keep shows that make zero money for long periods of time?
And what is the apparatus here that allows you to do so?
Yeah.
And there is something, right?
Like there's one of the things that's interesting.
And there does seem to be a bit of a left-right divide in this, but I don't think it's just that.
I think it's a little bit more.
But you know how like we've talked a lot over the last few years because we've we've we've been able to run an interesting experiment that we really never and I'm somebody who's like been paying attention very closely to the media for 20 years.
And I've done a whole lot of paying attention to what the media was like before that in the last 20 years.
And look, there's just never been a time quite like this where like you where the you know the internet is so much bigger than the traditional media and all of this stuff.
But so you see like, you know, we use the because I think they got fired in the same day or the same 48 hours, but you look at like the Tucker Carlson versus Don Lemon effect.
You had the number one guy at Fox News and you had the number one or number two guy at CNN.
I guess he was number two and then became number one after they got rid of Cuomo, I believe.
And so, but even Cuomo is another example of that too, right?
Where like, so you have these guys and then they go on the internet.
Now, Tucker's bigger than he's ever been.
These other guys are almost completely removed from the conversation.
Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon come up randomly in an internet clip when they say something particularly dumb, dumber than just their average rants, and then everybody laughs at them.
That's essentially what their role is.
Whereas Tucker Carlson is like leading the news cycle, you know, like he's getting the interviews with foreign leaders.
He's getting the interviews with the big American politicians.
He's doing the big stories on 9-11, like he's getting millions and millions of views and just killing it.
And so in a way, in this experiment, you got to figure out who is real, who has organic support from their people, and who essentially is a product of the machine, right?
Like it's not that Don Lemon was Don Lemon, it's that he was the 9 p.m. hour at CNN.
And if you take that apparatus away, you see what his real support is.
Joy Reed, these people go to disappear.
And I think the truth is that all of us know that we all think Kimmel was going on his way to disappear.
So just to like add to your point, it's like in this moment, there's a lot being revealed about like what is really inorganic.
And in a sense, what is really speech?
What is really a show where it's like, oh, hey, there's this one person who's got this point of view and there's an audience of people who want to hear from him verse.
There's a guy being presented to you by one of the biggest corporations in the history of the world who is going to give you all of these regime approved talking points, who there isn't even really an organic audience for.
It's all just smoke and mirror.
The smoke and mirrors to the tunes of billions of dollars.
That's another thing that's being revealed here and and and, in a way, you know look, as I say all the time right, but Joe Rogan is bigger than everybody on tv like he's.
He's just bigger than all of these people, all of them put together, and he's over here on the internet, So, like, if you really did have this organic support, it's not really a punishment to get canceled from your network show these days, right?
Like, if Jimmy Kimmel was a Tucker Carlson type guy, he could go do more creative shit, push the boundaries even more, and raking way more money by leaving the network.
Maybe not more money than their crazy contracts, but still, like, it'd be so like, in a way, the fact that you knew this was such a penalty proves that your whole thing is bullshit to begin with.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, because it just shows that you were getting, you know, fabricated profits for the value you were actually bringing to the marketplace.
That's right.
And look, when somebody, this is a natural thing that happens.
It's something I experience, Rob.
It's something you experience, and you probably experience it more than ever as you've been just on the road more than ever doing more of your own shows.
When you're like telling the truth and you're like standing up against a dominant narrative, against what the regime that you live under wishes for you to view, it just builds up a certain amount of loyalty that the people who listen to you have.
And something me and you have both benefited a lot from over the years.
People appreciate that.
They're like, thank you.
You know, when they find you, they're like, thank you.
Someone's fucking saying what I've been goddamn thinking.
We got a lot of this during COVID, you know?
And whereas if you're a regime propagandist, people appreciate you being in this position of power, you know, saying the approved things.
But as soon as you're out of that position of power, it's like it was never really about you.
We could just get someone else in there who's going to say all the same things.
How much does it really take to, in the height of COVID, say, you really should get your vaccine, stay socially distanced because we care about people.
Anyone can do that.
And so you just don't build any actual loyalty to you.
Like no one really cares about you.
And there's been so many examples of this over the years.
I mean, think about like, think about Andrew Cuomo.
They were all celebrating him like he was going to be the next president.
They were Cuomosexuals is what they called themselves, Rob.
And as soon as they went, no, he's done.
They're like, oh, okay, cool.
Who's next?
For anyone who was a Cuomosexual, you can just go work for him.
You could do it.
Yeah.
Very, very easy.
Get that Cuomo love.
It doesn't pay well, but he is hiring.
There's, but you know what I'm saying?
Like, it's just, there's not, even with Joe Biden himself, like you just, there is something where when you're just a puppet, people don't, nobody has loyalty toward a puppet.
And so like, you kind of know you're not going to, you're not going to bring that with you.
Whereas Fox News firing Tucker, it was like all of Tucker's audience was like, we are going with him.
And Tucker's doing better than ever before.
And Fox News is doing worse than ever before since they fired Tucker.
It's been a disaster for them.
And now they're still the number one in cable news, but that's number one in cable news, way diminished from what they used to be.
And it's also because CNN and MSNBC have also been diminished, you know?
But like that was bad for them.
And these guys just, they don't have any of that.
Here, let's see if we could get to this next part because there was something here that he said.
It's when he starts talking to Donald Trump about the ratings.
And it's right on topic of what we're saying.
And I thought it was very revealing.
Should the government be allowed to regulate which podcasts the cell phone companies and Wi-Fi providers are allowed to let you download to make sure they serve the public interest?
You think that sounds crazy?
10 years ago, this is very crazy.
Brendan Carlson, chairman.
Yes, it does sound crazy, man.
But it's also like sounds a lot like the United States of America over the last 10 years.
It's like as if like the Twitter files and the Facebook files and the stuff that I just read from the Google hearing, like as if none of this happened, that there wasn't a, what were all those apps, Rob?
Was it Gab was one of the big ones?
Right.
And they were other, where they straight up, they tried to start free speech versions of Twitter and then they pulled them off the Apple store or they pulled them off the app.
It was worse than that.
It was the Twitter competitor that was doing well.
I can't remember the name.
I think it's Gab.
They lost their server that was through Amazon and they were pulled down from the internet.
You got to fact check me on that, but I seem to really it was crazy what they went through.
Parlor was one of them.
There were like a bunch of these one I'm thinking of.
Yeah, yeah.
There were a bunch of these ones where they just destroyed these companies.
And of course, we know from all types of examples of people where they just got their, you know, their like Alex Jones, where like in one week, he gets kicked off of iTunes, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, you know, like Spotify, every single one of the things.
And then people have even been like debanked and like where you can't open a checking account anymore.
So again, it's like, yeah, that does sound crazy.
That's what actual dissidents have been facing now.
But I guess that's the game we're in.
I guess Jimmy Kimmel's coming out against net neutrality.
So that's a plus.
Right, right.
Because of course the Democrats were looking for more censorship of the internet.
And I agree with him.
Listen, I think what they did was 100% wrong.
And the fact that they've never used this public good cause against anybody else, I think that is correction.
But he's also, he's under the FCC and cannot do what we can do with podcasts.
He cannot go on and do Legion of Skanks one night.
He can have the three of you on and say, you know what?
This is your show for tonight.
We're doing the Legion of Skanks takeover of Jimmy Kimmel.
So he's also just talking, in a sense, he's also talking nonsense because he does have regulations that don't exist on the internet.
And the entire audience would agree.
Should Jimmy Kimmel be allowed to play porn in his time slot on ABC?
But no.
Do we think that should be taken off the internet?
I don't think so.
Right, right, exactly.
But right, exactly.
So you're right.
It's not a one-to-one comparison.
That's a very fair and important point as well.
But I'm sure that someone like Tom Elliott or someone like this, who's real good at making these things, I'm sure will get like there'll be a compilation of all the things Jimmy Kimmel said over the years.
But just to sit here and go like, hey, do you think like, is this like, because he, he invokes podcasts almost to be like, hey, come on, aren't all you guys have all been about free speech and you want your free speech?
Cowboy Colostrum and Missing Disinformation00:02:34
They're not in power.
Oh my God.
They got every libertarian principle in the book.
Everybody, everybody believes in liberty when there's a gun pointed at their head.
You know what I mean?
But then as soon as they're pointing the gun at someone else's head, they change.
But, you know, for Jimmy Kimmel to be saying this, how many times to go, hey, but dude, look, we got all these podcasts out there.
I mean, you really want the government to be in the business of regulating what podcasters can say?
What has, what do you think the whole missing disinformation thing has been about?
Like, how many times did you talk about that?
Right.
How, how many different people on Jimmy Kimmel's show, how many times did Jimmy Kimmel himself, how many people times did all of the liberals sticking up for him talk about misinformation on social media, misinformation on podcasts, all of this stuff?
They set up a ministry of truth, the board on missing disinformation that the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to be enforcing, right?
Like this is the whole thing.
But yet when Jimmy Kimmel says actual misinformation, like actually in his inherent in his thing was him saying MAGA is freaking out, trying to blame this, trying to act like this wasn't one of their own.
We're like, that's not what was happening.
Was that misleading information?
And you got a little, you got you missed a show or two.
And now, hey, what country do we want to live in?
Like, this is the country we've been living in.
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Gangster Threats and Bad Strategy00:10:01
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All right, let's get back into the show.
But anyway, let's, I'll, I'll close on a thought on that.
But anyway, let's go back to this because I want to get to this other part.
The FCC telling an American company we can do this the easy way or the hard way, and that these companies can find ways to change conduct and take action on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead, in addition to being a direct violation of the First Amendment, is not a particularly intelligent threat to make in public.
Ted Cruz said he sounded like a mafioso.
Although, I don't know, if you want to hear a mob boss make a threat like that, you have to hide a microphone in a deli and park outside in a van with a tape recorder all night long.
This genius said it on a podcast.
Brendan Carr is the most embarrassing car Republicans have embraced since this one.
And that's saying so.
Okay, here, let's pause it here for a second.
It's just unbelievable how bad the jokes are.
Yeah, it's so bad too.
It's also like Jimmy Kimmel.
This is the level of joke writing of Jimmy Kimmel is that he's like, oh, did you just figure out that the government does gangster shit, Jimmy?
Yes, that's right.
It's almost like the whole nature of the government is just the gang that's perceived as legitimate.
Yes.
And again, this is what I talk about with the thing from liberals.
And this is why it's like, this is why whoever the fuck the person is who still watches this show, whoever the, you know, if you know some people, like I know some people who are still kind of like vote blue, no matter who, just old Democrats.
You know, and to be fair, I know some Republicans who probably aren't any more informed than them who just vote Republican, like regular people.
I'm not holding anything against them.
I'm just making the point that like back to the stuff that Jonathan Haidt published, that it's like these guys are so clueless about the world around them.
And where you go, like, look, first of all, okay, so we agree with you, right?
Like the spirit of what Jimmy Kimmel is saying here, like, look, the government's doing some gangster shit.
And why should the FCC be threatening in a very gangster-like way?
No question, right?
He said we could do this the easy way or the hard way.
It's like a gangster line is what he said.
It's like, okay, yes, you're right.
Okay, obviously we all believe, like me and you believe the FCC shouldn't exist.
This whole model is stupid.
The government should never be talking about what some comedian has to say.
Sure, that's fine.
How about if the president of the United States of America were to like talk about people who didn't want to consume a pharmaceutical product that was completely based off lies sold to the American people based off lies, totally misrepresenting what the clinical trials had shown.
And now this experimental product was going to be forced down you.
No one says there's some Americans who are like, I think I'll choose not to take that.
And then the president said, we've been patient with you, but our patience is wearing thin.
Is that a gangster threat?
Because I took that as a pretty gangster threat when the president of the United States of America said that.
The president, there's been, of course, Rob, as you know, throughout the Twitter files, all types of different examples of the president himself, his campaign team, his transition team, the administration themselves, calling up Twitter, going, What's this guy still doing on Twitter?
What's the, you know, specifically talking?
Jen Sackey used to come up to her press conference with lists of people who they straight up said we gave the social media companies lists of people who we wanted to be banned, who we wanted to be silenced.
Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, straight up said that the government pressured him into censoring different people, including news organizations, including one of the biggest newspapers in the country, and censoring all types of regular Americans.
In fact, he admitted to censoring people who were saying things that were true, to censoring the truth.
At least in your case, you're talking about censoring something that you got wrong.
So, anyway, it's just like they say this shit.
They convince people who aren't paying attention that, yeah, that does kind of sound right because he's saying some freedom-sounding shit.
And that has a way of sounding right, you know, because it kind of is.
But it's just totally divorced from reality, from the context of what's going on.
All right, let's keep playing.
FCC has a tradition of meddling where they shouldn't under many administrations, but it wasn't always like this.
There was an FCC commissioner back in 2022 who worked under Joe Biden who was spot on.
He wrote, President Biden is right.
Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech.
It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people into the discussion.
That's why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship.
You know who wrote that?
FCC Commissioner Brendan Calmer, who later was appointed chairman of the FCC by this former crusader for free speech.
If we don't have free speech, then we just don't have a free country.
It's as simple as that.
If this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple just like dominoes.
One by one, they'll go down.
That was also in 2022.
And I wonder, how did that guy turn into this guy?
Who would you like to see replace Kimmel on late night?
A lot of people, anybody could replace him.
Kimmel had, look, he was fired.
He had no talent.
He's a white job, but he had no talent.
And more importantly, the talent he had no, because a lot of people have no talent.
They get ratings.
But he had no ratings.
Well, I do tonight.
All right.
So this is this big punchline, which gets a huge standing ovation.
We can cut off.
That's what I wanted to play.
And I just, I thought that was the moment that was like kind of revealing where he's like, he's basically admitting it, right?
That, and it is true.
He's 100% right.
I mean, this is essentially what I was saying.
Look, I was saying before, like, I don't actually care about the government shutting down Jimmy Kimmel's free speech rights.
As I said last time, I just feel like, you know, with a lot of these guys, I have been pushed to a point.
I don't, I still have never, and I still reject the idea that, you know, like you'll see some right wingers who will say, well, you know, the left played like this, so we're going to play like this too.
Like we're going to abandon our principles.
We're going to be hypocrites because the other side doesn't have those principles.
I don't believe in that.
I think that's that's it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what principles are to begin with.
And it's also just bad strategy and it's just wrong.
I don't agree with any of that.
What's different to me about this is that I'm not talking about like a group of people here.
I'm talking about on a very on an individual level, like a person like Jimmy Kimmel, when you just become a mouthpiece for the regime, I don't care about you anymore and your speech rights.
There's a different dynamic here.
You're like a guy with a rifle who joined an invading military.
You're a part of that now.
Whether you're officially a part of it or not is irrelevant to me.
But it was just always so obvious that this was just so stupid, man.
Like talk about backfiring.
If you were working for the liberals, you couldn't have done a better job than Carr did by coming in here and putting your finger on the scale.
And then when they reverse it, he can now say he can call out your hypocrisy, rightfully so.
And as he admits himself, he was getting terrible ratings, but now he's not.
So that's what was accomplished by this government.
You know, it's like one, one of the let forget the lessons of like free free speech on moral grounds, which I still do believe in and will always defend.
But don't you think like seeing as how we just went through 10 years of the liberals censoring their critics, right?
And seeing as how the liberals completely lost the national conversation and now their critics are 10 times bigger than all of them are.
In what world did anyone think like, oh, I guess this will be a good strategy.
Now that Jimmy Kimmel's down and no one gives a fuck what he says and no one's watching his show, let's have the government come in here and threaten to censor him.
And then they just gave him a show that'll get just millions and millions of eyeballs on it.
And allow him to, at least on the surface, kind of play it like he's being the good guy here.
You know, as much bullshit as that is, it's just so stupid, man.
It's like, God damn.
And, you know, I'm not like blaming like everybody on the right wing.
It's, it's been a crazy couple of weeks.
And so I understand everybody, but like, think about just how bad the strategy is here, people who were like cheering this on and celebrating it.
It's like, no, this is the last thing you want to say.
Ridge Wallets and Code 1000:02:25
It's like what I said.
Why would you want the ref?
Like, why would you, you're winning in a game?
Why would you want the ref to come in and cheat at the last minute?
You're winning.
Just win.
I don't know.
Any other thoughts, Rob?
I agree with you on that.
This was a poorly implemented strategy.
Yeah.
I mean, like, it's just, again, I mean, I don't know what the numbers are going to do, but I'm sure they will be huge.
And it's, it's funny that even he can say that.
Like on some level, he knows that like, oh, this was the best thing that happened to me.
Is that Donald Trump?
Oh, yeah, Donald Trump.
You say my ratings suck?
Not tonight.
Tonight they're going to be good.
And because, of course, everyone wanted to tune in to see, like, is he going to double down on it?
Is he going to apologize for it?
Is he going to cry like a bitch?
And we got the latter.
Yeah, right.
We got all three.
Somehow he did all of them.
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Libertarian Arguments and Regime Parts00:10:36
All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, I don't know.
I think that there's the right wing in America, I think should try to really think about the fact that any of these kind of systems of censorship, they're, first of all, they're not necessary.
And second of all, they're counterproductive.
Like you, I think, particularly with the latest brand of like progressivism that has come to characterize the regime that we've lived under for the last, you know, decade and a half, two decades.
This thing gets destroyed when there's a level playing field.
Like their arguments just don't hold up.
Their comedy isn't as good.
There's nothing like it's just, I've watched it.
I've watched it on every level.
I mean, literally my friends, as being someone like me and you, Rob, where we've got like our foot in, like we're in the world of comedians, and then we're also like in the world of talking about the news and stuff on both ends.
And now, like, I've got a lot of friends in both worlds.
I've just watched all my friends dominate all the people in the positions of corporate.
You know what I mean?
Like all my funny comedian friends, like there's, I know a whole bunch of, I mean, I don't know all of them, but like Comedy Central and HBO and Netflix for many years and like all these things were giving out shows and things, like all this type of comedy.
And then I just watched my friends like Nate and Shane and Joe and, you know, like all these guys just run laps around them from doing it their own way.
Nate got all the corporate stuff, but, you know, like all these other guys who I know are just like dominating them.
And then in the news world, I mean, it's like, you know, the exact same thing, like all these people just running circles around the corner.
And, You know, even now, I understand like Charlie got killed and a lot of people are emotional and all this stuff, but I also do feel like, guys, like for right-wingers to like even start like talking about embracing like the cancel culture stuff or even talking about, you know, like this stuff, like embracing like, say, the FCC threatening Disney or something like that.
It's like, guys, like we just started rolling all of this stuff back and winning.
Like, let's not be, you know what I mean?
Like, let's not contradict the whole thing now, or even if it's not truly hypocrisy, don't give them this talking point to say, look, it's, it's hypocrisy and all this.
Like, we just got to the point where we can talk on the internet without having to worry about getting, you know what I mean, silenced for it.
It's like, let's just leave this stuff alone and let these guys go die.
It does not matter.
They've put themselves in a box where they can't succeed.
This essentially, I think, is the only way.
I think almost, Rob, this might be the only thing that could have happened today that would get the possibility of like 10 million people watching an episode of Jimmy Kimmel, which like I'm sure he'll hit on this one.
I don't know what else could you think of that would get 10 million people to go watch any of these shows.
Like it's only something like this.
And so what are you even driving?
Look, these guys, all of them, they went all in on being mouthpieces for the Democratic Party.
They are essentially spokesmen for the DNC, but they picked that at a point where Democrats are historically unpopular.
You know, it's not even, it's not even, oh, they turned out, they tuned out half of the country.
They tuned out 75% of the country.
Democrats have like a 25% approval rating.
And that's who they went all in on.
And also, they like somehow, I mean, it's, you know, like people don't actually believe you when you tell them that Jimmy Kimmel was funny once.
I know this.
I've had this with young people.
They do not believe.
When I, I've, I've talked to like kids, you know, like I say, kids, I mean, in their 20s, you know, who are like fans of the show.
And you tell them Stephen Colbert used to be hilarious.
Like, they think you're crazy.
And they just don't know any better.
I understand.
I'd probably feel the same way if I didn't know.
But it was like, I don't know, Rob, like woke progressivism.
It was like all of them.
Like you, you remember in Space Jam when the aliens like sucked all the basketball players' ability to play basketball out of them?
It was like that.
Like they, all their, their fucking creativity and funny, it all just got sucked right out of them.
So just let these, let these guys go die.
Keep the government away from it.
I don't know.
Final, final thought to you, Rob.
Um, well, we only got six minutes here, but I'm curious.
Uh, you know what?
I gotta, I gotta give a second listen to your uh Jimmy Kimmel breakdown episode.
Um, and then uh, maybe on the uh subscriber episode, I will uh, which is tomorrow, I will challenge you on uh whether or not it's good, uh, good freedom for government to be censoring potential state actors.
Well, what do you mean?
Like, like, oh, oh, like within like, no, look, I don't think it's good, just to be clear on it.
I don't, I'm not like supporting it.
I'm saying I don't view this as like a like if in the same way that like, uh, if the if the FBI ruled to disarm the CIA, like, I don't think they're violating their second amendment rights.
It's a conversation between like governments.
Is that I almost look at it that way.
Like at this point, when you're talking about companies like Disney on the level of Kimmel, like you're just like, to me, you're an official mouthpiece of the regime.
I'm not even saying that's right or wrong.
Technically, he's a private citizen.
I'm saying like, I don't care about it.
Like, I don't actually, I don't care.
Anybody who like just in my own like ethical framework, anybody who like voluntarily like became a mouthpiece of the regime and enriched themselves in doing it, like, I don't care about their voice being squashed.
Like, I think it's uh, I think it's more productive if you either remove funding and then they fail because you're able to showcase the fact that it was actually just state funds that were sponsored propaganda.
100%.
No, no, but just to be crimes.
But just to be clear, like, as soon as you said, I think it's more productive, that's essentially my whole point is that I just go, look, I don't even, whether I even care about the speech rights of Jimmy Kimmel or not.
This is just a stupid way to do it.
It's not productive.
And I completely agree with you.
Essentially, like that's, and maybe this is why I like when you give me pushback sometimes because it also helps me like clarify and kind of like better articulate my point.
But that's why I was making the point of like the connection between the people who could go from a network thing to the internet thing and be even bigger is because they have organic support.
And then he's even himself admitting that like, oh, I did have terrible ratings, but I got now I got big ratings because of you.
It's like, so don't give them the thing.
Like, that's my point.
Try to remove the funding.
Try to remove the system that props them up.
There's no need to suppress, like let them fail.
It's such a better strategy.
It's so much more like it's a little bit like if Donald Trump tomorrow just said CNN's illegal.
That would absolutely be suppression of free speech.
Now, with that said, if you want to prove to me that CNN's actually been funded by the CIA and it's got some inappropriate relationship with the deep state and that they've engaged in illegal behavior, or if you want to make pharmaceutical and military companies illegal to advertise there so that it's no longer profitable for CNN to be on the air, those are all great things.
But for the government just to say, hey, you've been working against me and criticizing me the whole time, you can't exist.
Like even if the other two things are true, you're still just suppressing free speech because you're using a mechanism that can be used against honest people.
That's right.
And even if you agree with my argument, right?
Like I'm making kind of like an advanced libertarian theory argument here, which I could understand.
Like I said on the thing, it's it's um it there's uh an aspect of subjectivity to it where you go like, yeah, but who do you say is the part of the regime and who isn't part of the regime?
And I get that, but I'm just saying like I would still make the argument, you got to draw the line somewhere.
And I consider Kimmel like a fucking regime actor.
And so even if I make the argument that like, I don't care about his free speech, I don't care if a different part of the regime shuts him down, that muddies the message.
Like if you're talking about what's going to get across to like the average person, it's like, just stay in your principle.
We believe in free speech.
That actually does appeal to most people.
And we still believe that.
We still, even whether we think Jimmy Kimmel's a part of the regime or not, we still do believe.
Yeah, what is the FCC even talking about this stuff for?
What are you doing?
Don't start threatening these guys.
It's also, I do think, like to my analogy, just of the refs cheating in the game, like think about even the fact that like people are arguing, because look, this one, it's like a little bit in dispute.
You know, a lot of people, and there was some stuff that did suggest that actually there were some of the affiliates who were just complaining because they were getting pushback.
They were just complaining because people were like upset and like, hey, yeah, like, you know, that's part of being a television host.
You can't upset most of the country for that long before it'll, it'll affect your ratings and your job.
But, like, you could already see where it's like, dude, if Jimmy Kimmel gets fired for bad ratings, then that's a win.
But if Jimmy Kimmel gets fired because the company was scared that the FCC was going to prevent a merger, then that's a loss.
Then you lose.
Then, like, you didn't, he wasn't really driven, like, he didn't really lose the argument.
Um, and my point is that he has, so just let it let that be clear, just better all around for everyone.
Um, all right, let's wrap up, let's uh wrap up on that.