“DEEPLY Unconstitutional And Immoral!” Jimmy Kimmel Sparks Free Speech Debate | With Bill O’Reilly
Since ABC took Jimmy Kimmel off the air for his insensitive comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the US has found itself in a vexed debate on free speech. TV stations said they’d refuse to air his show; forcing the network to make the choice - but, after receiving a huge backlash and mass boycott of their streaming services, they have now only just announced Kimmel will be reinstated. Does Kimmel deserve to carry on doing what he does after his comments? Joining Piers Morgan to discuss is author of the new book ‘Confronting Evil’ and host of No Spin News, Bill O’Reilly, Fox News contributor Kat Timpf, comedians Adam Friedland and John Fugelsang and Jeff Dye plus CEO of Timcast Media, Tim Pool and editor-in-chief of Semafor, Ben Smith. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: Oxford Natural: To watch their full stories, scan the QR code on your screen or visit https://oxfordnatural.com/piers/ to get 70% off your first order when you use code PIERS. Cozy Earth: Luxury shouldn't be out of reach. Go to https://cozyearth.com/PIERS for up to 40% off Cozy Earth’s best-selling temperature-regulating sheets, apparel, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Blackout on Liberal Voices00:10:49
To this day, don't know why he said what he said.
So, something about this says to me that Kimmel wanted this to happen.
Bob Iger jumped up on his desk and started tap dancing when this controversy started because it gave him a morality clause breach against Kimmel to terminate his contract a year early and he's losing money.
What we need to do is we need to not be killing each other, okay?
And it's not Jimmy Kimmel's responsibility to deliver that message.
It's the government's responsibility, it's the president's responsibility.
If you think that this whole FCC thing is just a coincidence out of all the things that Jimmy Kimmel's ever said about conservatives, then let me know.
It's grotesquely against the First Amendment, and these guys are not going to look good in the history books for doing it.
Is there any way back for Kimmel at ABC, do you think?
America and the world are still reeling for one of the most significant assassinations in half a century.
Politics, sadly, is inevitable.
And amid the finger pointing over the excessive reactions on both sides, the United States is now navigating a vexed debate on free speech.
ABC has taken Jimmy Kimmel off air indefinitely for saying this.
Some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
Kimmel's comments were undeniably crass, inaccurate, and insensitive.
TV stations said they'd refused to air his show, forcing the network to make a choice.
As with Colbert's late show, this was an expensive production with falling ratings.
It's frankly impossible to imagine a time in the past decade when a network host would not have been cancelled for offending the liberal orthodoxy.
But that's why it's complicated.
Liberals created an enforced cancel culture, often with enormous glee.
Many of them feel conservatives and are doing it too, just because they can.
And many on both sides are uneasy about a government agency threatening a network over a host of presidents warned will be next.
Well, President Trump played it down in his speech at Charlie Kirk's Memorial.
Over the last 11 days, we have heard stories of commentators, influencers, and others in our society who greeted his assassination with sick approval, excuses, or even jubilation.
And the same commentators who this week are screaming fascism over a cancelled late-night TV show where the anchor had no talent and no ratings.
Last week were implying that Charlie Kirk deserved what happened to him.
Well, he's right.
The liberal outrage is grotesque hypocrisy, but is the MAGA cheerleading an example of precisely the same thing.
In a moment, we'll debate all this with my all-star panel.
But first, for his insider's perspective, I'm joined by the host of No Spin News and author of the new book, Confronting Evil, Bill O'Reilly.
Bill, great to have you back on Uncensored.
Before we get into Kimmel, just in all your time in news, where does this Charlie Kirk assassination rank, do you think, in terms of significance?
One of the top five stories of this year, 2025.
It will be not forgotten.
I don't think ever in this generation, because all of America focused and it's hard to get the folks to do with the cell phone era.
A lot of people don't understand the story and what really happened there.
But I think Mr. Kirk's legacy is going to be a revival of the Christian conservative movement in America.
I think they're going to get a lot more traction with his widow running turning point.
So that'll probably be his legacy.
You must have, like me, had a lot of threats over the years to actually see somebody murdered like that in open air at an event simply for having opinions that the shooter didn't like.
What does that make you feel?
Well, it was worse than that.
So my book, Confronting Evil, came out September 9th, and I woke up September 10th, my birthday, to find Putin, who's on a cover of Confronting Evil, lobbing missiles into Poland.
And then a few hours later, Charlie Kirk being assassinated in Utah.
And I've been doing, obviously, promotion for the book.
One interviewer said that was haunting.
The release of your book was haunting with the rise of evil that we're seeing the world over.
And I think that was accurate.
So I was drawn into this maelstrom.
And I have, of course, had no idea.
I'm not an Ostradamas here, but I did know a year ago that the rise of evil in the United States and throughout the world was starting to get very troubling, almost like the beginning of the 1930s.
And that's why I decided to write the book.
Now, Mr. Kirk himself died because of his political opinions.
There's no question about that.
That's why he was targeted.
And the unintended consequences have now gone into all kinds of different areas of expression.
The Jimmy Kimmel saga is still ongoing.
We don't quite know how it will all play out yet.
You know, my view of it for what it's worth is people talk a lot about free speech.
And the reality about free speech is I don't think it should be criminalized or governed by government unless people actually say criminal stuff.
In other words, if I say I'm plotting to kill you, Bill O'Reilly, tomorrow night at your home, that's clearly something which crosses the line.
It shouldn't be covered by free speech.
Jimmy Kimmel is perfectly entitled to say a disgusting thing as he did about Charlie Kirk, but at the same time, he's accountable to his employers.
And that's where it gets interesting.
And I know that you've got insight into how this went down.
What I didn't like, Bill, in the process was the FCC chair, a pro-Trump political appointee, Brendan Carr, publicly kind of threatening, almost like a mafia don, kind of threatening.
We can do it the easy way or the hard way, because that looks like government interference in a private company like ABC, Disney, making a decision based on perhaps other commercial imperatives.
What did you feel about that part of it?
Because it's that part of it that I think most journalists are concerned about.
Well, if I were Mr. Carr, I would not admit the statement, but he has the power to do so.
So the three networks and people around the world don't understand that.
The three networks use what they call a public airways.
Therefore, there are government regulations on them that they must operate within the public interest.
That is the headline.
So ABC, NBC, CBS have to operate within the public interest.
That's subjective.
But Carr has the right to go in and investigate anything that he believes is not in the public interest.
And I'll submit this to you.
There's almost a total blackout in the United States for non-liberal voices on the network news.
Did you know that, Pierce?
No, it's obvious.
Yeah.
It's been in place ever since Donald Trump got into the political arena.
I'm the best-selling nonfiction author in the world.
As you know, anybody putting me on TV gets higher ratings.
People want to, what that crazy O'Reilly is going to say today.
I can't get booked on a Today Show or Good Morning America or any of the late night shows.
Why?
Because I'm not a liberal.
Jimmy Kimmel didn't book one liberal in three years.
That's crazy.
So the FCC, and there's no denying that the Trump administration despises people who it deems have treated Donald Trump unfairly.
There's no denying that.
But the FCC says, hold it.
Is this in the public interest?
Where you have the three networks blacking out, excluding every voice that isn't non-liberal.
That isn't a liberal voice.
You can't prog a movie, a book, a recording.
You can't have a dialogue.
Now, I used to be on Kimmel and Letterman and Leno all the time because the ratings were so good and the view all the time.
But that changed.
And the corporations, they were fine with it.
Disney led the league in it.
So you're telling me that that's not an attack on freedom of speech?
So these 400 movie stars, TV saw, oh, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Kimmel.
Oh, well, what about the blackout?
And I'm not a what about guy.
I'm not.
That's ridiculous.
You got to keep it into what you're talking about here.
But there wasn't a word from the left because the left benefited from this.
And that was the biggest assault on freedom of speech I've ever seen in my lifetime.
Now, for Kimmel, the reason he got taken off the air, and this is again, people who don't live in the United States, the stations in states like Utah and Idaho and Mississippi and Alabama are getting crushed by their viewership.
Saying, why are you running this guy every night hating Trump?
Every night, why are you doing that?
So the stations themselves are under pressure from their audience, not in San Francisco or LA or New York.
And that's why that happened.
And then Kimmel hit the turning point.
Now, I always got along well with Jim.
And I, to this day, don't know why he said what he said in the wake of the Kirk assassination.
That's just absurd.
And he's smarter than that.
So something about this says to me that Kimmel wanted this to happen.
Maybe I'm wrong on that, but he's got 10 writers and producers.
Nobody flagged him to this.
Just doesn't stack.
You and I have been in the business a long time.
If we're going to say something that blows everything up, people are going to come over and go, you sure you want to do this?
The Kimmel Turning Point00:02:26
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Is there a danger, Bill?
Is there a danger?
I've been watching a lot of people reacting to this, and I agree with everything you've said.
But is there a danger in people on the right playing into the same place that they have always criticized the woke left in particular of occupying, which is the enemy of free speech, wanting to cancel people, wanting people to lose their jobs over things that they've said.
You know, I mean, for example, I'll play you a clip.
This is of Kimmel reacting to the cancellations of Tucker from Fox and Rose Ambar from his own network ABC.
Let's take a look.
That's right.
Fox News has severed bow ties with Tucker Carlson.
Cancellation and Free Speech00:15:45
After all these years, they are parting ways, which means he was fired.
I mean, that's really what parting ways means.
You know, what would have been interesting, Bill, would have been if the conservative right to a man and woman had just reacted by saying he shouldn't be fired.
It would have absolutely exposed the hypocrisy if on the left, if they had not called for him to go.
It seems that I reckon Kimmel was going to get fired anyway based on ratings and how much money it was costing, just like we saw with Stephen Colbert.
It would have been a natural thing to happen.
But by demanding he be fired and gleefully celebrating it, is the right not falling into that trap of behaving exactly the way they've always attacked the left for behaving?
Well, the quote is: when they go lower, we go higher.
Right?
Right.
That was Michelle Obama.
But extremists never go higher.
That's why they're extremists.
So you're hearing the amplification of voices on both the left and the right that are not rank and file.
They're loons.
They're people who don't want to hear the other point of view, who despise the other point of view, and oftentimes want to hurt the other point of view.
You open this conversation with you and me and a lot of controversial people have always been in danger.
I had to have security live in my house for a time.
Even now, when I go to events, like the Yankee Stadium event 10 days ago with Donald Trump, it was security, massive security.
We all know that there is a danger to speaking your mind.
And that's why a lot of people won't do it.
But you're never going to get the extremes on the right and the left to be logical.
That's why the word extreme exists.
They're fanatics.
And you've seen that all throughout history.
Just final word for you, Bill.
In the memorial service, you had the kind of two really memorable moments.
One was Erika Kirk, Charlie's widow, saying she'd forgiven the assassin.
And then you had almost immediately afterwards Donald Trump, the president, saying, you know, he could never do that.
He hates his opponents.
And sorry, he apologized.
It was kind of half joking, but not really.
What did you make of those two moments?
And was Trump, was that a sensible thing to do following what Erica Kirk had said to sort of ratchet things up about hating opponents?
Well, number one, the comments by the president were not scripted.
They were off the cuff, and he does that all the time.
I thought it was an extraordinary moment for America when Erica Kirk said that she forgave the man that killed her husband.
And you have to put it in this kind of context.
What does she say to her three-year-old daughter?
And when her one-year-old son becomes cognizant, what does she say?
They don't have a daddy.
Yet she stood up there in front of millions and said, I am a Christian.
I believe in Jesus.
Jesus forgave the people who murdered him on the cross.
And I'm going to do the same thing.
Just step back for a moment with all the emotion flying and go, that's just absolutely extraordinary for a human being to do that.
Now, Donald Trump was honest when he said he has a very hard time emulating Erica Kirk.
And I can identify with that.
It's very hard for me to forgive the people who have just tried to destroy me and my family, who've harmed me and my family.
I know who they are.
I know what they've done very hard.
And I say to my priest, because I actually go to church every Sunday, go to Mass.
I have to.
I can't get behind in the atoning.
But I say, look, if somebody asks me for forgiveness, they say they're sorry, I'll forgive them like that.
But these people have no remorse and they'll hurt other people.
And I have a very hard time with that.
And that's the essence of confronting evil.
All 15 men in the book, they did the most heinous things you could do.
None of them showed any remorse at all.
And so the question for the theologians is, are we collectively supposed to forgive Hitler and Mao and these other people, Lee Harvey Oswald?
It's very, very difficult.
But I admire what Erica Kirk did because that is such a positive message.
But I have to be honest myself, I'm like Donald Trump in that regard.
I have a very, very hard time.
You know, if I'm honest, I'm probably more sided with you guys than I would be with Erica Kirk.
And that's why it was such an extraordinary thing for her to do.
And said, I was interested that Trump said, you know, he's going to talk to Erica and maybe they can persuade him.
I think probably good luck with that, but it would be very interesting to hear those conversations, particularly as he's become, I think, more profound about his faith since surviving the assassination attempt on his life.
I've talked to him about that.
One word answer to my last question, Bill.
Is there any way back for Kimmel at ABC, do you think?
Sure.
I don't like what happened to Jim.
As I said, I had a good relationship with him.
He was respectful to me when I was on his program.
But at this point, what I would advise him to do, and here's an interesting thing.
I offered about a year ago through Adam Carollo, one of his best friends.
I saw where Kimmel was going.
I saw it.
I've been around a long time on TV.
And I said, look, tell Jim I want to talk to him.
Because you can do the satire.
You can get your point across.
You can do all that without being hateful, without being, you know, a person who's just loathing, okay?
But Kimmel never called.
And I know Corolla passed on the message, but I don't think he should be banished or canceled, but I think he needs a little bit of time off.
You know, it's interesting.
It's interesting because Jimmy Fallon did invite Greg Gutfeld on from Fox, and it was a very highly rated show.
So in a way, this refusal to have anyone from the right on is self-harming because it always leads to a bigger audience.
I don't know why they would do it.
I mean, for the view in particular to only have one view now, which is they all hate Trump, is pathetic.
Bill, I've got to leave it there.
Thank you very much.
It's great to have you on a sense that always really appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Okay, Peters, thanks for having me in.
Well, join me now to debate Charlie Kirk, Jimmy Kimmel on the battle for free speech.
He's the CEO of Timcast Media, Tim Poole, the man the New Yorker has called the future of late night, host of the hugely successful show, The Adam Friedland Show, comedian Adam Friedland, the author of Fox News contributor Kat Timf, and the comedian and commentator John Fugel saying the author of the new book Separation of Church and Hate.
Well, welcome to all of you.
Kat, let me start with you, because I do think it's that the Kimmel story is quite a complex one.
Instinctively, we all believe in free speech.
Instinctively, we don't like to see people canceled for just having an opinion.
And people on the right have been particularly exercised about this rightly because of the way the woke left have behaved with cancel culture for years.
But you were interesting on Gutfilm.
You said that while you were disgusted by the comment that Kimmel made, the FCC's actions bothered you as well.
And Ted Cruz has said similar, as have others on the right.
I think Ben Shapiro did too.
Just explain why what the FCC chair, Brendan Carr, said publicly bothered you.
Yeah, the FCC is not supposed to be engaged in the nuances of content moderation.
The public interest statute's not been interpreted this way before.
For me, it's pretty simple.
He's talking about, oh, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.
And then a few hours later, Jimmy Kimmel's no more.
And this is especially concerning given the fact that Nexstar is looking for the FCC to approve a merger that would make them a lot, a lot, a lot of money.
I simply don't see that as a coincidence.
And I simply do not think that that is appropriate or good to have the federal, the FCC, an arm of the federal government engaging in content moderation in that way, regardless of how you feel about Jimmy Kimmel, regardless of how you feel about what he said.
And I heard what Bill O'Reilly just said about how you can't imagine how he went forward with that statement saying that, hey, oh, there's just kind of essentially saying it's delusional to believe that the shooter was anything but MAGA.
And I honestly think that that's because maybe he kept himself in such a bubble that he didn't even have anyone who would moderate him and saying, hey, you know, we don't know yet or something along those lines.
But to me, that's all irrelevant.
To me, I've spent my entire career espousing the importance of free speech.
It's easy for me to say, hey, when the FCC has this influence, that's not a good thing.
And it's been disheartening to see people on the right who have behaved as though they don't even know what I'm talking about, right?
Employers, employees have consequences for them.
They're employers.
What do you mean?
And they don't even bring up the FCC angle.
I think there's people out there that don't even know about the FCC angle because so many people talk about it as if.
So just let me know if you think, if you think that this whole FCC thing is just a coincidence out of all the things that Jimmy Kimmel's ever said about conservatives, which there are many, this after the FCC says this, that that's when this happens, especially with this merger on the line, if you think that's just a coincidence, then let me know.
But I don't think it's just a coincidence.
But also tell me to my face that you don't, you can't possibly see how I might think that one thing has to do with the other.
Tim Poole, you've called out those defending Kimmel.
You said liberals celebrated Charlie's death and cry over Kimmel's firing.
I literally don't care what they say anymore.
Dark days indeed.
But as somebody who I know has, you know, has often been appalled by the cancel culture which enveloped our society for the last few years.
Do you feel comfortable with the way many on the right are gleefully celebrating Kimmel getting fired, you know, urging more draconian action against him and against other late night stars and so on for being anti-Trump and so on?
Is it not really the same kind of behavior that you guys on the right would castigate the left for doing?
I can't speak for anyone but myself, so I don't know about what draconian measures people would ask for.
I certainly wouldn't support that.
But Jimmy Kimmel got fired, according to the Wall Street Journal and the Hollywood Reporter because he refused to apologize.
He wasn't planning on apologizing.
He, in fact, was planning on furthering the commentary criticizing MAGA for twisting his words.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the executives approached him on his side saying they were actually going to defend him, but the advertisers and the affiliates were upset over the comments that he made portraying the assassin as a MAGA guy.
When Jimmy Kimmel expressed his desire to further that line that he had pressed the day before, that's when they had a private meeting and decided to pull his show.
So I do believe the FCC comments obviously played a role.
I think it was multifaceted.
But I've said this since cancel culture was more in the news with many on the left getting people canceled on the right.
If you own a company and someone says something objectionable, which threatens the existence of your company, I honestly have, I don't care if that person gets fired.
If someone at my company was going on social media and posting abhorrent racist things, I'd fire them too.
The issue with cancel culture is that people were being fired for things that were not objectionable.
There was a Netflix executive who got fired for simply describing the racial slurs they would not allow on Netflix.
Papa John got fired and removed from his company, name stripped from universities for lamenting the fact that the colonel used a racial slur and got away with it.
There was no criticism.
In fact, in one instance, a NASCAR driver lost sponsorship because his father used a racial slur in the 80s.
That's cancel culture.
Pulling Sarah Silverman off a movie because 10 years ago she did a black face joke, that's cancel culture.
Bud Light facing a massive sales backlash and having their beer pulled from stores and bars, target losing customers and being criticized.
This is consumer backlash.
So I certainly don't think a teacher who criticizes Charlie Kirk should get fired.
What I will add on top of this is the real reason stated by the reporting from various outlets, left and right, was that Jimmy Kimmel was going to continue that line the next day.
And that caused concern.
They would lose more advertisers at a time when Jimmy Kimmel's ratings are down 43% and he's costing them millions of dollars.
So if the FCC is to come out and say, we are going to get you taken off the air, that's a bad thing.
But I think it's important that we discuss the context around when a business has a right to say you are threatening the existence of our company.
Adam Freeland, I interviewed Jay Leno about a year and a half ago, and he was really interesting about, yeah, it was actually great.
I went to his car garage in LA.
We had a great few hours.
I loved him.
What I liked about what he said was, you know, he believed in like teasing and gently mocking all politicians from all sides.
And he talked about the kind of real golden period of Johnny Carson.
Nobody knew Johnny Carson's politics at all.
And yet, if you've watched late night comedy in America in the last 10 years, since Trump became a politician, all of them, almost two, I mean, they're all middle-aged white guys, which always makes me laugh when you think about the diversity push who've never seemed to attack late-night comedy.
But they all, to me, developed an increasing loathing of Trump, which began to really distort what their actual job was, to make Americans laugh late at night.
I stopped watching them quite a long time ago.
I could not watch it.
Jimmy Fanon would kind of keep out of this.
I think he's always been a lighter touch, but I think Kimmel and I think Colbert in particular, they really went hard in the anti-Trump rhetoric.
The View doesn't have alternate views.
It has one view.
They all hate Trump.
They all came out in black funereal clothes after he won again.
And I don't think these serve their viewers, and I don't think they serve their companies.
But I also feel uneasy, as Kat said, about the FCC poking its nose publicly into making not even veil threats, but direct threats that if ABC Disney didn't take action against Kimmel, then they were going to pay the consequences.
Bullying by Low-Rated Shows00:03:34
So where do you sit with all this?
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Listen, I'm new to your audience.
So just to introduce myself, I am a tell-it-like it is comedian.
And, you know, no one's safe from my jokes, be it bratty kids, celebrities, politicians, people that just walk by, they're all fair game.
But it is still deeply unconstitutional and immoral for the president to silence his enemies.
But I think what's important now, especially because it's so crazy right now, is that we zoom out as like people, like human beings.
And like, there's a lot of kind of empathy being expressed towards Kimmel right now.
But where is the empathy for Donald Trump?
Certainly what it seems like to me is that he feels like he's been bullied.
And I've been a victim of bullying my entire life.
And still, I am regularly.
I'm on the internet.
But I've always said to my bullies, like, while it's disrespectful, rude, hurtful for them to be saying that, I support their constitutional right to be saying things about me that aren't true.
So, you know, previous Democratic administrations have gotten the same treatment from conservative comics like Dennis Miller, Michael Richards, Kill Tony.
I'm sure a lot of that caused Joe Biden a lot of pain, but never were their constitutional rights violated by the executive branch of the government.
And I think that is what the clear difference is here.
And I think for all of us as a culture, we have to ask ourselves, like, is the president suffering right now from being made fun of?
And the truth is this, like 30% of Americans suffer from depression and there's a stigma.
And if that is indeed true, like he should feel equipped to get help.
And it is a Slight sarcasm to your son.
I'm not.
No, no.
Here's the point I've been made.
I don't think Trump feels bullied or hurt or any of those things.
I think what he feels.
So why?
Here's what I think he feels.
He actually spelled it out in the last few days.
There's no doubt, as he said, that about 99% of all the coverage of Trump on all these late night shows and the view and all these other mainstream media shows has been Trump bashing.
It's never been that percentage historically with anybody else.
It was never like that with Obama.
It wasn't like it with Reagan.
It wasn't like it with Clinton.
It's never been so skewed.
I think Donald Trump brings a lot of it on himself.
But I also think there's no doubt, no one can argue to me sensibly that Trump has not had a more relentlessly vicious, negative treatment from shows that used to be much more bipartisan in their mockery than Trump.
So I think all these things can be true, right?
Trump's Aggressive Litigation00:15:01
But he also comes from television, right?
And so it's something that he pays close attention to.
Yeah.
Ratings, he talks about they're being very unfair to me, unfair treatment.
And this is something that he is like locked in on constantly.
So, I mean, to some extent, if these are low-rated shows that are taking jabs at him, vicious jabs sometimes, that doesn't really pose much of a threat to his power if not a lot of people are watching them.
But for him, it's something that he's like zoned in on, perhaps.
That's what happened with Jim.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's complicated with Jimmy Kimmel.
John, for second, let me bring you in here.
You said the Kimmel suspension shows how brittle, unmanly, and frightened the Trump White House is.
I would add that they're angry about the way they've been treated for years by the mainstream media, rightly or wrongly, and they're vengeful, and they're thoroughly enjoying Jimmy Kimmel, one of their most ardent protagonists, getting his comeuppance, which is a kind of human reaction you would not find surprising in someone like Trump.
Again, those things can all be true.
Yeah, I mean, from your point of view, I mean, I remember, for example, here's an example of canceled culture at its worst, where I don't remember anyone on the liberal side coming to her aid.
I got bounced out of my job hosting Good Morning Britain for disbelieving Meghan Markle in her Oprah Winfrey interview.
And it made a lot of headlines.
I said, I don't believe her.
And nobody raced to my defense, by the way, on the liberal left, even though I've always identified as a liberal kind of guy myself.
But then a worst thing happened.
You know, I was fine about it.
I was tired of getting out of bed that early anyway.
Sharon Osborne was on the talk on CBS, and she got jumped by Cheryl Underwood, who was one of her co-panelists, who was an African-American woman, who accused her of supporting a racist.
And Sharon said, well, what's he said that's racist?
And Sharon Underwood couldn't actually explain.
She sort of went on a long tangent about how it's kind of, you know, if you say things a certain way, blah, Well, obviously I'd said nothing.
Referring to whom, Piers?
I'm sorry.
I'm referring to whom is referring to whom?
Well, Cheryl Underwood was saying that I had been racist.
She was inferring I'd been said racist things about Meghan Markle, which I hadn't at all.
And no one, everyone knew I hadn't.
But because Sharon...
I'm sorry.
Because Sharon said, well, it's fine, but I was annoyed for Sharon.
Here's what happened.
Nobody supported Sharon.
She got suspended.
She again got bullied into making a tearful apology, sort of begging for mercy, really, over nothing.
She'd done nothing wrong other than show me support as a friend.
We used to work together on America's Got Talent.
And then she got fired anyway.
But what I remember most of all about it, nobody on the liberal left gave a damn that Sharon Osborne's career got ruined in that way on American television, simply for saying that I hadn't said racist things when I hadn't.
So there's a lot of double standards about all this.
It's like depending who you are.
Tucker Carlson, I showed earlier with Bill O'Reilly a clip of Jimmy Kimmel gleefully celebrating Tucker Carlson being fired, gleefully celebrating Roseanne Barr being fired from ABC and so on.
So it's interesting to me to see who people race to defend when it comes to free speech.
There's a lot of hypocrisy.
What do you think?
If I may, Roseanne was fired by a private corporation for making racist comments that would hurt that corporation's bottom line.
And Tucker Carlson was fired for repeated lies that cost his private corporation three quarters of a billion dollars.
They were not fired because of abuse of power, which is the case here.
But is it the case here?
But John, is it the case here?
Or could it be that Kimmel did exactly what you've just articulated?
He was hitting his company on the bottom line.
Local TV station owners were pulling the plug.
They were saying we don't want to air him.
In other words, is it not the same thing?
But because he's a liberal darling left guy, everyone's framing it in a different way.
No, this was abuse of power.
This was Brendan Carr saying the quiet part out loud in public, which was very stupid of him because it's going to make sure this issue never goes away.
At least with Colbert, they kept this on the down low.
If you actually look at Kimmel's comments, I don't really understand why there hasn't been a more forceful defense mounted.
He said that MAGA folks spent the weekend trying to assert that this killer was not one of theirs and then said they spent the weekend trying to blame everybody else.
That's really a very fair comment.
It was in no way besmirching Mr. Kirk or the grief that many people were feeling.
There's been a lot of exploitation over this.
And whenever anything of this kind of violence happens, it always brings out the best in some people and the worst in others.
And many of us on the left and right will exploit any tragedy to go ahead and hate on the people we already hate.
In this case, however, this was going to happen no matter what.
And Brendan Carr has always envisioned this.
He is an architect of Project 2025.
These other cases you talk about are private corporations.
And look, this administration has taken a lot of pleasure in a lot of Americans losing their job.
They take delight in it.
And there's a lot of talented people who work on this show that I hope will not be losing their jobs.
Because you know, Bob Iger is negotiating heavily with Nexstar right now to try to put a happy ending on all this.
Because Bob Iger doesn't want champion of censorship to be stapled to his obituary when he leaves.
When Michael Eisner is the voice of morality against Bob Iger, my God, what have we come to?
Kimmel's going to be fine.
He'll find a job somewhere, as will Colbert.
They're very, very wealthy.
But this is something that's unprecedented.
We haven't seen the government doing this.
And in both cases, they were contingent on bribes.
This is more corruption that we're very getting, we're all used to in this country.
This was about putting a merger through.
Bob Iger was looking at the stock price.
He wanted to make this merger go through, and he made the Kimmel problem go away because he was hinted to do that by the government.
This is self-cancellation by intimidation.
It's grotesquely against the First Amendment.
And these guys are not going to look good in the history books for doing it.
Well, joining me now as the editor-in-chief of Semaphore and host of the Mixed Signals podcast, Ben Smith.
Ben, great to have you on sense.
Your debut, I think.
Thank you for, I believe it is.
Very exciting moment.
This was Adam Friedland, no less.
Yes, exactly.
Ben, what do you mean?
I mean, John Fuchsang just made a pretty full throttle attack on the way the Trump administration, as he sees it, is flexing its muscles against media companies to get rid of critics and so on.
Do you see it that way, or is it a little bit more complicated?
You know, I talked to Brendan Carr actually about this in February, because I think the thing that John was saying that I think most people in our world would say is that the biggest threat to free speech in the United States is the government.
That's why the First Amendment restricts the government, not private actors.
And that's, you know, the kind of long-standing consensus view.
And it really is not how the Trump administration sees the world.
And when I talked to Carr, I kind of put that to him.
Don't you think, obviously, the primary threat to speech in the United States is you, the government, always has been.
And he said no.
He thinks that the biggest threat to free speech was the big social media companies.
And I think the reality is that the Trump administration, starting with Trump himself, like feel that very, very personally.
There's people who's, in some cases, they're kind of formative political experiences are getting tossed off Twitter and Facebook.
For Trump, certainly a very intense experience.
And so I think when I think, you know, setting aside the law here, setting aside the fact the First Amendment just literally does restrict the government, not private corporations, their view in a kind of intuitive way is that, look, those guys did that to us.
And so we're going to do it to them.
Right.
And there's no doubt they did.
I mean, I remember the same people screaming how unfair it is that Jimmy Kimmel has been suspended, screaming their glee at Trump being thrown off Facebook and Twitter and the rest of them and seeing no apparent contradiction there.
Yeah, I mean, there's, I think, a broad consensus in the United States, probably everywhere, that we would like to see our opponent's speech smashed while ours, but our friends should be allowed to say whatever they want.
Yeah.
I mean, and it turns out the constituency for actually letting your enemies say things you hate and defending that is pretty small, although admirable.
Is there another thing going on here with the downfall of Stephen Colbert and now Jimmy Kimmel?
That actually the reality, when you look at the numbers they were getting watching their show, have been dwindling now for many, many years.
The costs are very high.
You're seeing many people now decamping from mainstream media.
I'm one of them, right?
Going into the world of YouTube, which is one of the fastest growing platforms in the world, the fastest growing for watching stuff.
But actually, these guys, in a way, are kind of, you know, they're the modern day dinosaurs who were still trying to create content, which was becoming increasingly unpopular.
And therefore, because they're so expensive, that their company executives in charge of their shows are making calculated, ruthless decisions, using a moment, if you like, as an excuse to do what they may be wanting to do anyway.
Yeah, I think it might be a little bit the opposite.
I don't think that the I don't think Disney thinks it's like a nice excuse to look like they're caving to political pressure.
They caved political pressure in this case, though, because this isn't such a good business.
I mean, broadly, with the kind of irony here is the part of media that Brendan Carr regulates, that the federal government regulates, is the weak dying part, is the part that's rooted fundamentally in broadcast television, you know, which has been rolled up by these no-name affiliate companies like Tegna that we were all learning about over the last week, because that's where the pressure point is.
And what's so strange is that Donald Trump won on the back of understanding that there was this really vibrant new media world, but his kind of personal obsession and his vendettas are still with people like Jimmy Kimmel, people like Stephen Colbert, who are obviously in some sense part of the past.
Trump is very litigious and has been using that tendency very aggressively against a lot of media companies, most of whom have been caving and paying him a lot of money.
And we're seeing the same thing with universities and so on.
What do you think about that?
I mean, is that all part of crossing a line of government interference?
Or is it actually a bit of moral cowardice by the media companies in paying the money?
The answer to that question is yes.
But, you know, what is so interesting is that Trump and his lawyer, Boris Epstein, have kind of found a way to use the law to pressure these companies and force them to pay these huge amounts of money, basically on the premise that this thing is never going to go to court, right?
And the reason is these companies are huge conglomerates.
They have interests here.
They have interests there.
And, you know, they're essentially scared that federal regulatory agencies will over on this side of the map, you know, stop their mergers, mess with their broadcast licenses.
And so if they can like pay some money over here, whatever, call it a settlement in a lawsuit to make these things go away or take a little pressure off here, they'll do it.
And that's basically the system that's been developed.
I mean, these are sort of new channels for donations to the Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg Presidential Library.
Do you think there's any way back for Kimmel at ABC?
Are we going to see that show back on air?
I mean, I think this is the most anybody's talked about Jimmy Kimmel in quite a while.
Yeah.
You know, I saw that Midas Touch, which is this kind of dominant left-wing YouTube channel, is trying to, we reported today that they're trying to hire Jimmy Kimmel to go on their air.
So, you know, I'm sure we'll be hearing from Jimmy Kimmel again.
Ben Smith, great to have you.
Don't leave us along next time.
Thanks for having me, Pierre.
It's very exciting for me.
Really good to talk to you.
Thank you very much.
Joining the panel now is comedian Jeff Dye, who says attempts to use Kirk's past comments against him is truly sick.
All right, Jeff, welcome to Uncensored.
Why truly sick?
Well, I think that you can find me to be a hypocrite on this subject all week online, I will admit, because I react in a lot of feelings about these kind of things.
I'm a comedian and I'm not as educated as your other guests about the FCC or conglomerates or any of these things.
I'm a comedian.
Okay, well, I just meant I didn't know as many things as these other things.
And my feeling was it would have been insane if anyone made a crack or a monologue riff about George Floyd while people were initially kind of hurting about it.
It would have kind of a strange thing.
That week was a week of everyone going, hey, something pretty serious happened and we need to like be kind of, you know, maybe pause a little bit on the commentary or pause a little bit on the jokes.
It would have been absolutely insane.
And I know that the goal of these companies is to keep everyone happy, but you especially have to keep the people happy that give you money.
And the people that give you money are probably going to have political opinions and different things.
And so I think that that's kind of what happened here.
The people that are giving money to Jimmy Kimmel thought that it was a little insensitive and they wanted him to apologize and he refused to.
And they said, hey, we're going to have to do the thing that a lot of companies do and cut you loose.
Now, to speak to the FCC and all these other things that I'm not as educated about, maybe that makes me a hypocrite.
Well, I think a lot of things can be true at once.
I mean, Captain, it may well be that ultimately the FCC quotes from Brendan Carr, utterly inappropriate, very threatening, quite mafioso, as Ted Cruz said.
But it may be that that wasn't in the end the determining factor.
We don't really know.
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Maybe that ABC and Disney just concluded the heat, the commercial heat from the fallout of what he said.
And I actually think that's a really good point by Jeff Dye.
You know, if you had been on air, if you'd been on air on Gutfeld in the week after George Floyd was murdered, I'm sure you were.
But if you cracked a joke, it wasn't really even a joke.
And that's why...
It wasn't about...
That's why, Jeff, I mean, the point that John made, I've seen someone trying to explain how it wasn't the way it seemed.
Political Statement Setup00:15:42
I haven't heard this from Jimmy Kimmel yet, but apparently he was trying to explain that he was just revealing that this is what the right were doing.
But it wasn't a joke, and it was crass, wasn't it?
But to me, the one difference here is the FCC.
You can point to whatever other example of any other comment, whether it's something that actually happened or whether it's a hypothetical, and it's still going to be a different situation because it's not a cancellation that happened, just a matter of hours after the FCC was using that threatening language.
And you can talk all you want about the local stations pulling out, but those Nexstar was looking for a merger.
They're looking to get rich off this.
They're going to do what the FCC says.
If people would like to believe that's a coincidence, that's fine.
I don't believe it's a coincidence when it's the one difference when Jimmy Kimmel has been making these sorts of comments, jokes.
Some are jokes, some are just political commentary, going really hard against Trump, really hard against the right.
And then the one thing that's really different this time is that just hours before the head of the FCC was threatening.
That to me, that's what makes this different.
And I'm not, and I'm not a Democrat.
I'm not on the left.
I'm not on the right either.
I'm just an independent and I'm a free speech advocate.
And as a free speech advocate, I cannot imagine having any other take.
But at least, at the very least, being able to understand how someone could possibly think that maybe this had something to do with it.
Yeah, Tim Poole, I got to say, it's a persuasive argument that Kat makes.
I don't think it's just not the reporting.
Look, I certainly understand when Brendan Carr said.
I don't believe everything I read in reporting.
I think for myself.
Indeed.
So you make things up, I guess, because what I can only go off of is what the left is.
What did I make up, Tim?
What did I make up?
Everything I just said was factual.
Now, you're going to accuse me of making things up.
What did I make up?
Yeah, you made up that the FCC had a door.
What did I make up?
I didn't make up anything.
Everything I said is what happened.
And an assumption that I think is not unreasonable, but the official reporting from left-wing sources and right-wing sources, I mean the more mainstream ones, is that the executives were largely behind Jimmy Kimmel.
Advertisers, as well as affiliates, took issue with the comments he made, insinuating the assassin was somehow a Trump supporter, whether that was unintentional or otherwise.
Jimmy Kimmel, as officially reported, did not want to apologize, didn't feel he needed to apologize, and wanted to further those comments, criticizing MAGA for twisting his words.
If we are going to make the assumption the principal reason his show was taken off the air was Donald Trump and the FCC, that would be us speculating, not going off the main reporting.
And the only thing I've heard this whole time with even Benson and everybody is the assumption that is true, despite the evidence suggesting it played a minimal role.
So I think it's fine to assume that Brendan Carr saying that can be worrying to affiliates.
However, if we're going to go off what the actual reporting says from liberal outlets and conservative outlets, Bob Iger, as well as other executives, asked Jimmy Kimmel to walk it back and he said no.
They said, okay, your show dropped 43% over one month.
Maybe we shouldn't do this anymore.
Okay.
Adam Friedland, Scott Galloway on the Pivot podcast said that Bob Iger would go down in media history as Neville Chamberlain in a cashmere sweater minus the dignity.
Okay.
What do you think of that?
People always use Neville Chamberlain as a historical reference.
Also, by the way, yesterday was entirely on our managers.
It was entirely Arteta's fault.
I just wanted to say, I'm too upset about that.
Guys, can I just address this kerfuffle just now?
Folks, both sides have been hypocrites, but it also means that both sides have been correct at a certain point, right?
So what we need to do is get them, make them be correct at the same time.
Yes, who cares?
Like, at the end of the day, who cares?
It's comedy, right?
The president got really pissed off when Obama did the White House correspondence dinner.
He takes it very seriously.
You know, if you're at one of my shows and you're in the front row, you know, you're in the splash zone.
You might get burned.
Or the burn zone.
Listen, guys, it's just comedy.
It's not that important.
You know what's more important?
Like someone that is an air traffic controller.
Comedians are like the way they're being treated as modern-day philosophers and the most important people in society.
It's dangerous.
But isn't that bad?
Adam, isn't it?
Because.
Use of power is important.
I think it's a good idea.
And also, the joke had nothing to do with Charlie Kirk.
Do people still have to do that?
Okay, well, look, first of all, I would say it wasn't a joke, right?
It was a political statement.
He said, Jimmy Kirk.
Jimmy Kirk.
He's saying that Donald Trump didn't seem, he wasn't being sympathetic.
The point he was making, he said that the MAGA right effectively spent the whole weekend trying to make out this guy was not one of them.
The clear inference.
Well, the clear inference from that statement that he made is that he probably was one of them.
That's what caused all the offense.
Now, Jimmy Kimmel.
Oh, it was still.
Jimmy Kimmel has briefed.
Well, just to be clear, Jimmy Kimmel's briefed that that's not what he intended, in which case, I would say it's incumbent on Jimmy Kimmel to come out and explain himself.
At the moment, he's not given that explanation at all.
He's a joke.
Well, because it wasn't a joke.
What he said was the truth.
Sorry, John.
The least funny thing in the world is when a comedian explains a joke, okay?
But it wasn't a joke.
He killed the crowd like being like, this is what I meant.
It wasn't a joke.
No, it's a freaking.
Actually, it wasn't a joke.
John.
It was a setup to a joke about Donald Trump's callous indifference to the murder of Charlie Kimmy, which is the bit that got the lap at the end of the beat.
Yeah, but John, would you have said what Jimmy Kimmel said if you were on mainstream television?
And it was pre-recorded.
Myself?
Yeah.
I mean, well, it's not whether I would have, it's would I have had the right to, and I would have without expecting anyone to get to the right.
But you've got the right to.
They wanted to fire Kimmel.
You've got the right to, but would you?
You've got to get the chances to fire him.
You've got the right to, but would you have said that?
I phrase it a bit differently.
You don't have the right to.
I'm on TV right now.
I'm on TV right now, and I'm saying that Kimmel didn't say anything to besmirch Charlie Kirk.
He didn't say anything that wasn't the truth.
He made a couple of statements as a setup for his joke about Trump's callous response to a question about Charlie Kirk's murder.
He said that MAGA was trying desperately to prove this guy wasn't one of theirs.
That's true.
He didn't say he's MAGA.
He didn't even say he's a white guy from a white state raised by a MAGA family, surrounded by guns.
He could have said that.
He didn't.
He just said MAGA spent the whole weekend trying to pretend this guy's not one, try to claim this guy's not one of theirs and blaming everybody else.
And my God, I've never heard, Piers, the pro-gun control people blamed this much for gun violence since the last time a Republican kid shot at a Republican figure, Donald Trump, a year ago.
The people who want gun control of this country, they're not the ones you get to blame for this.
So they could have fired him.
You're right.
Kimmel's ratings are in the basement with the demo.
Maybe they did want to do this a long time.
The timing of it, Piers, is what's going to damn all these players involved because they will all go down in infamy for being part of this censorship.
If this goes through, there's no way this ends where it looks good.
Kimmel's going to be a free speech hero.
He's Library of Congress for the rest of his life.
But Carr, Trump, these other folks, again, the comments were not about Kirk.
They used it as the excuse.
I think the problem was it was ambiguous, and it was ambiguous enough that actually a lot of people did take the inference from it that he was making.
The ones who wanted to.
He was directly suggesting that actually this kid was a MAGA kid and therefore they were trying to distance themselves.
That's the problem.
I'm sorry, that's not correct.
He was saying MAGA's crime desperately.
That was the reality of the weekend.
Behind the proclamation.
John, the point I'm making was it was clearly ambiguous because half the country rose up in fury about what they thought he was saying.
So my point is, my point is you are assuming, John, you're assuming that your interpretation of it is the correct one.
We don't know yet because Kimmel has no idea.
I'm not just going by the words on the paper that I read, Piers.
I'm just going by the exact words.
I don't know what was in his heart.
And it wasn't a joke at Mr. Kirk's expense, nor was it a joke denigrating this atrocious crime that happened last week.
Again, this is all about weaponizing anger against people who had nothing to do with it.
And that's what we've seen all week long.
We saw our good friend Brian Kilmead the week before call for the murder of homeless people in this country, that they should all be put to death, including thousands and thousands of veterans.
I heard no outcry from our conservative brothers and sisters.
Brendan Carr was completely undisturbed.
That's not on their radar.
They don't care that Brian Kilmead called for the murder of thousands of American vets.
They wanted to take this guy out.
Iger wanted a merge.
This was the excuse they used.
Charlie Kirk's death is going to be exploited for a lot of things in the months to come.
All right.
Let me get around the panel.
Cat Tim, do you think we'll see Kimmel back on his show on ABC, or is that it, do you think?
I think that's it.
But I mean, we'll see him somewhere.
I mean, we'll see him somewhere, but I don't think he'll be back.
I think that the cancellation is going to make too much money for people.
Right.
Adam Friedman, what do you think?
If he's coming back to TV, I don't know.
I don't even know the name of the show.
Could anyone tell me what the name of his show is on ABC?
I know there's a night show in late night.
I mean, like, guys, this is just like things are, I like it when things are nice and things are not nice right now.
And we need to, like, the president needs to be telling Americans to calm down.
There's too much violence right now.
No matter what the side is.
Yeah, people also lose.
The one we have right now.
People are politicizing violence and blaming the other side and claiming to be victims of the other side.
It's not nice, okay?
What we need to do is we need to not be killing each other.
Okay.
And it's not Jimmy Kimmel's responsibility to deliver that message.
It's the government's responsibility.
It's the president's responsibility.
So like, let's, the truth is this: like they're being snowflakes.
Libs were being snowflakes before.
Can we just, if they both realize the hypocrisy of the snowflakes at the same time, things can calm down.
But right now, everything is the lipid hypocrisy.
What?
What's the lip hypocrisy?
I don't get the both sides in here.
What's the lip hypocrisy?
I'm sorry.
Someone losing their health care because they say something that they don't like.
You know, that's like people losing their livelihood.
They're not really in healthcare.
They're fighting for everything.
You don't think any conservatives were ever canceled?
I mean, they were, of course.
I think we've seen a lot of brave conservatives.
A lot of brave conservatives have stood up against this.
I think we've seen a lot of brave conservatives who stood up against this with.
I agree.
It's just.
And I don't know any liberals who cheer when someone gets fired by government intervention.
Well, we have seen many liberals cheering about Charlie Kirk being murdered and posting TikTok videos.
Plainly, painfully, I'm not sure for that.
We've seen him selling crazy.
You don't have to prove that no liberals are happy when a conservative gets fired.
That doesn't prove the point that the Constitution exists.
That's what matters right now.
Let me ask you a question.
It's executive overreach.
It's the president's using the FCC to take off a late-night host.
It's just that it's like a dwindling industry anyway.
It's like this is this entire thing is like what matters is that people are killing each other right now, okay?
And it's not nice for people to be killing each other.
I agree with that.
Tim Paul has proved that no Democrats ever celebrated a cancellation on the right.
I agree with you.
Tim Paul, do you think there's any way to Democrats?
Listen, Bob Iger jumped up on his desk and started tap dancing when this controversy started because it gave him a morality clause breach against Kimmel to terminate his contract a year early when he's losing money.
That's what I think happened.
Yeah.
Jeff Ty.
Well, I mean, I'll be the bleeding heart here again.
I don't really care if we see Jimmy Kimmel back on a late night show again.
We won't see Charlie Kirk back on his show again.
And that was kind of the whole issue for a lot of people and what Jimmy said is that, you know, it was insensitive and just not the right time.
Maybe wait a week before you get your jokes in.
You know what?
Author of Trump.
Yeah, I agree with that.
And actually, whenever people say, yeah, but what about Trump?
I'm like, yeah, but actually, not everything has to revolve around Trump in terms of how we view these things.
You can just view it in the round, which is Jimmy.
I'm afraid of Donald Trump.
Yeah, listen.
The joke was about Trump.
Yeah.
Like, obviously, this is about that Trump got his feelings hurt.
And maybe he's he doesn't, he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, okay?
And like, does he have enough time for self-care?
Okay.
We have to ask this question as citizens of this country, not you, Piers.
It wasn't the goldfish joke that he got in trouble for.
It wasn't that Donald Trump made that, that they made the joke about Donald Trump having more affection for his goldfish or whatever the stupid punchline was.
It was the setup and political statement.
It was, but also trying to separate it.
Also, remember, just before this, just before, hang on, just before this, there was an outrageous story that came out about the number of conservative guests Kimmel had had on in the last three, four years.
And it was like one or two or something ridiculous.
That is the problem, right?
Charlie Kirk, ironically, always sat opposite people who disagreed with him.
These late night guys hate Trump so much, they won't have anyone on the conservative right on their programs, even though half the country or more have voted now twice for Trump to be president.
And until that changes, you're going to constantly have a sense of them and us.
And I think that's part of the problem.
I loved it, Kat, when Greg Gutfeld went on Fallon.
It was great.
It was a nice chat.
It was fun.
It rated through the roof.
You know, that would be great.
More of that, because you guys on Gutfeld have loads of left-wing people on.
And it's great.
I do the five and you have always somebody on the left on that.
I think on the left, there's a real visceral reluctance to have people on the right even engaging in debate.
And that's got a challenge.
Not on the Adam Freeman show.
Not on my show.
Well, your show's great.
That's why I'm not sure what it is.
I think it's an issue.
I think that there's some left or the right.
And some people won't have me on the show, won't talk to me, simply citing the fact that because I work here.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
So I would definitely agree that that's a problem.
It's a huge problem.
I would definitely agree.
I hated Kimmel's comments.
All that being said, the FCC cannot be engaging in the nuances of content moderation.
It's against the title.
Totally agree.
Everybody should be upset about it.
Yeah, I think we can all be upset about that.
Thank you.
Great, great debate, panel.
Thank you very much indeed.
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