Kimmel Returns - Opening Monologue Reactions

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Last night, Jimmy Kimmel returned to television. This is a
guy who has been very adamant about his political views lately.
He said something very loose lipped about Charlie Kirk and
the Assassin and did what he I think he thought
he was making a joke, and last night his indefinite

(00:22):
suspension was lifted after just six days. Depending on where
you are, you may not have been able to see
it in Nebraska because Sinclair and Nextstar are two companies
that have a ton of affiliates around the country who
are refusing to air Jimmy Kimmel liive, so he was preempted. Now,
with that being said, I went to YouTube to watch

(00:43):
this after the fact because I.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Didn't watch it live. I didn't care that much live.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
But when I did watch it live, I was surprised
at how many people actually were.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Watching this.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
And looking at this, over fourteen point three million people
to this point have actually watched this opening monologue, which
essentially took thirty minutes of the show. Now, with that said,
this guy is super political. You may not like that.
I'm going to give that a platform. You're either gonna
love what I'm gonna put do here, or you're gonna
hate what I'm doing to do here.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
If you love.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
The idea of free speech, you love the idea of
hearing ideas that are different than your own and trying
to understand them. If you like the idea of maybe
poking fun and trying to, you know, maybe get under
the skin of somebody who may disagree with you, you
might like this. If you really hate that I give
a platform to anybody you disagree with, you probably will
dislike this a lot. So let's go ahead, and let's

(01:37):
go ahead and dig into this. I got a half
dozen clips that I want to play here for you.
The first one, this is Jimmy Kimmel talking about the
He thanks Disney for allowing to come back. He said
they didn't have to do that, but they did, and
he thanks them. He thinks all the people that are
supporters of his, including people in the audience, which they

(01:58):
appreciate for always you know, fighting the good fight and
supporting him and everything. But he also had another group
that he wanted to think.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Maybe most of all, I want to thank the people
who don't support my show and what I believe, but
support my right to share those beliefs. Anyway, or I
never would've imagined like Ben Shapiro, Clay Travis, Candice Owens,
Mitch McConnell, Ran Paul, even my old pal Ted Cruz,

(02:31):
who believe it or not, said something very beautiful on
my behalf.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that
he was fired.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Oh wait, no, not that the other part.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
But let me tell you, if the government gets in
the business of saying say what you the media have said,
we're going to ban you from the airwaves if you
don't say what we like, that will end up bad
for conservatives.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
I don't think I've ever said this before, but Ted
Cruz is right.

Speaker 5 (03:06):
He's absolutely right.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
So there's the little bit about the people who disagree.
And you hear Klay Travis. I mean, he was pretty
adamant saying he didn't feel comfortable with the way this
was going down on the show. That precedes me here
on eleven ten kfab Now with that being also said,
you knew at some point he was gonna have to
address what he said to get himself suspended. Last week,
of course, it was about you know, saying that the

(03:31):
assassin was you know, people who are MAGA are trying
to make the guy who's assessed or anything other than
MAGA for their own benefit or something along those lines.
While he's talking about this, it's still pretty fresh last
Monday or so, and this is what drew the ire
of Disney and affiliates and people around the country, even
if they don't watch Kimmel, they learned about this. They said, oh,

(03:53):
he needs punish for that. Well, now he's back, and
this was his way of addressing that is sort of
a clarification slash quasi apology.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
I've been hearing a lot about what I need to
say and do tonight, and the truth is, I don't
think what I 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.

(04:26):
I don't.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
I don't think there's anything funny about it.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
I posted a message on Instagram on the Daves killed,
sending love to his family and asking for compassion, and
I meant, but 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

(04:54):
timed or unclear, or maybe both. And for those who
think I did point a finger, 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

(05:16):
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 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

(05:37):
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.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
All right, so there's kind of a clarification but also
an apology. Could hear the emotion in his voice. I
know people who dislike Jimmy Kimmel, they're going to say
that he's acting there get that vibe.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
I also feel like.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
He's being pretty sincere when he says if what he
said was said about somebody on the other side and
the roles were reversed, he would understand and it probably
have felt the same way. I think that's an important
acknowledgment from him now. He also a little bit later
on in this monologue, he talks about Donald Trump and

(06:26):
Donald Trump being he kind of alludes to him being this.
You know, obviously he's very anti Trump in general, but
again he is going out of his way to try
to make jokes out of it. Most of the time
he gets more into the business end of well, the
government trying to slow us down. And then he alludes

(06:47):
to this champion of free speech, and then he plays
this clip from a video.

Speaker 5 (06:51):
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 riter is allowed to perish, then the
rest of our rights and liberties will topple, just like dominoes.
One by one, they'll go down.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
That was also a twenty twenty two and I wonder,
how did that guy turn into this guy?

Speaker 4 (07:13):
Who would you like to see replaced Kimmel on Late Night?

Speaker 5 (07:16):
A lot of people anybody could replace some guy had
no talent kim All had.

Speaker 6 (07:21):
Look, he was fired.

Speaker 5 (07:22):
He had no talent. He's a whack job, but he
had no talent. And more importantly than talent, he had
because a lot of people have no talent, they get ratings,
but he had no ratings.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Well I do tonight, Yeah, any I don't know if
what those numbers look like yet. I remember there's over
ninety stations that actually preempted his show, but he's doing
gangbuster numbers on social media and on YouTube, at least
for that particular monologue. The fourth clip that I want

(07:57):
to play is Jimmy kim going through during his monologue
talking about this is something that we as a whole,
as a country need to pay more attention to.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
And he will explain to you why here.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
That unfortunately, and I think unjustly, this puts them at risk.
The President of the United States made it very clear
he wants to see me and the hundreds of people
who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates
Americans losing their livelihoods because he can't take a joke.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
He will.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Somehow able to squeeze Colbert out of CBS. Danny turned
his sights on me, and now he's openly rooting for
NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers and the
hundreds of Americans who work for their shows who don't
make millions of dollars. And I hope that if that happens,
or if there's even any hint of that happening, you

(08:56):
will be ten times as loud as you were this week.
We have to say speak out against.

Speaker 7 (09:01):
This because.

Speaker 8 (09:04):
He's not stopping. And it's not just commedy.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
He's gunning for our journalists too. He's suing them, he's
bullying them. Over the weekend, his Foxy friend Pete Hegseth
announced a new policy that requires journalists with Pentagon press
credentials to sign a pledge promising not to report information
that hasn't been explicitly authorized for release that includes unclassified information.

(09:31):
They want to pick and choose what the news is.
I know that's not as interesting as muzzling a comedian.
But it's so important to have a free press, and
it is nuts that we aren't paying more attention to it.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Well, all right, so there's that.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
He also mentions that this could be something that could
bring people from across the aisle together.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
But I never imagine I would be in a situation
like this. I barely paid attention in school. Well, one
thing I did learn from Lenny Bruce and George Arlan
and Howard Stern is that a government threat to silence
a comedian the president doesn't like is anti American. That's
anti Ami.

Speaker 9 (10:09):
And I'm so.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
Glad we have some solidarity on that, from the right
and left and from those in the middle like Joe Rogan.
Maybe the silver lining from this is we found one
thing we can agree on, and maybe we'll even find
another one, maybe we can get a little bit closer together.
We do agree on a lot of things. We agree

(10:30):
on keeping our children safe from guns, from reproductive rights
for women, social security, affordable healthcare, pediatric cancer research. These
are all things that most Americans support. Let's stop letting
these politicians tell us what they want and tell them
what we want.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, and that sounds like a laundry list of democratic
talking points, for whatever it's worth.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
But those are issues that do.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Quite well even with the middle of the aisle, which
is what he's trying to get at here. The most
important part of what he said was at the very
end of his first segment, and he continued the monologue
after the first break, but there was nothing nearly as
interesting as the stuff I'm playing here. But here is
one of the last things that he said in the
last thing he said in his first segment, And I

(11:23):
think we really need to hear this because I think
this actually is a good message.

Speaker 8 (11:26):
A moment over.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
The weekend, a very beautiful moment. I don't know if
you saw this on Sunday, Erica Kirk forgave the man
who shot her husband. She forgave him. That is an
example we should follow if you believe in the teachings
of Jesus as I do. There it was, that's it,

(11:51):
a selfless act of grace forgiveness from a grieving widow.
It touched me deeply, and it touches money. And if
there's anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward,
I hope it can be that not this so thank

(12:11):
you for listening, and Alan Morris say when we come back.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
All right. So there it is.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
That's a few clips from Jimmy Kimmel Live last night.
I didn't watch it live, as I told you I wouldn't,
but I did.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
I am trying to you know, you want to balance this.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
You knew that there was going to be something that
you know, this guy is going to say. There's something
that this guy's going to do that at the very
least we're going to disagree with his mindset. But the
more I listened to him, the more I was willing
to hear what he had to say. And you know,

(12:52):
I don't agree with everything that he said, and certainly
he didn't give an outright apology. I still have a
cast role sitting on whether or not he's going to
actually donate money to Turning Point USA, and the spokesperson
for that group wasn't super happy with the way he
handled himself. And like I said, there are like ninety
different stations around the country that have seen clearer Nextar.

(13:14):
I didn't even see this as it was happening. They
would have had to find it on social media after
the fact. Now, what's his monologue? Going to look like tonight.
Is he going to have even half as many people
watching tonight? Probably not. But it gives us something to
talk about, doesn't it. This morning, I woke up come
through his monologues. It hurts some things that I thought
you needed to hear, and I played those. Whether you

(13:34):
believe that he's sincere about the things that he says
or not, I guess that's a big conversation talking point.
We will get to that. Phone lines are open if
you want to be a part of the conversation. At
four two five five eight eleven ten. Four oh two
five five, eight eleven ten. Connor is on the phone line. Connor,
Welcome to our show today. What's on your mind?

Speaker 9 (13:52):
Hi, Eri, Thanks for taking my call. You know, I'll
say I'm not a big listener of nighttime talk shows,
but I do tune into them once in a while.
But I have to say the FCC and the Trump
and Trump really blew it in this case. I mean,
this country does allow these individuals to say what they
want to say. And you know, Trump was not elected dictator.

(14:15):
He was elected president to uphold the Constitution, and he's
not doing a good job of that in every instance.
Of free speech is what this country was sounded on.
And Fox News does the exact same thing on the
other side. And the FCC should not be a heavy
handed organization. They also are required to uphold the Constitution

(14:37):
and the First Amendment. And Trump is one hundred percent
off base. And I think Kimmel did a great job
addressing the issue.

Speaker 10 (14:47):
And you know, did.

Speaker 9 (14:49):
He apologize no, what he said?

Speaker 8 (14:53):
Should he have probably said it? No?

Speaker 9 (14:56):
But was it bad enough to get fired?

Speaker 10 (14:59):
Absolutely not. Yes, I mean this is not Russia.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
So so yeah, condor's real quick, you know. So the
White House, for whatever it's worth, and the people who
are in his administration are saying the FCC director's comments
were actually a joke, and they're kind of downplaying the
fact that they had anything to do with Disney pulling
him off the air.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
You know, it was more of an affiliate thing in them.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Will that changed your opinion on this, even though they've
been outspoken critics of a guy like Kimmel.

Speaker 10 (15:27):
No, No, I I that that's absolutely bs what they're saying.
I mean, the FPC what was one hundred percent behind it?
And I mean they basically said they're going to go
after more of them, and I hope, I hope this
will stop it, and and I applaud Disney for having
the guts to to rehire Kimmel. And you know that's

(15:49):
that's just my thoughts.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
Appreciate the call, Uh, really do appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Connor, thanks for listening to the show and calling in
sure all right, We got Mark on the phone line
at four oh two, five five, eight, eleven ten. Mark,
Welcome to our show today on eleven kfab Hey, every first.

Speaker 11 (16:05):
Off, I'm gonna exercise my first amendment right, uh, based
on the last Yahoo that has obviously had no idea
what he's talking about, because none of that made any sense.
You know, he didn't cancel the guy, he disagreed with it, okay,
and they got the whole things misconstrued.

Speaker 8 (16:23):
Anyway.

Speaker 11 (16:23):
I wanted to talk about kim O. The way that
he came out and and and talked about the fact
that he had gotten suspended and why he got suspended.
It reminded me of these these young people nowadays that
they they end up in the face of authority and
they laugh at it like like they're invincible from authority.

(16:44):
Because of of the way everything's going with this first
amendment this that he says, you know, oh, it's because
Trump said this, and and you know he can't take
a joke. Well, you know, timings everything. Yeah, he didn't
get canceled. He didn't get canceled because.

Speaker 6 (17:00):
Of what he said.

Speaker 11 (17:01):
That was an excuse that Disney and everybody used to
finally get rid of this guy that's costing him millions
of dollars because of where he's sitting now. Unfortunately, because
of the backlash and the people canceling. That's why they
put him back on. It has nothing to do with
him or what they believe in him, and it has
everything to do with money and income and revenue.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (17:23):
Sure, they were losing money, so they put it back in.
And the guy says that that last call. O' connor says,
though they had the guts and the backbone to do it, No, it's.

Speaker 7 (17:32):
Exactly the opposite.

Speaker 6 (17:33):
They didn't stand up with their back and they didn't have.

Speaker 11 (17:37):
The guts to keep him off.

Speaker 12 (17:40):
Yeah, they and they let him back off.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Well for whatever it's worth, you know, I think we've gotten.
You know, like k Cruz said, the word fired, Donald
Trump said the word fired like he was never actually fired.
He was suspended indefinitely. So they were looking at it
and a lot of people said it was the sinclaired
Next Star thing that was really why they ended up

(18:02):
doing this, But that can't be right because both Next
Star it's included in air him last night, and aren't
going to air him for the foreseeable future. They're going
to continue to preempt the program and that's going to
cost ABC money. I mean, like as far as advertising dollars.
That's going to hurt them in their wallets over time.
So we're going to see where that goes.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Mark.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
But this is why I liked talking about stuff like this,
and I didn't know if he was going to give
me anything to work with last night, but I'm glad
that he did, because you and Connor both to have
this different type of perspective and to feel like you're right,
I mean, it makes for great discussion, and I appreciate
you coming in today.

Speaker 11 (18:37):
I will say, can I say more one more thing?

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Sure?

Speaker 6 (18:40):
I will say, and what you asked if about his sincerity,
I will say that he was sincere in what he said, Sure,
on the good things and then also on the ridiculous things.
But I do one hundred percent think that he was
sincere what he was talking about. Erica, I believe that
at night, and I hope that that's true.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
No, I one hundred percent, and I agree with your
assessment for the stuff you agree or disagree with. He
sounded like he meant everything he said. So, you know,
for whatever it's worth, Mark, good stuff. Thanks for calling
in today. America got some emails coming in. I got
a lot of emails. Gosh Aj says, total hypocrite. What

(19:21):
it wasn't a joke, it was an outright lie. And yeah,
he shared a meme of Jimmy Kimmel's monologue from May
twenty nine of twenty eighteen thiss in the fall out
of Roseanne being canceled. Now again, it's not a one
for one, but I use this as a pretty obvious uh,

(19:46):
you know, like they here's a person that shared conservative
beliefs and put them on social media, and the network
thought that it was too big of a liability to
continue to employ her, so they found a way to
kill her character off and basically drop her from the show,
oh which she was the centerpiece of the Connors. And Uh,
people on different political parties, like the people on the right,

(20:08):
said you can't do that. She's got to write to
free speech and people in the political life says free
market like capitalism. If she's a liability to them, they
are going to let her go. So people still watch
the show, so they don't have to can the show. Well,
Jimmy Kimmel said this and I quote, and ABC, to
their credit, didn't waste any time. They canceled her show today.
I'm not a fan of censorship, but this wasn't about

(20:30):
free speech. It was about consequences for saying something vile.
You can say what you want, but networks don't have
to pay you to say it. You can't blame ambient
for that. Actions have consequences. And ABC made the right
call end quote. Uh yeah, so they didn't cancel her show.
They killed her off of her show. But yeah, I
but that's the thing. And Jimmy Kimmel at the time,

(20:51):
you know, trying to explain that, you know, he defends
free speech. Well, this isn't a free speech thing either,
for whatever it's worth. And again, I I think it
is a dangerous president. And I agree with Klay Travis
and you know, Rand Paul and a lot of other
people that I just felt a little weird about the
way that this was going down, and if you could
find a way like CBS did saying this show is

(21:13):
costing US forty million dollars a year to just keep
it running. It is not a sustainable business model. It
is not what it used to be in terms of
ratings and revenue, and in the social media age, show
like this just doesn't need to exist. We can kind
of move into different directions if you can give me
that and fire the guy. Make it very clear that
this wasn't about censoring somebody's words. We don't have a

(21:35):
discussion here. It was like, well, obviously they're a business.
They're operating as a business, aren't they. But that's not
exactly what happened here. There's still like a murkiness in
the water. And you heard it from my two different
callers here. Of you know, whether the FCC or Donald
Trump was behind it, they deny any involvement in what
Disney ended up doing. As far as their suspension, Disney
basically said it was themselves that made that call. I

(21:57):
don't know what kind of influence next Star in Sinclair,
but if they had influence at the beginning, I don't
know why that still wouldn't have had influence this week
when they said, okay, you're bringing him back, We're still
not airing Jimmy Come Alive. That is going to hurt
the rating. That is going to hurt the revenue that
they can make if this continues to be an ongoing
battle between these two carriers of the Affiliates and this

(22:21):
particular show in ABC. So there's a lot of just
muddy water trying to exactly get down to the bottom
of who made what decision and how. And I think
we all can agree that what he said was insensitive
at a very bad time, and I do have every
reason to believe that he meant what he said. But
I have a lot of people here like keV who

(22:42):
said even bad actors can fake cry. Don't buy his bs.
You are smarter than that. Uh yeah, I mean, I
don't want to be this guy, but there's nothing more
frustrating to me. And this is one reason why I
don't know how politicians do what they do. Because you're

(23:03):
trying to be as sincere as possible. Sometimes other times
you are probably not. It is almost impossible to discern
when somebody's really good at it. Now I have no
reason to believe that Jimmy Kimmel is faking through tears
when he's talking about the stuff that he was talking about.
He was right, he did. But in the immediate aftermath
of the Charlie Kirk assassination was posting things, you know,

(23:27):
thoughts to the family and you know, prayers for the
family and compassion. We need to have compassion in this country.
Stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Like he did do that.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
And I do think that he was deeply moved by
Erica Kirk's words when she forgave the assassin that killed
her husband. I also think he was incredibly sincere when
he was talking all this stuff about Donald Trump and
Trump not taking a joke, and I have people in
my email saying where was the joke. Well, sometimes people

(23:58):
are goofing on different people and it comes across like
a joke, and sometimes it comes across like you're actually
just venomous against this person and you're using your platform
to spew your hatred. And Jimmy Kimmel, I don't watch
it enough to really know, but my best guess is
he's towing that line a little too far on the

(24:19):
ladder of those two things. And I would imagine that
is what's drawing the eye or not just of Donald Trump,
because I don't know if he's paying any attention to
him other than when people are telling him. But for
conservatives in general saying I want this guy off the air,
it's not because they don't feel like he's got the
ability to have free speech. I think it has everything
to do with him just saying something that they find

(24:39):
to be an outright lie that is absolutely untrue to
what America is supposed to be about. And it's not
a thing that we should be doing or allowing here
in the United States. We'll get to more calls here
with Jerry starting us here this segment. Jerry, welcome to
our show. What's on your mind?

Speaker 12 (24:57):
Hey, Emrie, So, Congress shall make no law a bridging
freedom of speech. So and then obviously we can say
that certainly within the last several years or the last
several presidencies, there should be no executive orders since they
seem to be semi usurping Congress's power. But no legal

(25:20):
injury was suffered, no arrest, no imprisonment, no fine.

Speaker 6 (25:26):
That's all.

Speaker 12 (25:27):
You're guaranteed. Businesses are allowed to conduct business. I don't
believe regardless of whether you think the president of the
SEC asked them to do that, they eventually made the decision.
If I walk into my boss, or I walk into
my place of work having read policies saying something racist, sexist,

(25:47):
or incendiary creating a hosta work environment, I'm going to
get fired.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (25:51):
And you know, it doesn't matter what side of the
aisle you're on, You're not guaranteed to be able to
say something as an employee of an employer and and
call that free speech, and that your free speech rights
have been violated because they have not. You have not
been arrested.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, And that's the thing with a lot of these
like teachers and people who got in trouble with.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Their employers or where they were.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
Working with the Charlie Kirk assassination in the way that
they were talking about it, and it costed them their
their positions. It's the exact same idea, and we forget
that the freedom of speech and First Amendment right essentially
is exactly what you said there, Jerry. It's very much
a procedural and we can celebrate having freedom, but there's

(26:37):
a reason that there.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
I mean, there's a gosh, we do ethics training here.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
You know, in our place of business every single year
just having to pass you know, kind of little tests
and stuff to make sure that we know what our
handbook says. That way, if something does come across, as
you know, insensitive or offensive or just out of line,
and that's happened before, and I know many people listening
the afternoons you're in, Kfab. No, it's happened before. It

(27:02):
doesn't protect you from your ability to lose your position.
And so I think that's a great reminder to everybody.
And I appreciate you calling in, Jerry, And just one
more thing.

Speaker 12 (27:14):
You know, obviously if it violates you know, the company's
values or if it's putting the company at risk in
terms of their reputation or their ability to make money again,
they have that right to fire you.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, no doubt, Jerry. Appreciate you listening man, Thanks for
listening to our show and for calling in.

Speaker 12 (27:32):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
George joined us on the phone line at four oh two,
five five eight eleven ten. Welcome in Georgie are on
eleven ten, Kfab.

Speaker 7 (27:39):
Hey you Amrien.

Speaker 8 (27:41):
You know.

Speaker 7 (27:43):
This happened about thirty thirty five years ago on the
morning program called Good Morning America and they used to
have no This is during June because people were graduating,
and they go to different places and they say, good
morning America. I'm so and so and so on and
so one lady she was under graduation down and everything,

(28:04):
and she yelds out, good morning, America. I just got
my lot of agreement from the university of whatever it
might have been. And the commentator says, well, congratulations, and
then that's she's honest, says just that we need another lawyer. Well,
you never saw that guy on television again, I'll tell
you that. I mean, how frivolous and just jokingly he

(28:27):
said that, and he was gone, and you know, word
to have meaning. But it's just the way it was.
And if you're going to say something, you better be
prepared to take the consequences.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
And no doubt.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
And George, that's it's a really good example from a
long time ago, before cancel culture was even a thing.

Speaker 7 (28:51):
Exactly. That's what my point was, before cancel culture was
even here. That hadn't been at least, oh yeah, at
least thirty years ago, maybe even thirty five. I'll never
forget it. Because the guy was a he's one of
the main commentators on Good Morning America back back in
the late eighties or early nineties.

Speaker 11 (29:11):
I know it.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah, well, George, do you appreciate you for calling in
and sharing that.

Speaker 7 (29:15):
I appreciate you and we really do. You do a
heck of a good job. Absolutely, that means a lot.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
Man, Thanks for thanks for listening and for calling in today.
If you want to call in. Four h two, five, five,
eight eleven, ten is the number. It got plenty of
emails here that'll keep me busy. Had ajsay, apparently Jimmy
Kimmel didn't see the news about Biden in big tech censorship,
and this was making the rounds too that if you
didn't catch it, YouTube essentially said hey, we were getting

(29:45):
pressured by the Biden administration to suppress information.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Mark Zuckerberg said on Capitol Hill on that Facebook and
Meta were essentially being pressured by the government to suppress
certain information or shadow bands and words. This is why
Elon Musk's acquiring of Twitter was such an important situation.
You can think what you want about Elon Musk, but
the fact that you can actually say what you want

(30:11):
there and yes, it's still kind of assess pool because
there are still a ton of bots, and there are
still a ton of anonymous accounts, and there's not a
lot of productive conversation in certain circles as far as
it relates to politics, depending on what your feeling of
productivity is. But you want to know something, you can
say what you want there, and if you share incorrect information,
you don't get banned, you don't get you know, silenced.

(30:33):
They just put a community note there and say, look,
this information isn't one hundred percent accurate, and that led
leads people to have the opportunity to decide for themselves.
That's an important feature and I think it's made a
really positive difference in the way that we interact on
social media. This person in jim says, just my opinion,
but Jimmy Kimmel is a feminine hygiene product one might

(30:55):
use on a summer's eve and the bag it comes in.
I see what you did there, and Jim, I do
I understand that people are going to listen to Kimmel
and say, what a pretentious hypocrite who you know I
would never agree with and I dislike we do. I
think have to humanize people a little bit more than me.
Do you can dislike him? And what he says and

(31:16):
what he believes in and everything like that. But I
don't think that he's a monster. I don't think like
if Jimmy Kimmel has that kind of influence on our
society with the stuff that he's saying on his show
like a or are we being for real that this
is the guy that we're afraid of? And we can

(31:37):
say he's one of many different characters who are trying
to peddle liberal and progressive viewpoints to help out the
Democrat Party for the people who watch him. But who's
watching Jimmy Kimmel and taking his political advice like he's
he's He's doing his show for an audience that already
is laughing and enjoying that type of rhetoric. A lot

(32:00):
of conservatives, I don't think that are turning into tuning
into Kimmel and then all of a sudden grasp their
pearls when he says something negative about Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
So I just want us.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
To like, yeah, is Kimmel a guy that like we
can I guess, celebrate the fact that maybe he said
something that could have lost him his job. If you
dislike him, you have the right to do that. It
felt weird to me that we were doing that. But
at the same time, it's like, I still don't see
him as this guy that's really changing a lot of
minds in America. It's really not what he does. Like,

(32:33):
if you told me, like, who's the more dangerous person
that we have to pay attention to who disagrees with
the conservative administration that we have right now, Jimmy Kimmel
wouldn't break my top ten, maybe not even my top twenty.
There are so many other people who are out there
trying to stir stuff up that are already in politics,
or they are journalists, which people are trying to take
them seriously. I would consider anybody who's doing news for

(32:57):
seeing in our MSNBC much more powerful because there are
people that misconstrue them as legitimate news and not just entertainment,
and that in and of itself creates a lot of confusion.
Those are people I'd be much more willing to have
a talk about whether or not we need to actually
like have community notes on TV just make sure people
understand what they're hearing isn't necessarily a fact. Back to

(33:20):
the emails, and I played some audio. If you missed it,
I'll have. I'll probably replay it probably in the five
o'clock hour, be my guess, something like that for people
who miss it, so you know what to listen for,
and we'll of course podcast what we have here for you,
because you know, it's a thirty minute long monologue. I grabbed,
you know, probably a total of six minutes of it,

(33:42):
you know that I thought were interesting. Rich sent an
email and said, Jimmy is such a bleep, the big dummy.
I'll say, Trump isn't upset at jokes and comedians. He's
angry at liars and propagandist phonies like Kimmel. Yeah, you
could say that. The only thing that I would challenge

(34:04):
on that, Rich, is that do I need the President
of the United States upset about the jokes being talked
about on television. Now you can say it's not jokes
and it's not comedians. You can say it's somebody like
you know, spewing propaganda. But who's his audience, right, Like,

(34:26):
when was the last time you watched Kimmel? When's the
last time I watched Kimmel. When's the last time you
told your fifteen year old this is the guy. He
has all the answers and then you throw on Jimmy
Kimmel Live. I mean, come on, like I said, he's
not mascarading, masquerading around like a journalist.

Speaker 6 (34:49):
You know.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
This is why I have like major beef with like
legacy media, and this goes for all of them. It
depends on which side of the aisle you're on, because
you're gonna be much more upset at opposition than the
one that you know kind of represents your side. But
I'm looking at like seeing a NMSNBC, You're looking at
Fox News, oan Newsmax, you're looking at CNBC, you're looking

(35:11):
at gosh, really even ABC CBS in the way that
they can't cover things on their networks. You can get
kind of entranced into the idea that these are journalists
that are speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
and they are not telling you anything other than what
the truth is as a whole, and they are not

(35:34):
taking any sort of angles to this, and.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
That's just not true.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
Like, I'm not here to say that there aren't straight
shooters out there in the media, and I'm not here
to tell you that every single person is trying to,
you know, kind of fool you. But the people we
should be afraid of as far as propaganda's concerned, is
people masquerading as journalists and trying to not just tell
you what to think, but they're trying to give you

(36:00):
evidence that's gonna help you think the way they want
you to think. They're not journalists. A lot of these
people are in the entertainment industry. These big national cable
news networks are trying to talk to you so you'll
pay attention and that you'll keep tuning in to listen
to them. They're not trying to tell you all this

(36:20):
stuff from a perspective of unbiased angle. They're literally taking
spin and turning it into what they are considering the truth.
We could be really frank about that conversation, and I'm
willing to do that, But Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert, like,

(36:44):
who's going to them and thinking what they're bringing to
the table is news?

Speaker 2 (36:50):
I mean, it's I don't know.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
I just think that Donald Trump, but I don't buy
that he had a legitimate says saying like hey, get
him off the air. I don't think that's what happened
at all. What I do think, though, is that he
will take any opportunity to try to kind of dunk
on his opponents, and he even said it as much
as Charlie Kirk Memorial Services, that this is something you know,

(37:14):
Charlie didn't like and that Erica Kirk doesn't like. But
I hate my opponents. I know I'm not supposed to
feel that way, but I do. Patty mailed in and
said it was Kim II crocodile tears, he says of
Trump because he can't take a joke.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
But where was the joke.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
I mean, if you don't find him Kim to be funny,
you know, even the punchlines, there may not be a
joke in there. So yeah, at the same time, whether
it's a joke or it's not a joke, or him
just giving his personal opinion on a late night talk
show host like like on his late night talk show again,

(37:51):
I just want to reiterate that we have the choice
to watch that it's not like state run media in Russia,
in North Korea or in China that basically just is
thrown up on your screen and it's almost like appointment
viewing and you have to watch it, and it's all
about telling you what's awesome about the country. That you're
living in and it's not really able to say anything

(38:13):
else to you.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
Phone lines are open.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
Four oh two five five eight eleven ten. Four h
two five five eight eleven ten. Fib I believe is
the name I'm looking at here. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 8 (38:24):
Flow there. It's actually said, I think if we're getting
over fought badly, it's really about common decency. Would you
ever say that about anybody who is a victim of
a crime, that was shot, raped, whatever? Yeah, use your
brain when people are hurting you, keep your mouth shut,

(38:48):
regardless of how you feel about the situation.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
I think you're nailing it, said because I honestly said,
like we just because it's the big topic doesn't mean
we all have to talk about it. And I know
his job is is he's supposed to get up there
and he's supposed to opine on like news of the
day and things. But he absolutely crossed lines in just
even bringing that back up days after this had happened.

(39:12):
He didn't take a sensitive enough approach to how to
even bring this up intelligently. And I know that he's
not a journalist, but he was suspended, I think appropriately
by Disney, and they needed to talk about what needed
to like, what steps to avoid this from happening in
the future. I'm one hundred percent with you said. I
think that if you're looking at this from just a

(39:33):
practical standpoint, saying nothing at all is still an acceptable answer.
There's plenty of other things you can make fun of
if you're a late night talk show host, exactly.

Speaker 8 (39:43):
And it comes down to an indication of character. If
you're that kind of a character, do the rest of
us really need to be listening to you anyway?

Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yeah? Well, and that's the thing.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
How many people on the political right who really were
offended by what he said even listened to him in
the first place. And that's a good point too. Sid
appreciate the call man, thanks for listening to our show.
I wouldn't have brought this up if he didn't give
us something to chew on. There were a few things
in there that I absolutely was interested in hearing him
talk about and felt like I needed to share that

(40:13):
and hope with a discussion with you guys, And if
you want to call in, you can At four h two, five, five,
eight eleven ten. Keith emails in at Emory at KFAP
dot com saying Jimmy Kimble claims he wants togetherness, yet
he refused to apologize for giving false information which caused
the whole mess in the first place. Well, this is
the thing about strongheaded individuals, and this is not a

(40:36):
Jimmy Kimmel thing. This is a human thing. Apologizing is
very difficult for people. Some people feel like it is
some admission of defeat if they apologize for what they said. Now,
while Jimmy Kimble did not officially apologize, he did clarify
what he was hoping to say and acknowledge that it
did come out in a way that could be viewed

(40:57):
as offensive and insensitive depending on it's timing and also
the way that the words came out. Now, is that
as good as an apology.

Speaker 4 (41:06):
No.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
I appreciate the acknowledgment, but I think a true apology
would go a long way to actually healing. And I
know that there are some people out there kind of
pining for him to get Erica Kirk onto the show,
not just to talk about you know, turning Point USA,
but maybe to have that discussion and maybe even to
apologize to her personally. That would go an incredibly long

(41:30):
way to helping heal the way that this country is
viewing this situation, but also just rhetoric in general. I
think that would be really, really cool and interesting. Unfortunately,
the likelihood of that is probably pretty slim to none.
While I would love it and I think it would

(41:52):
be incredibly well viewed, and I think you want to
pull in a brand new audience and maybe have Kimmell
have the opportunity to maybe win some people over that
might be leaning more to the right. That would be
an opportunity for him. Much like every other entertainment entity,
including these legacy news media stations that I have alluded
to this hour, they want to speak to their what

(42:12):
we call them p once in this industry. These are
people who are my core audience. I want to make
sure that my core audience is getting something out of
what I'm saying. Will my core audience of hardcore lefty
leaning stay up late and watch us make fun of
Donald Trump every day? Will they appreciate or have some
use for me spinning fifteen minutes talking to staunch conservative

(42:36):
Turning Point USA CEO widow of Charlie Kirk, Erica Kirk,
on the show and apologize to her. Will that do
anything for my core listening or viewing audience. I would
bet he'd be advised not to do that, for whatever
it's worth, unless they get real clearance that Erica Kirk

(42:57):
isn't going to go onto the show and demean him
for what he said, or you know, make him feel
less than in some way. He still has to maintain
his status as the star of the show somehow. While
it's a great thought, I'm just not sure it's really
an idea that conceivably is going to happen. Tracy sent
me this email and said I hadn't heard what you

(43:19):
played to thank you. My blood pressure was up though
thought what he originally said wasn't a joke, but more
a false statement regarding a crime.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Which doesn't that.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Go against FCC rules in theory, Yes, it would, especially
on network television, she continues. And it's rich about what
he said about censorship, after all the things he called
for when Biden was president. He wanted people censored for
their opinions and even said they should be in jail.
I think he's upset he got a slap on the
hand like a little kid, and that's plausible too. I

(43:46):
do think he was sincere in him clarifying what he said,
But I also think that he and the people around
him were stunned that anything that he said would force
him to be suspended and he would have to be
held accountable for that as far as you know, when
Biden was and it's not even just then, Roseanne Barr
lost her gig with the Connors on ABC while Trump
was president. You know, the FCC can can handle certain things,

(44:09):
but I think a lot of this we get mixed
up from business decisions versus what the government actually is
getting involved in, and that's I think a blurring of
the lines here. Also, did Disney Corporation really feel like
Jimmy Kimmel needed to be suspended very well? May may
be it sounded from their statement when they reinstated him
that it was their call to suspend him because of

(44:30):
what he said in the timing of it. At the
same time, they never said he was fired, they never
said they weren't bring him back. They didn't say how
long the suspension was going to be, but they said
they had positive dialogue and good conversations, and the hope
was that, you know, they can learn from this move
forward and maybe be a bit more sensitive to the
way they talk about certain things, especially when it's something

(44:50):
like the assassination of a high profile political figure of
some kind. AJ sent in a couple more emails and said,
like they rehired Roseanne. The people spoke up, and the
independent broadcasters decided not the government the left will spend
any amount to keep their failing propaganda machine rolling.

Speaker 6 (45:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
I don't think that that's incorrect either. I mean, again,
if you think Jimmy Kimmel Live is somehow a propaganda
machine for the federal government, I don't know what to
say to that or to the Democrats. Obviously is not
representative of the current administration. But this is something we
don't have to watch. It is something that exists, and

(45:34):
the people watching it already generally are in agreement with
the political musings of this guy. So I, for one,
am not sitting here as some kind of like, I'm
not trying to justify what he's saying. I'm also just like,
the propaganda is coming from news people. Propaganda would be

(45:57):
coming from sources that I think we all would think.
Our first inclination is, oh, I can trust what these
people have to say. I never got like I didn't
think about that with Leno or Letterman like Johnny Carson.
Could you trust him like you could trust Walter Cronkite.
Those are not the same type of person. Would you
trust Jimmy Kimmel instead of like somebody who's acting as

(46:20):
though they're a legitimate journalist. No, that the guy is
an entertainer more than anything. Go watch The Man Show.
That's the guy who got this late night TV show,
and he's been doing it for over twenty years. If
we're talking about this guy as some sort of propagandist,
and I guess it depends on what your definition of
propagandist is. Man, they're doing a really bad job because

(46:41):
the only people that are generally watching his show on
a night tonight basis. I know a lot more people
were interested in what he had to say last night,
but those numbers aren't gonna stay up, and there are
still affiliates that aren't even airing his show. How is
it propaganda if he's got such a limited influence on
what society says. I mean, he was doing what he
was doing, what he was saying about Donald Trump and

(47:02):
Republicans into the conservative movement, just like a lot of
other celebrities were, and it led to Kamala Harris being
shut out in swing states in twenty twenty four. If
that's propaganda, they're doing a really bad job.