So this seems like a big attack on free speech. And, yeah, I think we've been pretty staunchly in favor of free speech. And it is funny to watch right wing people just become left wing people, because I said something about how you're a snowflake if you think you should be, if you agree with this, that's some snowflake. [00:00:17] And somebody was like, you clearly don't even know what the First Amendment means. And that's exactly what left wing people used to tell me. Now, I'll admit I'm a free speech guy. I'm not going to advocate that people lose their jobs over naughty comments. However, when they come to me and say, I thought you were for free speech, I am, but you're not. [00:00:32] So I'm going to hold you to the standard that you asked for. Congratulations. This is the world you've made. You made me. You made me do this. You made me be anti free speech. Look what you did. But commentators and the independent media landscape are split on the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! [00:00:49] Some, like Akash Singh of Flagrant, are concerned about a crackdown on free speech. Others, like Tim Pool, who you just saw, are downplaying the severity of Kimmel's suspension. And let's start with the personalities who are speaking out against the FCC. [00:01:04] Comedian Tim Dillon wrote, FCC commissioner threatening to revoke broadcasting license licenses has a chilling effect on free speech. AG threatening to go after hate speech is a bad sign. When someone has a weapon, everyone will use it. [00:01:21] He added I am against Kimmel being taken off air and against people being shot for their opinions. See how easy that is? Andrew Schultz, host of flagrant, had a similar message. Right. Cancel culture is wrong. Unless you cancel the shows of our political opponents, [00:01:37] then we'll celebrate it. Left. Fascism is wrong. Unless you kill our political opponents, then we'll celebrate it. The vast majority of Americans that I speak to are repulsed by this behavior. Yet there's almost no representation of the sentiment in media, independent or mainstream. [00:01:52] How is that possible? Other commentators are downplaying the situation. My personal favorite and go to for political insight, Dave Portnoy. Of Barstool Sports chimed in on X, stating, With Kimmel getting canned. I'm seeing lots of people talking about the hypocrisy of cancel culture. [00:02:10] To me, cancel culture is when people go out of their way to dig up old tweets. Videos, etc. Looking for dirt on somebody they don't like in an effort to get them fired. But when a person says something that a ton of people find offensive, rude, dumb. [00:02:25] In real time, and then that person is punished for it. That's not cancel culture. That is consequences for your actions. Interesting take. We'll get to Brett's thoughts in a second. But first, here's here's Tom Ellsworth and Vinny O'Shaughnessy. What they had to say on the Pbd podcast. Take a look. [00:02:42] Everybody runs to First Amendment and all that. This isn't First Amendment. This is an employee gone haywire. And you've got advertisers and other people. So let's put it into our perspective. Pat, you have a company. You're selling things. The customers are upset with the salesperson. [00:02:58] The customers are upset with one of your employees. You know what you do? You say, go, wait a minute. Let's look into this. And an employee might get fired or put on the bench for a few minutes. Gina Carano, Roseanne Barr, Megyn Kelly, even Jason. Kelly fired for making comments about Halloween costumes. [00:03:14] About Halloween. So I don't want to hear anybody, anybody talking about free speech because free speech is free. You can say whatever you want, but there's consequences. And my question to you is, if somebody had valuetainment, okay, you you're a free, free speech absolutist. [00:03:30] If Rob started going out there and just bashing Charlie family, I hope he does good for him. And falsely, Jimmy Kimmel falsely claiming that this freaking Tyler guy was a a Maga guy. You have every right under the law to fire him. [00:03:46] So that's what media figures had to say about Kimmel suspension. But how do conservative voters feel about the issue. Here's Harry Enten with the numbers. Take a look. The media is biased and should be punished. Look at this. 71% of Republicans agree with the idea that the media is biased [00:04:07] and should be punished. Republicans already think that the US media and US news organizations are in fact influenced by government interests. Look at this again amongst Republicans. Look at this 64%. This is again, even before the news broke, 64% of Republicans believe that the US media is influenced by government interests. [00:04:25] A great deal. We're talking two thirds of Republicans, and then you get another 26% who say are somewhat. - I mean, before we. - Get into. It. You how could you even possibly think that right now, when Barry Weiss is taking over CBS right wing megadonors are taking over TikTok. [00:04:44] Fox is the most watched cable news network. MSNBC is dying, and the Washington Post implemented a conservative a mandatory conservative viewpoint on the opinion page. What what what what else do you want? Jesus Christ, what am I missing here? [00:05:01] Those Harry Enten polls are meaningless. Like, it's. It's like those ones. I was talking to a friend about this. It's like everybody, like, does this sound vaguely like something Trump would say? I'll say it, too. And that's the dictator playbook. To just make these vague threats against media and say that there's fake news [00:05:21] and that's like fake news that Trump used the the definition of fake news that Trump used isn't actually the definition that fake news actually is. But they're all behind it because they hate they hate the media, and you're suddenly hating the media people when they ask you, do you hate government? [00:05:37] They say, yes. Do you hate the media? You say yes. When they ask about your favorite politician, you say, no, I don't hate him. I love him. When they ask about your favorite media organization, you say, I love it and everyone else sucks. So that's just like this weird, like, self-reinforcing amplification [00:05:54] of this dissent against or, you know, institutions, made, you know, that's that's just what Republicans are living with. I agree, there's tons and tons of money, insane amounts. And I can like there's reports that Turning Point had $100 million a year [00:06:12] from like three families dumped on it. I've talked to people within the entertainment industry who I said, like, working at this company would be great if we had like, like the Republicans have where giant Brinks trucks back up and dump cash on on us. I'd love if that happened, because I love being I love being able to. [00:06:30] I would love to be as rich as these folks. And and the guy, the person who does these deals was like, I have been part of those deals. Yes, that does happen. And there are giant amounts of money just dumped on these folks. I've talked to people who are like, when during, a previous iteration [00:06:47] of internet like news funding. When the platforms themselves were doing that, they had a really hard time finding moderate right wing voices, but they had a mandate that they needed to give some of this funding equally to different voices. [00:07:02] And so they ended up giving Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro millions and millions of dollars from the platforms because there was no center right. They took Psykos and normalized them as center right. The right wing owns the affiliates. They give tons of money. [00:07:22] They have must run, local news stuff to the affiliates. They have invested so much cash in getting their word out. And then worse, Donald Trump. Like, listen to what Vinny said. Vinny, who I've said multiple times, is the like. I'm surprised he can draw breath with how bad he is at like, brain stuff. [00:07:44] Like he gets very upset. I fear for his health. But like that guy said that Jimmy Kimmel said that the shooter was right wing. No he didn't. Where's that said? He said that the right wing was doing everything to say he's not one of us. That's coverage of the coverage that happens all the time. [00:08:02] That is a mainstay. That's a staple of late night, and, and political commentary comedy. You cover the coverage. That's what happened. And Akassh himself was factually inaccurate and said, like, he preamble was like, I don't remember the facts of this case. [00:08:18] I just want to talk about the vibes, essentially. But like people are saying that Jimmy Kimmel like, what did Jimmy Kimmel do that triggered this for all the people like Dave Rubin, who go on Piers Morgan with Jang and go like the biggest hoax that ever happened was this, like very fine people on both sides play the rest of the clip. [00:08:35] Did he ever say that about Nazis were fine people? Where did Jimmy Kimmel say this guy was right wing? He played a clip that was embarrassing of Trump. That's what people are triggered by. Oh, my audience is offended. He would be so insensitive. [00:08:51] What did he say? Nothing. He didn't say anything. That's manufactured dissent. They are manufacturing dissent out of thin air. And? And when this happens, it's ridiculous. Like the Tim Dillons of the world, the Andrew Schultz's with his flagrant stuff. [00:09:09] Like he asked questions like, how is this possible? Like, that's one of those rhetorical questions that actually has an answer. And like, if you watch TYT for long enough, you'll understand how that happens. Like we outline it very clearly, but I don't know. What are your thoughts Jordan on on all of this. [00:09:27] I mean, I. I guess I'm surprised that Disney flip flopped so quickly. I've been surprised by some of the reactions. Not surprised by some of the dumbest people out there just defending it because they think this is just simple as consequences for speech. [00:09:45] Like you said, that's not explicitly what he said. He was pointing out which something that did happen. The right was saying, this isn't our guy. And that seems to be the case. All he did was mention that. And then he said, and in between, the finger pointing there was grieving, which again, that's true. [00:10:02] That's a true statement. But they there was a collective refusal by a lot of these people to acknowledge Brandon Carr, the head of the FCC, saying, you could do this the easy way or the hard way to try to use leverage over ABC to get Kimmel off air. [00:10:19] The next day, Trump tweeted out he wanted Jimmy Fallon next. I mean, they weren't trying to hide their motives here. One thing I am worried about, because we did see Colbert's show, say, say they were going to CBS, say they were going to wrap it up. [00:10:35] I mean, that is a company within Paramount, which was, you know, but maybe we don't know. But it wasn't as open. Maybe. Maybe that was the terms of the agreement for that Skydance. Skydance acquisition of Paramount and now Skydance, Paramount, which is headed [00:10:53] by David Ellison, Larry Ellison's son, Larry Ellison of Oracle, who is now part of this group buying TikTok. Now they're looking for, or they have a they're preparing a bid to acquire, Warner Discovery, which would include HBO and who's on HBO that they might want off air. [00:11:11] John Oliver. So all these people who have been critical and using their late night shows or talk shows to mock or disparage or criticize Trump all coincidentally seem to be in the crosshairs because this guy is a massive, [00:11:26] massive baby. The like Tim Dillon had some really good points on his podcast where he was like bringing it back to oligarchy. At the end of the day, he was like, they're just trying to bring it back and get it all together and hand it over to oligarch. That's what's happening. [00:11:42] That's what's going on. And I think there's just a fundamental inability in the conservative idea that these the people, you know, now in conservative circles that are taking up the mantle of Trump have [00:11:57] that they're they're not like good at art. They can't be good at art and definitely not American art, because America is the story of the underdog and the upstart. And these guys are Bajillionaires born on third base, who thought they hit [00:12:14] a triple that are taking over everything, and they're horrible now. I just want a world where the moral of the story and the movies that we watch and in the shows that we watch is like, let's be decent to people and not [00:12:31] let's let's not be total d-bag a-holes. But like every vibe I get from all the people taking over these companies, is that like, they want to be the worst you can be to everybody. [00:12:48] And I just, I hate I hate the direction that art is going into. I already hated it when it was like least common denominator blockbuster formulas, but at least the formula was like, nice guy finishes first. Like, you know, Superman win, Lex Luthor lose. [00:13:06] But these guys are all Lex Luthor. Yeah, well, we'll keep an eye on some of those other developments. I think it's a good point, though. This is just a consolidation of all of these media entities and properties and controlling what people see, think, hear in the handful [00:13:24] of a few multi-billionaire families. That's worrying, and everyone should care about it. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.