Comedians Give Trump A MAJOR Lesson In Free Speech

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:01]I'll approach this from a comedic standpoint. Couple things. One is when you make a joke and then nothing happens. Like there was no shooting. No one made a thing about it before the shooting.

[00:00:14]>> Mhm. So then it's kind of a thing where you go like oh, that um Alicia Krauss, I hate that I hope she dies. And then 2 days later you get in a car crash and you die and then everyone looks at me and goes, now now I'm angry at you and me. But I'm like, but if she never got in a car crash, you never said anything. Like this thing happened then the joke happened before. So A, it's it's unrelated.

[00:00:40]B, I mean to be fair, now people do this one too. They go, it's not like he wrote that joke. But he said that joke. But he didn't write that joke. Somebody wrote that joke and he said it cuz he thought it was funny.

[00:00:52]But that's a pretty typical roast joke.

[00:00:57]And late night host Jimmy Kimmel pushing back against criticism of his expectant widow joke about First Lady Melania Trump. That remark prompting backlash including from the White House. The First Lady posted in part, Kimmel's hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. Enough is enough.

[00:01:13]It is time for ABC to take a stand. And the president saying, I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel's despicable call to violence. And normally would not be responsive to anything that he has said, but is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC. Last night Kimmel defended his joke. He said this.

[00:01:34]It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am. It was not >> [laughter] >> by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination and they know that. And also I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject.

[00:01:50]I do and I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.

[00:01:56]>> It is also a trope. Any younger beautiful woman who's married to an older guy, especially if the guy is rumored to be sort of a douchey, you would make that joke at any roast. You would be >> and rich. Like a younger woman. My perspective was, oh, she's an attractive woman that is significantly younger than him >> Yes.

[00:02:16]>> that married him for his fame and fortune. So whenever he dies, whether he was president or not >> Yes. You would make that joke.

[00:02:24]>> could make that joke about Lauren Sanchez marrying Jeff Bezos even though they're more similar in age. It's like, oh, she's waiting for her cash out, right?

[00:02:31]>> If Trump was at a roast on Thursday, you would do that joke if he was still >> Well, if he'd never been president.

[00:02:39]>> Yeah. You would do that joke. But yeah, I get it. But now here's the problem.

[00:02:42]Once Once there's a lot of sewage under the bridge, then the the pump is already primed. But this one, although people think it's egregious for the reasons I just explained, I don't. The right and the left are always sort of misinterpreting things. He was inaccurate about something. It wasn't like he was necessarily attacking Charlie Kirk. He was trying to dump it on Trump and it and inaccurate about it.

[00:03:08]We're living in a time where something happens. Nancy Pelosi's husband gets hit with a hammer. This side says he's had a MAGA hat on. That side says he's some kind of nudist hippie. I don't feel like it's necessary, but that's that's all we do. And I don't like the government getting involved.

[00:03:25]>> seems like a big attack on free speech.

[00:03:27]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 cuz I said something about how you're a snowflake if you think you should be. If you agree with this, that's some snowflake 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. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. So y'all have just switched. Yeah. Now again, this is not has nothing to do with what happened to Charlie Kirk. That's a horrendous thing.

[00:03:56]Let's get that out of the way. But in in terms of censorship, freedom of speech is is more under attack now honestly than I think it has ever been.

[00:04:05]I don't know if that's me being hyperbolic. Maybe. I mean as far as what Jimmy said, I think it's untrue or at least unfair.

[00:04:13]>> agree with what he said. I don't like what he said. We should also say that. I don't agree with what he said. I don't like what he said. He should be allowed to say it in this and what happened to Charlie Kirk is worse.

[00:04:21]Charlie Kirk should have been allowed to say the things we didn't like.

[00:04:23]Jimmy Kimmel should be allowed to say the things we didn't like. That's just what America is. Yeah. And freedom of speech, I've seen it truly under attack in India where it's like you can go to jail. This is closer to that than I think what the left was doing. It wasn't like Joe Biden was putting pressure on somebody to get canceled for saying Mhm. You see what I'm saying? That's what makes this different and scarier to me and closer to what India has. And that's what makes it an actual attack on free speech to me. I I think it is ridiculous to pull this guy off the air.

[00:04:53]I think it's ridiculous to pretend it was about money. I think it's ridiculous to pretend um that it's not a political hit job.

[00:05:00]It's a political hit job and we know it.

[00:05:02]Was Was ABC uh is it the cash cow it was 10, 20 years ago? Absolutely not. We know late night TV is dying. We know all of that. That's not why this show got yanked.

[00:05:13]And pretending it is is an insult to people's intelligence. Okay? It's an insult to people's intelligence.

[00:05:20]This was a hit. Politically motivated hit job. Okay?

[00:05:25]It's something that most people who talk for a living should care about. If you talk for a living. If you're making money entertaining people informing people, whatever it is you think you're doing out there.

[00:05:42]Anybody who's doing that should care a little bit about this. And I've heard every every side of the story and in general, I just want people to speak and then the ratings will do the talking and you can support them or not support them and what you want to watch, you can watch it or you can watch Gutfeld and listen to him bash Kimmel, you know, or or however you want to do it, that's the world I'd like to live in. My perspective is different just cuz I know Jimmy and I know Jimmy to be a very good guy and a and a generous guy and I've always I've always said that about him.

[00:06:15]And I realized that while everyone else knows Jimmy as a caricature, I know him as a person. When I run into the people that don't know Jimmy as a person, O'Reilly or Dave Rubin, Dennis Prager and they go, what's up buddy Jimmy?

[00:06:31]Well, I know him, so that's why I don't think of him like you think of him. But on the other hand, they think of you as a cartoon character, too, and I know you. Dennis Prager is a very sweet man, lovely lovely man, but these guys on the other side think of you as a cartoon.

[00:06:47]And then at a certain point, there's the assassin who thinks of Charlie Kirk as a cartoon character, not a dude. I know him as a guy. Sweet guy, fair guy, family guy, good American. But that guy looks at him as a cartoon character and that's why he gets to kill him. I know Jimmy as a human and I know how good he is and I know how decent he is. And we disagree politically, but who cares?

[00:07:12]>> Right. I mean ultimately whether we pull a license for a big broadcaster like that will be decided by their own conduct. Uh I'd be surprised we ultimately don't go down the path of license revocation for some, but it will be up to them in their own conduct.

[00:07:26]>> Breaking news is bad news for Jimmy Kimmel fans. The latest is that the ABC stations that are being targeted by the FCC were just told internally, this means from the corporate side, not from the government side, to pull the Kimmel promos for this week.

[00:07:42]You know what that means.

[00:07:44]This you may like it, you may not, but it's not about Kimmel. It's about the levers of power.

[00:07:52]So this guy doesn't like a joke and now he's using federal agencies to shut down a broadcast show cuz he doesn't like it.

[00:08:03]Think about that.

[00:08:05]Now again, it's not about Kimmel. Um you know, whether you're a fan or not, it doesn't matter. Whether you think he's funny or not, it doesn't matter.

[00:08:13]There's no question that the company can take him off. Like if he pissed off the head of Disney, I totally get at a party or something. You know, something trivial. I totally get taking him off. You're an employee. It's how it works.

[00:08:26]May not be the smartest business decision, but that's their decision to make.

[00:08:30]But this is a president whose wife got upset and now he's using the levers of government to do something about it. And you're okay with that. You think you signed up with that. You think that's making us great. You think that's cleaning up the deep state and lawfare and all the things you said you were against.

[00:08:44]Really?