After Party with Emily Jashinsky - ABC Pulls the Plug on Kimmel, PLUS Obama’s Divisiveness and Gaslighting, with Batya Ungar-Sargon

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Emily Jashinsky reacts to the breaking news that ABC has dropped “Jimmy Kimmel Live” indefinitely over his comments about Charlie Kirk’s accused killer and then takes viewers through the timeline of how it happened. Next Emily is joined by Batya Ungar-Sargon, host of the upcoming show "Batya!" on NewsNation, and they discuss the fallout from ABC’s decision, why late-night comedy morphed into partisan punditry, Batya cautions that the FCC’s involvement could allow ABC to cast itself as a ‘victim’ when market backlash is likely the real driver. The two also discuss a Federalist report showing the difference in how top universities handled George Floyd’s death vs Charlie Kirk’s death, Batya goes after former President Obama for his remarks about Charlie Kirk, and Batya delivers a MUST LISTEN remedy for how Democrats can help heal the divide between the right and left. Then Emily takes on Obama’s attempt to mask his administration’s role in Big Tech’s growth, Catherine Herridge’s reporting on the aggressive approach from the Biden FBI and DOJ as part of its investigation into President Trump, including subpoenaing the records of dozens of conservative organizations, like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point, why Stephen Colbert’s show will never been as good as The Celebrity Apprentice, and more. Aware House: Visit https://awarehouseshop.com/discount/PARTY & use code PARTY for 15% off your first order. Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/AFTERPARTY  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome back to After Party, everyone. Of course, it's 10 p.m. on Wednesday, so you know you've got to be here because we have breaking news. Breaking news tonight. And that is Jimmy Kimmel has been, quote, indefinitely sidelined by ABC. We're going to get into all of the details in just one moment. Of course, we also will be joined tonight by Bacha Ungersar Sargon, who has a new show on News Nation premiering in just a couple of days. So we're going to be joined tonight by Bacha Unger Sargon, who has a new show on News Nation, premiering in just a couple of days. So we're going to be joined. So we're. We're going to talk to Pache about all of that ongoing news in the awful, awful story of Charlie Kirk's assassination that we will, of course, break down for everyone in addition to going over a bit of what happened with Jimmy Kimmel. We're going to talk a bit more about the reaction on college campuses and among people broadly on the left. So we'll get to all of that. Barack Obama has made new comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but also just about his tenure and what it represents now. And I'm going to break down some new details in Operation Arctic Frost, or let's call it code name Arctic Frost, was an FBI probe that it was into actually Turning Point

USA revealed yesterday by Senator Truck Grassley and talked about in the Cash Patel hearings over on Capitol Hill. It is a wild story. But let's first start with the breaking news because just in the last couple of hours, our favorite topic hit the news, late night television, because this is a late night, a late night podcast, a late night live show. You know my passion is talking about how late night television illustrates the trends in media more broadly and culture more broadly. So this story broke, we can put the variety headline up about Jimmy Kimmel being sidelined by ABC News. And this timeline is going to be very important for you to pay attention to because already the alarm is being sounded about Trump's authoritarian crackdown on the media. I'm going to read a little bit from

the New York Times story here. ABC announced on Wednesday evening that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel's late night show indefinitely after criticism of comments he made on his Monday program about the motives of the man who is accused of fatally shooting the conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week. The abrupt decision by the network, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, assailed Mr. Kimmel's remarks and suggested that his regulatory agency might take action against ABC because of them. In his opening monologue on Monday, Mr. Kimmel had addressed the killing of Mr. Kirk by saying, and you may have seen this, we hit some new lows over the weekend, and actually, why don't we just

roll this clip? Here you go, S2. We hit 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. So I went back and looked. That was taped Monday. Kimmel Show was taped Monday. As of Sunday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox had pretty definitively weighed in and said investigators had been told that the suspect. Tyler Robinson's ideology was, quote, pretty leftist and that he had been, quote, radicalized. And we knew that information was available to investigators. We knew that information, in addition to the fact, of course, that a conservative activist was assassinated in cold blood on a college campus in the middle of a speech about conservatism. I actually was fairly open-minded for the first 48 or so hours about who may have been behind this,

given the weird irony posting that was leaking into the public from the suspect, and also just the fact that to Charlie's virtue, to his great virtue, some of his most bitter enemies were fringe, radical weirdos who believe themselves to be of the right. So it was, of course, possible. But by the time Jimmy Kimmel taped this episode and made these abhorrent comments, misinforming his audience, this was all known. What a disgusting thing to do. And what a reckless thing for ABC to do.

You know, they had that information in front of them. And in the wake, I mean, this is within days of the historic collective national trauma of seeing a 31-year-old. activist shot in the throat for speaking on a college campus. This is how Jimmy Kimmel reacted. Now, reading more here from the Times cover, Shnight, the head of Next Star may, quote, soon have a major piece of business before the business before the federal government, having just announced a deal to acquire Tegna, one of its biggest rivals for $6.2 billion. The deal is sure to receive scrutiny from the Trump administration, particularly the FCC, which has in recent months

put media mergers under a microscope. So what that is in reference to is the fact that Next said, it was replacing Jimmy Kimmel's show with different broadcasting. And that came after FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, who of course we had on the show not long ago, said that ABC needed to either act on its own or something might else would have to be done. Something else might have to be done. He basically said we could do this the easy way or the hard way, a not so thinly veiled threat. Let's listen to what Brendan Carr said about some of this. on our show right here not long ago. The obligation, the public interest obligation, is on a local TV station.

So, for instance, if they don't feel like the programs that they're getting from CBS Central meet the needs of their communities or further the public interest, and they should have the right, and they're supposed to, in their agreements, to preempt the programming and do something else. That was on August 4th. And what Brendan Carr is talking about there is the public interest standard that broadcasters who are basically renting these airwaves from the government have in order to retain their licenses. That public interest standard has not been invoked often by Republicans at all,

or Democrats really at all, in the way that the Trump administration has wielded it because conservatives said, you hold the powers of the federal government. And never has anyone basically ever mounted a serious threat to these massive media conglomical. and corporate entities who slander Republicans day in and day out in ways that are just completely factually untrue, arguably maliciously untrue. These are not just easy mistakes or errors. And so Brendan Carr gets in and says, well, hey, we're going to do something about it. Here's what he said on Benny Johnson, another guest of ours. Here's what he said on Benny's show earlier before Nextar made its decision and then also before.

we heard from Disney making their decision as well. In some quarters, there's a very concerted effort to try to lie to the American people about the nature, as you indicate, of one of the most significant newsworthy public interest acts that we've seen in a long time. And what appears to be an action, appears to be an action by Jimmy Kimmel to play into that narrative that this was somehow a MAGA or Republican motivated person. If that's what happened here with his conduct, that is, that is really, really sick. I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action, frankly, on Kimmel,

or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead. So I checked in with a source who had knowledge before we went to air here. who interestingly framed this as, quote, local broadcasters standing up to big Hollywood. If you look at market cap, Next Star is dwarfed by the big guys, Disney, Paramount, News Corp. It doesn't, I mean, it is truly, in that sense, smaller than these other guys. And by, you know, measures, it's significantly smaller than some of, you know,

for example, Disney, Paramount, and News Corp. So to that extent, if you have local broadcasters saying they're uncomfortable, putting Jimmy Kimmel on their airwaves in, you know, Philly or Milwaukee or wherever it is. Sure, you can understand it in that respect. It is this conglomerate of local stations saying, we don't want anything to do with this. Now there's a wrinkle. Next Star is currently trying to get a merger through. Does that sound familiar?

It's what we were talking to Brendan Carr about with Paramount and Skydance earlier as well. And so it's also now being accused, next story is being accused of kind of threatening ABC to get rid of Kimmel by leveraging the local news stations. So we're taking you off the air, but really in the interest, as the accusation goes, of kind of greasing the wheels of this merger deal with Tegna, which would be significant. and I'm not for media consolidation in anywhere whatsoever. And I do think the appearance here is not great. But I also want to put this post up from Megan Kelly herself, who pointed out, I mean, this is just a fantastic deep cut. It feels like so long ago now.

In 2021, ABC fired Chris Harrison. Remember that? Bachelor host, bachelor host, for saying, maybe we should judge a Bachelorette contestant's attendance at an antebellum party, but what was considered offensive at the time, he was fired, and his me Higand points out his career never recovered. How about all of the boycotts, the left organized,

of corporations, corporate advertisers to pressure the journalists at Fox News to behave in ways that corporations approved of? That's something that happened for it. Remember when Laura Ingram, supposed to be like 2018, put out a post about David Hogg whining that he didn't get into some of the colleges he applied to, and there was a corporate advertiser boycott organized, by nonprofits on the left, cheerleaded by the left,

because Laura Ingraham put out a tweet about David Hogg's college acceptances. We all have memories of just hundreds, hundreds of examples of how these networks have behaved in one direction. And so, yes, to some extent, this is clearly just a reckoning. Jordan Weissman from the left posted. So to recap recent media events, Larry Ellison's son bought CBS

and promptly began remaking its news as a conservative network. We learned Alison and Trump donors at AZ-16 would get to buy U.S. TikTok. ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel after a mere threat by the FCC sure feels like American urbanism in reference to Victor Orban of Hungary. What felt to me like American, how do I put this? Without invoking this weird reference to Victor Orban, how do I put this? American soft American authoritarianism was the last, what, 30 years? years, 20 years of media conduct in the United States.

So while it really doesn't bring me any pleasure to see the government put its thumb on the scale more, it's a rebalancing. It's very clearly a rebalancing in every sense. It's a rebalancing. Finally, let's put up before we bring Bacha in to get her reaction to all of this, Donald Trump's post.

He has been truth socialing, I can't say tweeting anymore. He has been truth socialing in the early hours of the morning in the UK. He said, great news for America. F3, we can put it up. The ratings challenge Jimmy Kimmel show is canceled. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has zero talent and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that's possible.

That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers on fake news NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it, NBC, President DJT. Now, the Wall Street Journal, about 30 minutes before we went to air, actually reported that ABC is hoping to have Kimmel back on the air within a couple of days. So the president's post saying that Kimmel's show has been canceled appears to be premature. But of course, as Jordan Weissman pointed out, this comes on the heels of all of these other deals. Obviously, the cancellation of Stephen Colbert show. But that's where we're going to leave it for now before we bring Bacha in, is that

There's this right now argument, the pressure from the government and from Trump has to have been what induced this decision by ABC. It all has to, from Next Start, has to have been about the merger. And maybe by the way, from NextDart, it was about the merger. But what that does is pretend as though they are not significant market forces and obvious ethical concerns about what Jimmy Kimmel did and says, because there are conflicts, it must not necessarily, this must necessarily be a matter of a conflict of interest, as opposed to these very obvious ethical lapses and very obvious challenges in the market, meaning people who watch late night television, ABC, whatever, maybe they watch A.B., maybe they watch Good Morning America, and they're mad about Jimmy Kimmel, they're mad about

the network, and they're going to switch the Today Show or something, whatever it is. there are serious market forces against what's happening in all of these cases. And I think to act as though those aren't also part of the equation is absolutely stupid and just completely missing a big part of the real story. So we're going to bring Batcha in in just one second now that I'm done rambling, ranting and raving. But before we do, if you are like me, you are probably looking to support more made in the USA manufacturing this year, whether it's home decor clothing or furniture,

it's become extremely difficult to find high-quality products that aren't made overseas. We all have stories like that. A recent Forbes report revealed that annual earnings for small businesses across the US have dropped by over 75% since 2023. Small businesses in this country are struggling to stay afloat. And with the likes of Amazon and Target dominating the market, it is no wonder. That's where a warehouse comes in. Your one-stop shop for artisanal home goods made exclusively by small businesses,

with hundreds of products to choose from. They're deeply committed to supporting American manufacturers. They're easy to navigate online marketplace. Let's you browse a wide range of independent makers. And you can feel good knowing that your purchase supports real people and small family-run businesses. A warehouse believes that true luxury isn't about fancy labels or big brand names. It's about the dedication, creativity, and care that goes into every product. Help a warehouse hit their goal of supporting over 100 small businesses this year.

Head to a warehouse shop.com and use code party for 15% off. order that's a warehouse shop.com code party. Bacha Unger Sargon has a new show and you know what? Nobody deserves it more than you Batchya. I understand it has a name that's going to take a while for people to remember, right, Bacha? One of the geniuses of the people who are helping develop this show was that they realized how fun it would be for people to tell everybody else with the name of the show is. Well, you're going to get a lot of jeb jokes.

I'm sure you already have because it's botcha, exclamation point. It's on News Nation. It's premiering this Saturday, 4 p.m., 11 p.m. Eastern, and your first guest is going to be Megan Kelly. Huge first guest, Batcha. And, you know, just, listen, what an awesome way to start. I mean, the honor of my professional life, obviously, obviously, like just the absolute greatest. And yeah, this is a huge, huge honor for me. And we announced today that she's the first guest and just the feedback from people who are so excited. I mean, if Megan Kelly will associate with you, you're on the map. She's done so much for me, having me on her show. and being on her show is the show that I get the most feedback from.

I do a lot of media, but when you're on Megan show, everyone in your life is like, oh my God, I saw you on Megan. So, yeah, it's a really, really big deal for me. I think I've told her this, but back when, you know, I would do like a Fox News primetime show every once in a while, and I actually now get more feedback from Megan than any cable news show than I ever did, which is amazing because it, you know, it does. doesn't take that long from Megan to Eclipse Cable News World. And that's just such a testament.

And Batcha, I'm sure the show is going to be a huge success and a testament to your many talents as well. But one of those talents is as a media analyst. You wrote an entire book that is so relevant to the sideline of Jimmy Kimmel, which is just broken in the last couple of hours as we were prepping tonight's show. And Bacha, actually, there are some arguments that I think you're probably sympathetic to, being made by the left right now. Yeah. Being that this looks like the government bullying a media company into compliance on the heels

of the TikTok deal, on the heels of Cool Bear, on the heels of the Skydance, Paramount merger with Trump-friendly media moguls getting all of the deals that they want through. So I'm curious what you make of that because I'm also sympathetic to the argument, but, but, It's so obvious in this case that there's much, much, much more going on. Tell me what you think. I think you're exactly right. So, first of all, it's utterly facetious to call this comedy, okay? Like, let's just dispense with that mythology, right?

These people are political pundits. They stop being funny and they stop doing comedy. The tone with which they deliver their lines, you can tell that they're doing political analysis. And of course, all the jokes only go in one direction. But you're right. I feel it's a very complex issue. And I think the real question here, Emily, is, what do you do when the financial incentives are for the media to get worse and worse,

more and more niche? Because the vast majority of mainstream media is geared towards, Democrats at this point, not for political reasons, but because the Democrats are the rich, and they are the people that the advertisers are courting. And that's really what we've seen over the last 20 years is we all know that there was this political realignment to where the Democrats used to be the party of labor and the Republicans were the party of the country club and big business and corporations and the wealthy. And we've seen that go like this. And we've seen that go like this. And it was very apparent in the last election.

Donald Trump won the majority of Americans making under $100,000 a year. And Kamal Harris won the majority making over $100,000 a year. Upwards of close to 70% of Americans at this point who make over $500,000 a year now are Democrats. Nine of the 10 richest counties in America controlled by Democrats. You know, 75% of hedge fund donations go to Democrats. I can go on and on and on, right? You know, I have the list. That's a good one.

The headphones like that. Yeah, actually, 95% of donations from the top three management consulting firms go to Democrats. 75% of Silicon Valley, down from 95% but still 75%. Okay. So the Democrats are the Party of the Rich, which is why the mainstream media got so woke. People think it's because of politics, but it's actually more about economics. The media is built on advertising, and advertisers are not interested in the eyeballs of poor people. This is how you end up with a situation where these so-called late-night comics are making only jokes at the expense of conservatives is because they want wealthy viewers.

And a shorthand for that now is to pick on conservatives and Republicans. Now, there's no free market way to change that. There is a little bit happening in independent media in a very big way. It's really disrupted the lock that the left had on the media for so long. We could talk about that as well. But I think the question becomes, if the market cannot regulate the kind of thing that Jimmy Kimmel did, right? Telling a joke that tasteless and offensive and disgusting in a moment like that, ABC never would have disciplined him for it. with, there was no amount of conservative backlash, in my view, that could have gotten them to do it had Next Star not acted.

Does the government then get a role? Now, unfortunately, my view is still no. And what I really resent the FCC chair for is the fact that I don't think he is the reason ABC acted. I think it has much more to do with the fact that NextStar was pulling it from the affiliates. But what the FCC chair did was he turned ABC into the victim. And I really resent that because that is the left's move right now. Over and over and over again, they do these reversals of the victim and the perpetrator. They've been doing it since Charlie was assassinated, trying to make themselves the preemptive victims of future violence. because they have no past violence to call upon. And remember about you, ABC News, just in the last, what was it, 24 hours, had one of their reporters talking about how, quote, touching the messages between the suspected shooter

and their roommate slash lover were, as they came out in the charging documents, doubled down on it twice, has since walked it back a bit. But that was ABC. Exactly. So there is this sick. And I think if you hadn't had this Brendan Carr making these comments, ABC anyway, would have pulled the show. And then we could have said, like, look, this is good.

This is the market regulating itself. This is what's supposed to happen when somebody's owed a platform. But because a government actor stepped in and I think overreached, he gave them this excuse to where now they get to act like the actual victims of a potential. First Amendment breach, which potentially, like, the narrative is there, even though I don't think he was the real cause. He's certainly acting like he was the reason behind it. So I think it kind of muddied the waters a little bit of what would have been a very different type of story. I would never support Carr yanking the broadcast license or even beginning that process here.

I do think, and I'm curious what you make of this, the principle of pressuring these corporations to these media corporations to act in the course. quote, public interest. It gets lost. It's like they're entitled to our airwaves and that these aren't things being rented out by a constitutional Republican government, essentially a license by a constitutional Republican government. And if, for example, a Democrat was going full Tromsky and you had a network lying about war, manufacturing consent to get us into another Iraq, I actually don't think I would have any problem with an FCC commissioner, a Dem FCC commissioner, saying, hey, let's be sure that we're acting in the public interest in putting that statement

out there. On the other hand, I think you're right. The optics are just unhelpful to making the argument that the real decision had little to do with government pressure and likely had much more to do with market pressure as was applied by next star, which I think BOTR probably in full disclosure, News Nation is one of the next star properties. My bosses, yeah. But that's, but that's, I think what they did was right. But yes, full disclosure, like I'm not exactly objective there. I would have a problem with them yanking the license over something like that.

I just don't think that government today is a good steward of the public interest in a polarized moment like this. It just can't be, nobody would trust it. I wouldn't trust a democratic government to be behaving in that way. I very much understand why people on the left don't trust Donald Trump to be a steward of the public interest, even though a lot of what I think he's doing is in the public interest. But by the way, you notice his tweet or his truth, you know, the real tell that he's not being serious is because he did not write, thank you for your attention to this matter at the end of it.

And so we know that this is just him like mouthing off. He's riffing. Yeah, but he's in bed and he's riffing. But yeah, I mean, people keep saying, like, you know, do we want President Ocasio-Cortez to have the right to yank Megan Kelly off of the airwaves or what have? We don't, you know. So why, you know, even open that door? And by the way, I, you know.

But of course, Megan's not on a broadcast network that's license. It's true. It's true. It's true. But, you know, who knows what, you know, in 10 years or whatever. Yeah, yeah. You know, the, the, it was interesting. When people were assessing whether the Biden administration had violated the First Amendment

in the pressure that it put on social media companies. Facebook. Facebook and so forth. You know, I was really sympathetic to the idea that they hadn't because they had made requests and the social media companies were extremely eager to comply with them. So there was never like a need for a threat and so no threats were ever made, right? So the question is what is the implied threat there? It's just, I think we all still think it's bad that the Biden administration did that, even if it's not like a constitutional violation in a literal sense.

The Supreme Court agreed with you. The Supreme Court did agree with me. And I feel similarly here that this is sort of beneath the political side that I believe has taken on the mantle of free speech in a really big way. And of course, this is separate from the question of free speech related to people getting fired for saying disgusting things. about Charlie Kirk, which I have much less of a problem with, although that, too, is leaking into areas where I have seen cases that I'm sort of uncomfortable with. So it's, you know, interesting. Well, yeah, okay, so actually, let's talk about that. That's a super interesting point. And I want to read from this Federalist article, because this gets into the class dynamics as well. The Federalist

wrote an article where they contacted, quote, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Penn, Cornell, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth to ask what if any resources had been provided to students in the wake of Kirk's death? None answered the Federalist's inquiries. However, a search of each Ivy League school's website revealed that none of them released a unique public statement condemning or even addressing Kirk's assassination like they did after George Floyd's death. Many colleges and universities highlighted support for students following George Floyd's death in 2020. So Bacha, that brings us back to a point of confidence. If we put ourselves back in May, well, I guess it would have been June 2020, you had elite universities falling over themselves in order to make it known.

They were all over the George Floyd case, but those same elite universities are not putting, you know, an ounce of that energy comparatively into making sure falling over themselves to, you know, reach out and make it known they're tackling what happens. happened to Charlie Kirk on a college campus, exercising speech that is actually completely inherent to the mission of some of these elite schools. And I just, I don't know what to make of all. I mean, I know what to make of all of it, but it's all, there's so many crossed lines and boundaries. And I'm curious as somebody who is very much of both worlds, what you've made of this really difficult moment. Oh, God, it's so depressing. I find even in the like Democrats attempts to, you know, take down the temperature and seek unity, I find them all so offensive because they keep saying both sides have this problem, which is effectively asking the right

to bear 50% of the burden of a crime committed against themselves, right? Even though it's not true. I mean, we've all been around for the last five years, the vast majority of political violence, certainly in the last five years, has come from the right and from the left. And by vast, I mean like, obviously 90%. And every example that they bring of right-wing violence breaks down, like it crumbles.

Like Josh Shapiro, they'll say, oh, they tried to assassinate Josh Shapiro. Yeah, the person who tried to assassinate Josh Shapiro was a free Palestine freak who attacked Josh Shapiro, because he was a Jew, not because he was a Democrat. You know, the two state senators from Minnesota murdered by a Tim Wall's appointee who wrote a confession letter for the FBI in which he said, I did it because Tim Walls told me to.

So like obviously mentally ill, but also supplied a motive that was not right-wing ideology, right? And if you go through each of these examples, they crumble. So then they go to the statistics and you look at the statistics, you look at the data. And the data doesn't include any violence from the BLM riots in which I believe 100 people were killed. Like it's just ridiculous. The gaslighting is insane. The reversal, as we talked about, a victim and perpetrator, I want to just mention President Obama's remarks. Yes.

Because I'm seething about this. This is ostensibly like the standard bearer. And he comes out there and he acts like, I'm going to do the unity. I'm going to do the thing, you know. We can both condemn what happened to Charlie in no uncertain terms and say we disagree with him. So then what are the examples that he gives of disagreeing with Charlie? It's so amazing, Emily. They're all about race.

and they are all mischaracterizations of what Charlie said, including the fabricated quote that Karen Ataya was fired from the Washington Post for fabricating. Yep. You know, all painting Charlie as a racist, right? That's a great point. And then President Obama says, in my day, we didn't demonize the other side. You just did. We have this clip.

Let's roll this clip. This is the S-10, truly a banger from Obama. We have to recognize that on both sides, undoubtedly there are people who are extremists and who say things that are contrary to what I believe are America's core values. But I will say that those extreme views were not in my White House. I wasn't embracing them. I wasn't empowering them. I wasn't putting the weight of the United States government behind extremist views.

That is exactly what he did with radical trans ideology. When via a dear colleague letter, his Department of Education transformed bathrooms, locker rooms, in schools around the country and threatened them with funding, federal funding, which is essential to their work, if they did not read gender identity into sex in Title IX, but Bacha, I interrupted. do. So please continue teeing off on this.

No, it's just like, not only did he actually do it, demonize everybody on the right is clinging to their guns and their bibles, implying everybody's, you know, backward Neanderthal's racist, etc. But he did it on that very stage. Like, he literally could not get through the event without demonizing the other side while pretending that he was, his hands are so clean from this. And I just couldn't get over it because the way that the left does it is all in this very highfalutin, you know, like above it all. But they're actually doing the same thing. What you got from every segment of Obama's talk just there is the other side are racists, our bad people, are violent, are vile, and are divisive. When he is, like, that is divisive to say it.

And he does this every single time he speaks. And it's just such a farce because at the end of the day, you know, the left loves to say Donald Trump is divisive. But what he actually did was he united the very racially diverse working class of this country around the idea that they deserved a fair shot at the American dream. after it had been denied them by successive Democratic presidents and regimes, including President Obama's. So that really made me see red and just the piousness while doing the very thing that he is claiming the other side does in the rights moment of mourning. And I think that's the thing that is just so unforgivable. Well, can you imagine if after Dylan Ruth, if the Wright walked around saying, well, you know, you guys have your bad guys too, you know, like both sides have this problem. No, as a nation, we went into mourning.

Nikki Ely is an amazing chapter about this in her book, by the way, and about how President Obama actually was quite divisive at this time. Even as, you know, it was she who took the Confederate flag down from the state capital in this. very moving moment of coming together and then President Obama showed up and it became very divisive again. But I mean, that's effectively what the right has just had. It's beacon of the future, a man who united the cultural and political shift to the right under this rubric of spiritual revival taken from them, stolen in the most horrific way. And the left is trying to make them themselves, the victims here, President Obama being the prime example of this, it's so horrifying and the gaslighting and just the lack of humanity. It's really upsetting. Yeah, it's all so

ridiculous because obviously there are fringe lunatics on, quote, both sides. But do you know what we're talking about right now? A conservative who was assassinated in cold blood on a college campus by someone who had, quote, leftist ideology and thought he was, quote, filled with hatred and that some hatred can't be negotiated out. So the audacity of really anyone to say anything but Charlie Kirk seemed like a great man and a great husband and a great father is insane. And Bacha, that's where I just want to get your thoughts on what the left can do. Let's just act in like if we could truly have a conversation in good faith with people who say Charlie Kirk is racist, he's a bigot, et cetera. What do you think the left needs to do to stop?

And again, this isn't saying that I don't even know why I'm doing the throat clearing, but it's not saying that there are people on the right who overuse the word groomers or whatever. But we're talking about the left right now because somebody who is a leftist just shot a conservative on a college campus. So what would you say, Bacha? What I would really like to hear is every Democrat who has said the things that the killer said, which is every Democrat who had said, you know, Charlie Kirk is hateful. What was the thing in the indictment letter? Some ideas are too hateful to be argued about something along the... Negotiated out of, right? A view utterly, utterly commonplace in Democratic Party.

I mean, this is worth saying, but, you know, the, the ideology that has motivated all of the left-wing violence we've seen recently, whether it was Charlie's assassin or Robert Westman, or the Elias Rodriguez who murdered that beautiful couple outside the Jewish Museum, or the people who, well, the ones that we know about who tried to kill Trump, the Black Lives Matter, violence, et cetera, et cetera. These people all acted in a way that was very rational. Like, Elias Rodriguez wrote a manifesto about why he was killing these people to free Palestine, which it sounds exactly like every English paper you've read on the subject. Right. It's intentional. Yeah. It's just a complete product of left-wing ideology.

It's not the rantings and ravings of a lunatic. Insane but coherent, right. It's not insane, Emily. It sounds exactly like... I know what you mean, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, every op-ed in every college paper about Palestine sounds exactly like this.

Like, it's not the David DePopp who hit Paul Pelosi horrifically with a hammer who is an insane person, right? This guy as well, who killed church. He sounds exactly like every Democrat. So what I want to hear from them is we demonized the right. We called them fascists and Hitler. We said speech is violence. You combine those two things and you're signing death warrants for prominent conservatives. We are taking responsibility for whatever part we played here.

Maybe it's small, maybe it's large. The demonization ends here. We're not going to call anybody Nazis anymore. We're not going to call anybody Hitler anymore. We're not going to call anybody fascists anymore. Today, I, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, today I, President Barack Obama, I affirm that it is legitimate to vote for Donald Trump. I wouldn't do it, but this is a legitimate act in a democratic society.

I affirm that it is a legitimate point of view that there are only two genders. It's not my view. I, AOC, believe that there are infinite number of genders, but it is not hateful to believe that there are only two. You know, I, Kamala Harris, affirm that it is legitimate to be pro-life and think that life begins at conception. Not my view, but that is a legitimate view. It is not a danger to women to believe that. Like, this to me is what I'm waiting to hear. This is ground zero. If I hear that, if I hear that, from one person, I will seek unity with them for the rest of my life. But they're unwilling to do it. And it's very sad. But that is for me, the baseline. I can't, I can choose unity over revenge. We should all choose unity over revenge. You cannot choose unity over the truth. You cannot build

anything on a lie. And they have to take accountability or this never ends. Bacha, that was so well said and so helpful, especially with your background. I mean, you went through the deplorable comment as a Hillary backer, right, and thought about these things in a period of sort of evolution. So I'm really grateful to you for sticking with us this late tonight, and I'm so excited to watch Batcha. Not Bacha or Bacha, but Bacha, but Baja. but Bacha on News Nation. It's premiering this Saturday.

Megan Kelly is going to be on. So thank you, Bacha, and congratulations. Emily, God bless you. You're just the best. Thank you so much for having me. Right back at you. All right. Let's get to an ad that I'm never going to be able to read in a normal voice again because I got so much feedback on the Trump impression. Recently, I learned about colostrum, the very first milk known as liquid gold. I'm always going to have to say it that way, that babies receive from their mothers after birth, packed with proteins, natural growth factors, antimicrobial peptides that work to enhance your immune response, reduce inflation, repair inflammation, repair and balance gut lining, reduce bloating, and make your hair and skin look amazing.

Maybe they also reduce inflation. But inflammation, that's reduced. Today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum offers the highest quality cow colostrum available in the U.S., 100% made in America from 100% American grass-fed cows. They're the best cows. Let me tell you, these cows, they don't over-process or strip their colostrum, leaving it whole, full fat and high protein for ultimate nutrient density. It is the highest quality bovine colostrum you can buy. You can't buy bovine colostrum any better, except for a cowboy colostrum. So, Cowboy is easy to drink.

It really, really is. I like it in milk. It is made with delicious natural ingredients and no artificial flavors. You just add a three-gram scoop of either their chocolate, Madagascar, vanilla, or a strawberry. That one's my favorite into your coffee or your smoothie or, again, like I said, I enjoy it in milk. For a limited time, our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order. Just head to cowboy colostrum.com slash afterparty and use code afterparty at checkout. That's 25% off when you use code afterparty at cowboy colostrum.com slash after party. after you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them.

Please support our show and tell them after-party sent you to the best colostrum liquid gold. All right, that's enough of that from me at cowboy colostrum.com slash after-party. Let's get into more of the show. Actually, I have a couple of thoughts just on what Baccio went through there because what she was getting at, and I wanted to just put a point on this. What she was getting at is if you had Kamala Harris, Alexandria, Kasia Cortez, Barack Obama saying what she said the way she said it, what they're really doing is saying you can be a decent human being and have views that were treated as abhorrent or racist, sexist, bigotry by the sort of halls of power, by the court, by the people, the denizens of the, the corridors of power for the last 10 years, which, by the way, Barack Obama fueled. There was such a funny moment.

He said, I think we actually have it. Let's play this moment of Barack Obama talking about social media. Like, who could ever have imagined that social media would do these things to the country? This was, again, from that conversation last night, with Steve Scully. What happened was that how we got information changed. And it was turbocharged by social media. And suddenly you have a big chunk of the country who the reality they're receiving every day

is entirely different than the reality I'm receiving. Just go back in Google, Barack Obama, Silicon Valley. Look at those articles from when he was leaving office about how he brought Silicon Valley to Washington. This man oversaw so many mergers that consolidated power in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg and others, that for him to speak so passively about the effects of social media, when these were happening, monoculture was crumbling before our very eyes during his presidency.

And you can argue that some of it may have been inevitable, sure. But his public policy pushed it through at an accelerated rate. You know, a lot of these murders probably should have been challenged. and the power of Silicon Valley should have been challenged instead of treating these companies with nothing but reverence and optimism and boosting them to the hilt, basically, for his entire presidency,

and actually even before he was president. So that's another amusing but actually pretty typical Obama comment about just things that he had something to do with passively observing them, like 10 years later or five years later, or actually even in real time. That's something that he was known to do, of course. So, I mean, what Batcha was really getting at is these companies that did have this concentrated

power and they have so few people, they weren't necessarily. I mean, her point about the Supreme Court case on Biden and META was a really interesting one because they didn't necessarily need to have their arms twisted to, you know, Facebook didn't need to have its arm twisted by the government to add that you could, you know, choose from 52 genders or whatever it was when that happened. Of course, the government did that to schools with Title IX, but these corporations didn't necessarily need that because there was this intense synergy between the corporations and the faculty lounges and the Obama administration, millennial staffers and all of that. it was a perfect storm for what started to feel like a complete, a complete ostracization from the, from Josh Hawley campaigned on this. I remember because I covered his came. His campaign, he said back in 2018 when he was first running for the Senate, he would, in his stump speech,

talk about Hollywood, Washington, and Wall Street. That's what conservatives felt like for at least 10 years that these institutions had entirely closed ranks and had entirely been usurped or dominated by the left in a way that was being, the power was being leveraged to shut down conservatives. And there's evidence of that in every single one of these, every single one of these industries and institutions. Like, think about DEI and ESG. from Wall Street. Think about Operation Choke Point, which is a little joint effort. Think about Silicon Valley. Think about all of it. I mean, basically, maybe the only place that the left could still make the argument was dominated by the Republican Party. I mean, you could have maybe said that

about the Pentagon, but the Pentagon was going full DEI and the like as well, as conservatives were separating themselves from those old, quote, Republican foreign politics. policies anyway. And so for the right, there will be no tears spilled because Jimmy Kimmel says something awful is suspended for a couple of days. And it looks like in the process, a couple of corporations are trying to get a merger out of it or favorable treatment from the government. It just nobody's going to cry. It doesn't mean that it's the ideal circumstance. But in this case, ABC actually, A, does have to act in the public interest. Brendan Carr is not wrong about that. And I look forward to Brendan Carr, hopefully applying that standard evenly across the board.

If someone, one of these networks, I don't know conceivably what this would look like, does something that is egregiously biased in the direction of Donald Trump. I look forward to Brendan Carr calling ABC News up and saying you have a responsibility to act in the public interest. as I said when we were talking to Bacha, I would have no problem with the Democratic FCC Commissioner when, you know, let's say there was another buildup to the Iraq War. We saw something like that happened in 2026. Well, let's say 2029. I would have no problem with a Democratic FCC commissioner calling up ABC and saying, you just lied about the intelligence information. And this is not in the public interest and you know it. Great. All for it. I think actually these licenses are a scarcity. They are licenses that are given by the government. And they should be treated as such. It's different if you're talking about cable.

It's different if you're talking about podcasts. Completely, that is a completely separate story. I have no problem with Republicans flexing a little muscle, even though I do think Butch is correct, that it was a Brendan Carr that forced ABC into this situation. It was the fact that Jimmy Kimmel said something insane and local affiliates were dropping the program. Now, were those local affiliates dropping the program because their parent company wants to get a merger deal through? I bet that's partially an issue.

But I bet the bigger part of it is that people around the country don't want to see Jimmy Kimmel get away with what he said about the shooter of a conservative activist within days of the event happening. So just some follow-up thoughts on what Bacho was saying tonight. I also want to get into, man, do I want to get into Operation Arctic Frost? Operation Arctic Frost. Did you hear about Operation Arctic Frost? The Cash Patel hearings in the Senate and the House over the last couple of days were utterly dominated by these dramatic And I actually would say almost unprecedented. You can never really say unprecedented in the history of the U.S. Congress. But in recent memory, for as fiery as congressional hearings have gotten,

the dustups between Cash Patel and Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell. And actually, Senator John Kennedy, Republican Senator John Kennedy, had a good exchange with Cash Patel and Epstein. These explosions were wild. And in all of the craziness, one thing that got a bit lost is the news of Operation Arctic Frost, as I mentioned. What could that be? What could Operation Arctic Frost be? It's a great code name.

Catherine Harage has some more on this. She got exclusive whistleblower records. And Senator Chuck Grassley talked a bit about what we know ahead of Cash Patel's hearing at the Senate Judiciary on Tuesday. But basically, I'm going to read from New York Post coverage here. An FBI investigation launched in the wake of the 2020 election, scrutinized nearly 100 Republican and GOP-aligned groups or people, including Turning Point USA, co-founded by sling conservative activist Charlie Kirk, unclassified bureau files released Tuesday show. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley published files related to the probe,

codenamed Arctic Frost during a panel hearing saying the records revealed Arctic Frost was much broader than just an electoral matter, and that the investigation, quote, expanded to Republican organizations. Some examples of the groups that Christopher Ray, former head of the FBI, sought to place under political investigation, included the RNC, the Republican Attorney's General Association and Trump political groups, according to Grassley. Deeply disturbing, by the way, think about it like this way. Democrats orchestrated, I'm going to quote here from the Time magazine piece

that Molly Ball wrote, uncritically promoting it. way my former boss, my friend has covered this many, many times. She wrote a whole book called rigged about it, but this is how Molly Ball described what happened in 2020 in Time magazine. Quote, she said, a well-funded cabal of powerful people ranging across industries and ideologies working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. That's what Democrats orchestrated in 2020 to the favor of Biden. Even Mark Zuckerberg has since conceded, yes, it does, it happens as Mark Zuckerberg is trying to cozy up to the Trump administration.

There's no question about that. But Mark Zuckerberg has conceded that some of the research does show this money was flooded disproportionately. You guessed it into blue America. And that obviously greatly benefited Joe Biden. So think about it that way. I mean, this is just so profoundly disturbing. And it's barely a peep about this in the media.

It's a very crowded news cycle. but this story is so significant because Democrats openly had that, quote, well-funded cabal, bragged about it in Time magazine, and then subpoenaed people for questioning the outcome of the election based on a, quote, conspiracy investigation. And again, I am saying that as somebody who thinks Trump was, like, to say the least, completely reckless. Trump and others were completely reckless with their claims of, quote, fraud back in that election, the directions that various people went in, I think were beyond dangerous and disappointing and all of that is, you know, the amount of flack that I took when I was reporting literally live from the Capitol on January 6th,

expecting to cover what happened at the ellipse. I walked over with the crowd and everything all hell broke loose, basically. I mean, it took plenty of flack for reporting on that at the time and for covering it critically at the time. And I think the way that certain people on the left have said it was worse than Steve Schmidt, I think on MSNBC once said it was like worse than 9-11. It said something at that extent, worse than 9-11. That stuff was insane and ridiculous. And Dems obviously abused their power, congressional power, and otherwise in their investigations.

And this is clearly a case of them. that when you have left openly bragging about having a well-funded cabal flooding Democratic districts to basically nudge to tip the scales in the election with money. This is, by the way, what Citizens United, all of the libs with Citizens United stickers on their Priuses, this is why they're concerned about Citizens United when you talk about the most basic principle of why people oppose Citizens United, which is that billionaires shouldn't be able to buy elections. Okay, that's basically what the billionaires were bragging about to Time Magazine in 2020. And then the people who said something about it got subpoenaed in a conspiracy,

a conspiracy investigation, a conspiracy investigation. And again, that's not to say there aren't real concerns about, you know, what was saying. in the wake of that and how seriously these pretty thin charges of fraud were treated and hyped up. But they were bundled into a fucking RICO case by Fannie Willis, Fannie Willis in Georgia. Rico? Rico? This is a RICO case? A RICO case? I feel like I'm doing the... talking about practice? That's what I feel like we're doing right now. But truly, insane. that we're learning. I mean, it's not insane that we're learning it

because it's like pretty predictable. It doesn't surprise me at all. I mean, Catherine Harrodite's reporting shows from these whistleblower records. The FBI white paper details the extraordinary scope of this Arctic Frost investigation into President Trump. It described a quote, multifaceted conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Again, I remind you, the left was openly bragging about a, quote, multifaceted conspiracy to influence the results of the 2020 presidential election and says investigative steps take in interviews over 150 conducted, subpoenas, over 400 served, over 400 served. Their lines of effort included false fraud claims, false elector schemes, false lawsuit, state pressure, false DOJ letter slash Jeff Clark, financial fraud, pressure Pence and the Eastman plan. Listen to that. The pressure Pence and the Eastman plan was part of a conspiracy effort, the electors, which we all remember Democrats challenging over the years as well, that is what got you potentially swept up in this multifaceted, this, or I'm sorry,

this as the FBI put it, multifaceted conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election, turning point action, turning point USA were caught up in this. and the records are now being released by Cash Patel, who obviously has some pretty serious, some pretty serious motivations to be releasing some red meat like this. And I'm glad he's doing it as he is under fire in the obscene investigation. And also, sadly now, in the investigation to the tragedy that took Charlie Kirk's life a week from today, just a week ago today. It feels like it's been a year, but at the same time, it also feels like it's been an hour. I'm sure many of you feel the same way. But the more records we have about how the government handled this, the better. And I get really sick of people criticizing those who bring up Russia collusion over and over again because we have not had a reckoning on Russia collusion. It looks like we're in the middle of a media

the likes of which I quite literally never predicted. And it's due to a couple of different things and talked about this with Bacha. But one of those things is these companies realizing their business models are changing and their audiences are changing. And that they're either hyper-niche productions like Stephen Colbert's show. And I would say the same of Kimmel's show. We'll see what happens with him are really bloated. They can't sustain themselves. they can't turn a profit anymore because you can't pay people that much money to reach an audience that small.

And so these mass media organizations are reckoning with the disconnect between those two things. And also realizing some of that problem stems from just like really bad, putting out a bad product. Like Stephen Colbert won an Emmy and then rubbed it in Trump's, because Trump, I think, famously wanted an Emmy for The Apprentice, and he was like, oh, Donald Trump doesn't have an Emmy. Let me tell you, if you watched The Apprentice, you know it was a lot better than whatever. Stephen Colbert has been puking into the camera lens over the last few years. Actually, here's that Colbert clip right now. Welcome to The Late Show. I'm your host, Stephen Colbert. I'm sorry. I meant to say,

welcome to the Emmy running race. Speaking of Emmys, Donald Trump doesn't have one. Also, Oh, you got him. But you know what Stephen Colbert, sadly, has never done, is orchestrated a game show competition that put Kenya from Real Housewives of Atlanta on a boat in the Hudson River as Don Jr. listened to him perform her smash hit, Gone with the Wind, fabulous. Stephen Colbert can't say that. He didn't make TV that good ever.

And I say that as a fan of Strangers with Candy. and the Colbert rapport. Nothing will ever be as good as Celebrity Apprentice. Joan Rivers being ejected from Celebrity Apprentice, if you haven't seen it, you know, if you haven't seen it, you don't even know why Colbert's Emmy taunt there is so truly pathetic. That's, he could never, he could never, he could never compete.

But I guess we're giving Emmys out now for just saying things that Emmy judges politically agree with and find fast. and good for the Emmys to look like they're standing up to powerful interests, even though they are those powerful interests. Here we are. But it's interesting to see the reckoning, right? You know, whether it's the settlement with George Stephanopoulos, whether it's Colbert losing his show, which I don't think, honestly,

had anything to do. We've covered that extensively. I maintain that had nothing to do with the administration itself. I don't think the merger question hurt. I'm sure that that came up, but I think they would have done it either way. And I actually think if Next Star, Batcha is right, if Next Star had done what it did tonight, the same thing would have happened to Kimmel.

I think actually Kimmel might have been suspended for a couple of days. Either way, we'll see what happens to a show in the long term, because the decision to make that joke, which misinforms audiences, which is clearly not in the public interest. It's such a tasteless thing to do in the days after just a disinformed. generational collective trauma of seeing one of the most prominent conservatives in the country shot and killed on your social media feed on video which many many many many people watched and even if you didn't watch it you lived through you lived through the the morning period with everyone

and again even if you didn't like charlie kirk i think everyone also saw how dean withers and And Asa Kuyer and Ezra Klein reacted to those people on the left who have been utterly horrified. So in the wake of all of that, to make a stupid, incorrect joke that was known to be untrue at the time because you're either in a media bubble that's so thick, you can no longer make good jokes because you no longer have facts to base those jokes off of. or you are just truly that reprehensible and uncaring about your own political opponents, whatever it is, just an absolute disaster for ABC. So, you know, it won't see tears from me.

I don't love the way that Donald Trump throws his weight around sometimes. Like I've compared it to a mafia pause before. Some people do love that. I don't particularly love that. I don't love the, in fact, I actually hate the TikTok deal. I find it very gross. But this is also part of a big picture rebalancing. If I zoom out to 30,000 feet, all kinds of problems with the process.

The direction is good. And so we just have to weigh process and direction. You know, we have to weigh whether the costs of the process will be worth the benefit of the direction. I think a lot of times we don't have the answer to that question until, you know, we see Trump is out of office and what happens afterwards. But in this case, the process of ABC, like taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air for a couple of nights because Next Star might have wanted to grease the skids in a merger and Jimmy Kimmel did something insanely stupid and divisive and hurtful to the network. Are you kidding me? Give me a break,

especially after what they did to sweet, poor, innocent Chris Harrison. To Megan Kelly's point. All right, that does it for us tonight. Now, I've teased this last week, but obviously we decided to pause it given the events of last week. But there's an Instagram story up right now where you can send me questions. There's always Emily at devilmaicaremedia.com. where I answer just about every email I get, I always say this. But for you podcast folks, please, if you're not subscribed on the podcast feed, please head over there and subscribe because you're going to be getting a podcast episode where I just answer your questions.

You know, you're not going to be lucky enough to get a guest. It's going to be all me 100%. That's a gift to you, of course. But no, no, no, it's just because we're getting so many questions and want to have a chance to chat with everyone and put something fun in the podcast feed. So it's going to be called Happy Hour. Head on over. This is the after party. That's going to be the happy hour. I'm only at double my parrotmedia.com. Otherwise, I'll see you back here Monday, 10 p.m. live. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in.