Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: Jimmy Kimmel Pulled OFF THE AIR!

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein take on the breaking news of Jimmy Kimmel Live being pulled from the air, citing Kimmel's monologue on Monday commenting on Charlie Kirk, amid FCC chair Brendan Carr hours earlier threatening action on Benny Johnson's show.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey guys, me Sam Stein. I'm managing editor at the Bullwark. I'm here with my bud, Tim Miller. Breaking news tonight that we wanted to respond to. Jimmy Kimmel, a late-night host on ABC, is being taken off the air for the foreseeable future. No end date in sight. I mean, if we're being real, it's probably the end of his show. What started as a campaign to get him in trouble from Brendan Carr, who is the chair of the FCC, turned into an actual reprimand, first from Next Star, which is a broadcast, licensor and then from Disney itself, which pulled them off. And we are in a situation now where basically one of the more prominent late night hosts and entertainers and comedians in the country has been taken off the air. It's just, it is what it is. And I've seen a lot of people online

being like, well, you know, he did it because he said something factually inaccurate and insensitive about, you're laughing, about Charlie Kirk's death. And I saw the comment and yeah we can show the video the cut let's get i just want to say the biggest picture before we get in because in this case actually this is goes against the usual policy of the bulwark and the book youtube in this case the facts kind of don't matter like the facts like we should get into about whether he was correct and whether some facts matter but some here don't yes but in this case like what matters is the fact that as you said the government the federal government threatened and pressured private companies to silence

someone's speech and they did and they did like so it's not just someone a huge corporation the disney corporation was like yeah we don't want to deal with this shit and so they did it and so they did so like speech was silenced by threats from the government and and in that construct like if you're a person that believes in free speech like we do here at the bulwark um like you are against that even if the speech was wrong or noxious or whatever so anyway we can get into all the details I think that's like that is the headline. Can I just say one more thing for you, but the clip? Because we do care about free speech here at the bulwark because nobody's going to get fired.

You should probably subscribe and tell your friends, subscribe to the ball. I was going to give the pitch later on. But yes, now more than ever, subscribe to the fucking bulwark people where we don't deal with this shit. Okay. Anyways, let's play with, let's play what Kimmel said, which started this whole hubbub. And you can decide for yourself if this was a fireable offense. Here it goes.

We hit some new lows over the weekend with the maggie 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. In between the finger pointing, there was grieving.

On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism. But on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this. My condolences on the loss of your friend, Charlie Kirk. May I ask, sir, personally, How are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir?

I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They've just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it's going to be a beauty. Yes. He's at the fourth stage of grief. Construction.

Demolition. Construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls. called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish. All right. So look, if you read the text, he says that Maga Wright is trying to portray the Charlie Kirk Assesson as anyone other than coming from MAGA. We now know that Tyler Robinson was not a griper. Wasn't MAGA. Likely, according to these text chains, was compelled to commit this heinous crime because he's in romantic relationship with someone who's transitioning and found Charlie Kirk's anti-trans rhetoric

horrifying. It's awful. No one should defend it and we should be honest about his apparent motivations. Kimmel got that wrong. But kind of did he? Well, that's a good point. There's a way to think about it where he's just saying, yeah, they're trying to deflect whatever blame could be put on that. Yeah, this is not, look, and everybody, anybody who's watching the channel knows that I've been very meticulous about this and do not broker any sympathy for people who are out there trying to be like, well, I don't know, maybe this is a false flag and maybe it's the Jews and maybe it is Mag. It's like, it's pretty clear what this is.

But like, this was two nights ago. This was Monday night. So the text hadn't come out yet. And what he is saying here is that the Maga gang is desperately trying to characterize the kid as anything other than one of them. So there's two things. One, it's a joke. It's in the construct of a I want to get to later what Jimmy Kimmel gave a serious monologue about this. I want to get to in a second, like where he's being straightforward. So this is a joke.

Kind of the joke is about how MAGA is out there being super desperate to, you know, try to use this to their political advantage. And then he goes on to show a clip of Trump. You know, and so like that was kind of what was happening. It was, no, no, it's not kind of what would happen. It was what was happening. And Will Summer was following this because we were trying to figure out how the MAGA movement was responding to this in the real time.

And it's factually true that people like Dick Fuentes, maybe not MAGA, but MAGA adjacent, were like, we denounce violence. He's not one of us. They were moving expeditiously to try to distance themselves from the possibility that this guy could have been bred in their ideological corner. So it's not totally factually inaccurate,

and I should have said that up front. You mentioned that he did actually have a serious, element to his monologue. Do you want to expand on that? Yeah. So that was in the show right after the death. So the alleged offense here, this joke, you know, again, which is like, I think, borderline on what you're going to call it. Last week, he did a monologue in the show right after Kirk's assassination. We're like the rest of the country, we're still trying to wrap our heads around the senseless murder of the popular podcaster and conservative activist Charlie Kirk yesterday, whose death has amplified our anger, our differences.

And I've seen a lot of extraordinarily vile responses to this from both sides of the political spectrum. Some people are cheering this, which is something I won't ever understand. We had another school shooting yesterday in Colorado, the 100th one of the year. And with all these terrible things happening, you would think that our president will at least make an attempt to bring us together.

But he didn't. President Obama did. President Biden did. President Bush and Clinton did. President Trump did not. Instead, he blamed Democrats for their rhetoric. I've seen a lot of extraordinarily vile responses to this from both sides of the political spectrum. Some people are cheering this, which is something I won't ever understand. We had another school shoot in Colorado yesterday, the 100th one of the year.

With all these terrible things happening, you would think that the president would at least make an attempt to bring us together, but he did it. So like that, you know, if the accusation, And again, as I said, the stop, he should not be removed from the air by threat from the government, even if he was cheering assassination or something. I don't know. I mean, Bill Maher's, remember when he got kicked out of politically incorrect for saying, I forget what it was, but, you know, insensitive stuff, founding a terrorist, following a terrorist attack. Like, that shouldn't happen in this country. And it definitely shouldn't happen because of government pressure. But, like, that is not, like, Jimmy Kim, was not one of these, you know, fire breathing leftists who were saying, you know, who was cheering, Kirk.

he just wasn't he did the opposite he specifically condemned people cheering the attack he specifically said he would net and it's something that he doesn't understand why how someone could do that so like i mean he was again it's like if he was irresponsible this would still be bad but he wasn't right he was responsible and he told the joke that was like a little kind of borderline like that's that's it that's all of course but this but as i mean we're sort of dancing around this because it's all pretextual right it's like Donald Trump hates Jimmy Kimmer is waiting

kind of pretextual everyone was saying pretextual now makes you sound a little smart I guess yeah and everything is pretextual so it's accurate it's just kind of hot word of the week

I will stop using it so Donald Trump Sarah used like 12 times on the next level podcast today and she was right every time I'm just noticing that that word is in vogue all right well this is pretextual

I'm sorry I'm sorry Donald Trump hates Jimmy Kimmel. Donald Trump said sometime in like July or something that Jimmy Kimmel was next after what happened with Stephen Colbert. Fallon has no talent. Kimmel has no talent. They're next. They're going to be going. I hear they're going to be going. I don't know, but I would imagine because they get, you know, Colbert has better ratings than Kimmel or Fallon. You know that. Donald Trump has long tweeted or posted, you know, mocking and going after Jimmy Kimmel. And Jimmy Kimmel really doesn't like Donald Trump. And the idea here,

that they had something to go on to get Jimmy Kimmel thrown off the air was obvious because Brendan Carr, who is the chair of the FCC, went on Benny Johnson's show and basically laid out the exact path for how this was going to transpire. He was, I mean, we have the video, so let's play the video of him on Benny Johnson. You know, when you look at the conduct that has taken place by Jimmy Kimmel, it appears to be some of the sickest conduct. possible. As you've indicated, there are avenues here for the FCC. So there are some ways in which I need to be a little bit careful because we could be called ultimately to be a judge on some of these claims that come up. But I don't think this is an isolated incident. Obviously, look, there's calls

for Kim will be fired. I think, you know, you could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this. And again, you know, the FCC is going to have remedies that we could look at. Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it's time for them to step up and say, this, you know, garbage to the extent that that's what comes down the pipe in the future, isn't something that we think serves the needs of our local communities. But this sort of status quo is obviously not acceptable where we are. This is the part here, like to your point about how they lay out the exact path. It's the exact path. It is the exact path.

Yeah. He says, here's the go. Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content. It's time for them to step up and say this. Wink, wink, garbage. And then that happened. And then the stations, it's right, for people who don't get this, obviously, so ABC is the parent company. And then you have these companies that own like the local ABCs in your local market.

So next door, which owns a bunch of these local stations, is shocking. Are you ready for this? Trying to merge with another big local. $6.2 billion deal with Tegna that they need to prove by. I'm from Brendan Carr. So these guys right there, they want to merge, they want to make their company bigger. They need approval from the government.

You have the FC, the person that is in charge of the approvals out there saying, hey, guys, you shouldn't be accepting this. You shouldn't be platforming this wrong, think, you know, by a comedian that is an enemy of the regime. And they just went out there and did it.

Like it happened in three hours. Like Brendan Carr said this. Next star, pulled it. And then Disney, you know, basically, suspended him. And then the last part is, of course, Brendan Carr takes the victory lap by sending gifs of Michael Scott,

you know, doing the raise the roof to Brent Stelter. You know, and I know he's just doing it to provoke a response. He's like a big child. It's all fun for them. They love seeing people freak out. I'm sure they like watching the reaction online to this shit

because they get a hard on over it. But it's just like, you know, these people I would like to think know that they shouldn't be doing this, that this is bad. And the other thing that pisses me off, there's a lot of conservatives online who are just trying to make some sort of like rationalization for why this is fine, even though they know that this is deeply, deeply problematic. Oh, well, Jimmy Kimmel, you know, he said defensive things.

And, you know, there's no obligation for anyone to, you know, air misinformation. We have to, like, clean our airways of this filth. It's like, fuck off. Just be honest about it. This is great. I wasn't going to say. anything because I have whatever you liberals want to make this firing about quote unquote free speech yeah what else did he say keep reading because I'm going to get I'm going to keep reading a second but I just

would be like liberals other way I thought we were for a while we all lived in a liberal democracy yeah people who are who believe in liberal ideals are do believe in free speech that's true I don't know why free speeches in scarecoes they want to make this about free speech because did it ever occur to them the issue might be accuracy yeah it's false propaganda like this that's harming our country It's just like, what? Are you, I, if I'm sure, like, if the rules were reversed, if Joe Biden's FCC had kicked everybody off the air

who had said that Donald Trump won the 2020 election when he lost it, a, Fox wouldn't have enough bodies to go on TV to fill 24 hours anymore, like, because basically every Donald Trump supporter advanced that lie. And two, I don't think that the conservatives would have been like, well, you know, if you're inaccurate, free speech doesn't apply anymore.

okay this is about accuracy not free speech so I stand with the Biden FCC I like the whole thing is sure it's a fucky I'll say I'll say because I'll say because I'm salty right now with with great respect to Bill Crystal and the other hit the bulwark who were there pre-Iraq war I don't need lectures from Ari Fleischer on accuracy I just don't I don't I got to be honest about that oh what are you implying well you think that Ari Fleischer was lying on behalf of the Bush administration people can read between the lines about that one but I think Ari was lying about the Bush administration no interesting What topic are you thinking? Do you have a topic in mind in particular?

They were, you know, something to do with weapons and mass destruction. I don't know. Yeah, it's just fucking, it's just such a joke. It's so offensive. It's just like, it's pathetic and it's transparent. It's all, JVL wrote about this. You know how he said subscribe to the Bullwark? If you want JVL's newsletter, best newsletter in the business,

you got us pride to Bullwark Plus, go to the Bullwark.com and subscribe. He literally wrote this week a newsletter that was like, it's about power politics all the way down. And that's really what the, This is the evidence of that. There is no even conceit that they care about speech anymore. There's no limiting principle. There's no limiting principle.

And there's no even concede that this is about some other broader ideal or law or rule that they... The idea that you would shame them by saying, oh, well, weren't you guys like just warning about the death of comedy and comedy's not legal, which is what Elon did? The left wanted to make comedy illegal, you know? You can't make fun of anything. So it was like, comedy sucks. It's like nothing's funny. You can't make fun of anything. It's like legalized comedy.

And aren't you, weren't you the ones who, like, were so worried about wokeness, like, going after people who said, like, hateful things and that people should be fine, saying, like, they don't, they're not shameable by pointing at the hypocrisy. And, in fact, it's much worse, because at this point, it's not just the online mob who's, like, going after people. This is the sanctioned campaign targeting giant corporations by the president and his henchmen at the FCC. That's what this is.

I mean, let's just be honest. about it so dark place i'm in yeah they don't they don't care and that this is a good point and it's like it's kind of like it's frustrating to even bring up the hypocrisy because it's air they don't give a shit right no you got me you got me right yeah look that it's like they were upset that it was their guys that were getting fired for tweeting racist stuff simple as that right like that's that was that was that was what they're upset about about cancel country that it was it was fellow travelers as allies or suffering consequences for their actions and in this in this case It's like they want to inflict that punishment on other people.

That's what soft fascism is. They want to inflict that punishment on outgroups and on foes. And they're doing it right now. And like you said, it is extremely jarring because it's coming sanctioned from the government. And not just from the FCC. I have a breaking news thing that I need to share with you, Sam, additional breaking news. Since we've started taping, Donald Trump has issued a statement about this, the president of these United States. Great news for America.

Jimmy Kimmel's show is canceled. he goes on and on etc I don't need I don't want to dignify the rest of that by reading it but like again

it's the president's team pressuring the company to fire somebody for unapproved speech he gets fired they're cheering it it is it's straight out of an authoritarian playbook

let me just close I want to close by saying we've said twice to subscribe to the book not in jest although it might have come across as in jest let me just say because I do mean this

with all my like being that now more than never, there's like very few publications that have the type of editorial independence and editorial mission that is needed in this moment to actually do the type of journalism that is required in this moment. And look, we're not ABC. We're not Disney. We're not Jimmy Kimmel. We're not saying we're there to replace what he's going to no longer be able to provide. but it's important to support operations like ours because this is what we got folks in the media. This is it.

And so if you have the desire to support our mission, if you're interested in it, you can subscribe to our YouTube feed where this is going to be. But you can also subscribe to the bulwark.com slash subscribe. There's a whole number of membership plans there that you can choose from. We appreciate any support. We really do. Our work depends on people like you subscribing and paying for it.

And we pledge to continue doing what we're doing with your help. So with that, buddy, thank you so much. Appreciate it. We're doing too many of these dark commentary breaking news stories. I don't think it's going to change. So you might as well not lament it. I'm not expecting some breaking happy news reports next week, you know, coming around the corner. Who replaces Kimmel?

My polymarket bet is on Mike Lindell. I got long shot odds. I don't know. If I'm Disney, I'm just shutting it down probably. Saving the cash, putting on a reruns. Okay.

Talk to you later, buddy.