Bulwark Takes - If Vance Calls the Truth “Incitement,” Then We’re Guilty As Charged.

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Donald Trump and JD Vance are taking their authoritarian playbook to the next level with stretching “incitement” laws. Will Saletan dissects JD Vance’s recent comments on the FCC taking aim at Jimmy Kimmel and what it reveals about the dark path we’re on towards policing free speech.

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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, it's Will Salatan from The Bullwork. We've been telling you for some time that Donald Trump is an authoritarian, and now there's a new threat, which is we might not be allowed to tell you that anymore. So here's where we are.

The Trump administration has defied court orders. It is sending troops into cities against the will of local and state officials. And on Thursday night, Donald Trump by issuing threats and demands and removing honest people who stood in his way, forced a sham indictment of Jim Comey, the former FBI director, who documented Trump's blatant obstruction of justice in his first term. And all this is on top of the coup that Trump attempted to stay in power after he lost an election. This is authoritarian government. And by corrupting law enforcement and using the military to seize more power, it is a fascist government. What I want to talk to you

about today is the next stage of their seizure of power. They are trying to criminalize anyone who points out that they are authoritarian. I want to show you what the vice president, J.D. Vance, said this week. Here he is on Wednesday after a shooter attacked an immigration enforcement building in Dallas and killed a detainee. Vant didn't just blame the shooter who acted alone. He used the shooting to go after Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California. When Democrats, like Gavin Newsom did, say that these people are part of an authoritarian government, when the left-wing media lies about what they're doing, when they lie about who they're arresting, when they lie about the actual job of law enforcement, what they're doing

is encouraging crazy people to go and commit violence. That is a clear warning from the vice president. If you use the A word, if you say, This is an authoritarian government. You are inciting violence. And that's not the only forbidden word. If you use the F word, fascism, you are also guilty of inciting violence. Here's what Vance said on Thursday in an interview with Laura Ingraham. A reasonable response to fascism, to Nazism, would be violence, right?

So what they're saying effectively is that you should engage in violence because the regime, using Jasmine Crockett's words are so bad. And never mind the A word or the F word, if you so much as suggest that people on the right are responsible for political violence, you, just by saying that, are according to Vance, inciting violence on the left. And specifically, Vance went after Jimmy Kimmel, the comedian who got forced off the air for what he said about Charlie Kirk. Here's what Vance said about that. He was actually accusing right-wing America, conservative America, of killing Charlie Kirk. We now know that is false. Charlie Kirk was murdered by a left-wing assassin who was radicalized by some of the

rhetoric that we see coming from the far left. When you accuse the people who have been holding prayer vigils, who have been praying about Charlie Kirk, you accuse them of killing Charlie Kirk when we know it was a left-wing assassin. You're actually apologizing for his murder. You're encouraging more of that violence to happen. Now, first of all, Vance is lying about Kimmel. Kimmel did not accuse right-wing America of killing Charlie Kirk. Here's what Kimmel actually said.

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. Look, to be fair, I wish Kimmel hadn't said that. It's easy to see how somebody like Vance might present. perceive that as implying that the shooter was MAGA. But to call that an accusation and to say that it's inciting violence is stretching the definition of incitement to the point where almost any joke or statement that Trump doesn't like could be prosecuted. Now, the crackdown

doesn't start with prosecution. It starts by forcing people off the air. And that is what happened to Kimmel. But Vance says nothing happened to Kimmel. actually totally separate from the Jimmy Kimmel issue because nothing happened to him. He's currently on the air. And to the extent that he's not, it's because advertisers don't like him because his ratings aren't very good. Again, Vance is lying. Nothing happened to Kimmel. Kimmel got suspended from ABC right after he made that crack about MAGA and Charlie Kirk. So it wasn't a sudden plunge in the ratings. It was a political backlash. But Vance says the administration had nothing to do with the backlash. Here's what he said on Wednesday in an interview with News Nation.

The FCC chairman Brendan Carr put out a couple of tweets, but the government took no action. We did literally nothing to try to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air. We did literally nothing? You've got to be joking. Here's what Brendan Carr did to take Kimmel off the air. This is Carr who regulates TV stations in an interview last week. 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. And just in case ABC wasn't clear about what Carr meant by the easy way or the hard way, he suggested explicitly that ABC should suspend Kimmel. There's calls for Kimmel.

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. Just hours after Carr said that, ABC suspended Kimmel. So this was totally the administration using the power of government to intimidate a network into taking somebody off the air. And Kimmel is just the beginning. Listen to what Vance told Engram. There's something else that's important here, Laura, which is that these broadcast companies, ABC, NBC, CBS, they enjoy the public airwaves because they serve the public interest. So I actually think that we should be having a conversation about whether these companies are serving the public interest.

ABC, NBC, CBS, who's next? And they're not just going to take people off the air. They're going to use the power of federal funding to pressure university. to crack down on free speech that Vance considers incitement. If you are using federal dollars to incite violence against conservatives, you're not going to get those federal dollars anymore, and we're looking at that right now. So Georgetown needs to make sure that it's actually making it safe for everybody,

whether they're liberal or conservative to express their views. And then they're going to dismantle that network of people who, according to Vance, celebrate violence or apologize for violence. They're going to treat these people as accessories to crime. The person at the top of the pyramid who's pulling the trigger, that's the person that we're prosecuting, that's the person that we're going after that has to see justice. But there's also all the people who apologize for that violence. There's the people who celebrate for that violence.

They're the people who fund the networks that actually encourage and promote that violence. We really have to dismantle the entire network of left-wing violence in this country. Who does Trump think is running this network? On Thursday, he named some of the people. people he wants to target. George Soros, who funds organizations that promote democracy, and Reed Hoffman, a major donor to Democratic candidates. Now, you might think that the Constitution of this country protects you from being prosecuted for speech. But Vance is making it clear that they're going to use the term incitement to void that protection and go after you. But the First

Amendment does not protect imminent incitements to violence. If you were actually, actively promoting your fellow man to kill other people. That is not protected by the First Amendment. And we have to be clear about that. We have to go after that stuff. Look, this is complete bullshit. Vance and the rest of these goons in the Trump administration are stretching the definition of incitement to criminalize dissent.

And on the other side, they're totally blowing off incendiary language on the right. Remember this line from Trump at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk? He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent. Is that incitement? No, says Vance. That's just a joke. Well, I think the president was joking, and I think it's interesting.

If you go back and watch the full speech, what the president was trying to do in his very humorous and very unique way was highlight how hard it is for us to forgive our enemies. I don't think that he was saying we should hate our enemies. I think what he was saying is Christ's command. man meant to love our enemies, it's very tough. Oh, so the comedian is serious, but the president is just kidding. I mean, Trump doesn't really hate. He wouldn't really do anything about it, right? Like when he said this on Thursday about prosecuting Comey? I can only say that

Comey's a bad person. He's a sick person. I think he's a sick guy, actually. Just hours after Trump said that, his former personal attorney installed by Trump, to indict Comey, did exactly what the president wanted. That is authoritarian. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are imposing authoritarian government in the United States. And now that it's obvious, they're taking the next step. If you speak the truth, if you call them what they are, they're going to say you're inciting violence and they're going to come after you.

See you next time.