The Ben Mulroney Show - Did Kimmel apologize? And why do Canadians recognize US politicians more?

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

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This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Hey, thanks, son. What do I owe you? Don't worry about it. It's payday. Payday, huh? I bet you it went straight into your bank account and you didn't even check your pay stuff. My what? Your pay stuff. Back in my day, you had to wait for a physical check. Then, you had to go to the bank. Deposit it, and wait for it to clear.

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As you will remember, he got himself into some hot water by turning up the temperature. time when it didn't need to be turned up and saying some things that were factually inaccurate following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It didn't, matters were made worse by the administration, the presidential administration, if seemingly putting their fingers on the scale with the FCC head that governs the public airwaves threatening ABC's license and threatening all manner of attack on on that television network and that media company. And so yesterday he was told, or he was told a few days ago that he would be coming back yesterday. What was he going to say? Well, we made a lot of hey

about that on this show yesterday because I said I had no idea because as far as I was concerned, I didn't think he was going to get his job back. That's how wrong I was. So let's listen to a little bit of Jimmy Kimmel's return to the airwaves last night. I don't think what I have to say is going to make much of a difference. If you like me, you like me. If you don't, you don't. I have no illusions about changing anyone's mind. But I do want to make something clear because

it's important to me as a human. And that is, you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man. I don't I don't think there's anything funny about it. I posted a message on

Instagram on the day he was killed, sending love to his family and asking for compassion. And I meant it. I still do. Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual. That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make. But I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you're upset. Yeah. I don't know how you feel. There's some people who just don't like Jimmy Kimmel. There are days where I think he's funny. There are days I think he's not. And I like him. I like him on TV. But I'm an old guy, right? There's a lot of people who don't subscribe to that. I thought what he did right there was beautiful. I thought it was beautiful and it was human. And it was, you could hear the sadness in his voice that people had ascribed. some pretty terrible motivations to him, which I don't believe he believes.

And when he said that I would ever make light of the murder of a young man, I think we have to remember that in those moments. If there is ever political violence, if anybody loses their life, remember that. In that moment, in that moment, Jimmy Kimmel saw the tragedy of what happened in, Utah. He saw this, he appreciated the gravity and the sadness of it. He could hear it in his voice. And, and, and that's, that's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. Let's, let's continue because

then he, he moved past that to talk about more of his, his relationship with the parent company of ABC Disney. Disney has asked me to read the following statement. And, uh, I, I, I agreed to do it. Uh, here we go. Um, to reactivate your Disney Plus and Hudo account. Open the Disney Plus app on your smart TV or TV connected device. Okay, we're going to dump out here. There's a lot of that. But he gets back to the comedy.

And then from there, he pivots to, I think, the reason he got his job back, right? I've said before that had the... the administration not chimed in the way they did, this would not be a first amendment issue. It would have been host on TV says something stupid. People complain. Pressure is put on the company. ABC fires their employee. That's what it would be.

It would be a private company dealing with an employee. That would be it. But because the government stuck their nose in there, that's why we saw all of the pressure put on ABC to bring him. back. Here's what he had to say about free speech. This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.

Yeah, and I'm glad he said that too. I'm very glad he said that. He pointed out that there are talk show hosts in places like Iran and Afghanistan and China who really appreciate how special it is to live in a place like America,

which is very similar to a place like Canada. which I've said before, the violent collision of ideas in the public square is what makes these places fantastic and it's the magic, the magic of the Western world. And I'll say one other thing. I think he didn't apologize and he's definitely going to keep criticizing Donald Trump. I think that's clear to everybody. But I think he realized if I'm locked in a battle with Donald Trump, I'm never going to beat him, but I can outlast him. He'll be gone, and I will still be here. And I think he probably

realize that he doesn't have to score a knockout punch every single time. He has a monologue. He has to realize, he's got to be more judicious. He's got an activist president who's got a target on Jimmy's back. And so he has to be smart. He has to have a game plan. And it reminds me in a far different way, when the stakes were not nearly as high, when I was at another network, work, the people who had hired me and really took care of me for a long time, they left and they were replaced by people who didn't like me so much. They didn't like me and they didn't like my show. And so I was sitting around with my executive producer when we realized they, these people are making moves to marginalize our show, to weaken us and to eventually

say, well, look, there's there's really no point in keeping you on. You're too expensive and all these other shows do what you do. And so we made a game plan then and there. that we until until those people were gone we were going to be perfect our ratings were going to go up and we were going to give them no excuse no excuse to ever challenge the existence of our show and that's what we did and ultimately we outlasted the people that had a problem with us that's what jimmy kimmel realized i think that he can't win against donald trump but he can outlast him and he will then still have his ability to talk to uh americans talk to people around the world and shape debate.

So Hollywood was, the support from Hollywood was wild. But even Republicans who hate Jimmy Kimmel defended him. Ted Cruz came out and said, I think it is unbelievably dangerous

for government to put itself in the position of saying we're going to decide what speech we like and what we don't and we're going to threaten to take you out there

if we don't like what you're saying. It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel but when it's used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it. Kimmel quipped,

I don't think I've ever said this before, but Ted Cruz is right. And let's listen to, we've got a little more Kimmel. Here's Kimmel talking about, so he's now hit the big ones. Now he's hitting back against the head of the FCC. This is the organization.

It's like their version of the CRTC. The president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our job. our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can't take a joke. He was somehow able to squeeze Colbert out of CBS. Then he turned his sights on me,

and now he's openly rooting for NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers and the hundreds of Americans who work for their shows who don't make millions of dollars. And I hope that if that happens, or if there's even any hint, of that happening, you will be 10 times as loud as you were this week. And because he was just mentioned, here's what Donald Trump had to say on his truth social. I can't believe ABC fake news gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back.

The White House was told by ABC that his show was canceled. Something happened between then and now because his audience is gone and his quote, unquote, talent was never there. Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who's not funny, and who puts the network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democratic? garbage. He is yet another arm of the DNC and to the best of my knowledge. That would be a major illegal campaign contribution. I think we're going to test ABC out on this. Let's see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 million. This one sounds even more lucrative.

A true bunch of losers. Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in the bad ratings. All right. So there you go. To be continued. But like I said, don't give him the ability to attack you. every single day. You gotta be perfect if you want to outlast him. Canadians would know more about our high-profile politicians than the ones down south, right?

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Presale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. slash Y-Anex. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much, excuse me, for being here. And we've been watching with great intent, our leaders in Ottawa, and how the public is responding.

And after every election, there is a bit of a honeymoon where there's a grace period where voters will appreciate that every government's got to find its footing, right? New staff, new priorities, new teams. And so there's an element of that. And there's also an element of recognizing that some of the problems that are being tackled were not caused by the prime minister, for example. And all of this can lead, and so many other things, can lead to a prime minister riding high in the polls for a sizable amount of time. Well, we're joined now by a liaison polling principal David Valentin, because there's a new poll, a big poll that came out, looking at just that. Not just our leaders in government, but our leaders in opposition. David, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. Okay, so one of the key takeaways from this poll that just came out is that Canadians know a lot more about the Trump administration than they do about their own cabinet. That's right. And when we ask people, you know, what do you think about this minister or that cabinet secretary down in the states? More often than not, people knew who Robert Kennedy Jr. was. People knew who Marco Rubio was. They know who J.D. Vance is. but ask them about Anita Annand or Julie DeBruzen or both ministers in the Carney cabinet and they don't really have much of an opinion. Yeah, it really is a one-man show up here right now, isn't it? I mean, we've got the old standbys.

We've got the Dominique Blancs and the Anita Anans and those names that have been around for a long time. But everything begins and ends with Mark Carney pretty much. And the numbers bear it out. Pretty much. And if you look at Mr. Carney, he's doing, you know, as you mentioned, He's in his honeymoon right now. It's getting softer and softer every month, but he's still there, and 60% approval overall is pretty good. That being said, for context, the Trudeau honeymoon lasted two years.

So we'll see how long this will last. That's interesting. Because my question to you was going to be, does a budget typically bring government back down to Earth? Well, and this is the thing, is that it's a big opportunity, and it's a big risk. And I think given what we've been hearing, my expectation would be there's going to be things in this budget people don't like. Maybe the rating will take a hit. But it's also possible that there might be a lot of cuts. And for people who are looking for restraint and spending, but who still want increased spending in the military, maybe this will hit the sweet spot.

So there's risk, but opportunity, we'll see how he sells it. Okay, so let's look at the leaders themselves, because we're going to look at the prime minister, we're going to look at the leader of the opposition, then we're going to look at the NDP. What were you looking at? Because as I look at each one of these people on your charts, there's a black line, a red line, and a green line. Well, you want the green, right? The green is the approval. The red's the disapproval.

And the black is just people who don't know who you are. And you've got this little gray area for people who heard of you, but don't really have an opinion. So 5% of people didn't know who Mark Carney was. But then when you look at the people supporting him, 34, 3, 41, 41, 48, 32, 33, 28, that's the percentage of people who do not know his team. That's right. It's a lot of people who, you know, you ask them about a Canadian cabinet minister,

half the time they don't know who it is. And when we look at the matching counterparts in the states, they're all better known for the most part than the Canadian cabinet is. Now, the big difference is that all of the current cabinet ministers have pretty soft net approvals. Right. And probably if we attested them the same cabinet under Trudeau, they would all have negative approvals, by the way. I think a lot of this is Carney rubbing off on his team rather than the other way around.

And when we look at the leader of the opposition, these are actually going to sound weird to say, because only 38% of Canadians have a favorable view of Mr. Polyev compared to 54% who have a negative view. These are actually some good numbers for him for the year. Why is that? Ever since he lost the election, he took a big dip in favorability ratings, and this is him slowly climbing back up. So these numbers are actually more positive than some by other polling firms. So these are positive numbers, even though they're negative numbers, even though he's got a net negative minus 16 rating, this is actually improvement, and it's moving the right direction.

Okay, so that's where he's at. And then if we look at his front bench, someone we're talking to in, I think about an hour, A little less than an hour is Andrew Shear, the former leader of the opposition, but he's also the house leader. So he'll be joining us. His numbers are not so good either. No, he's also in a negative. So what you want here is you want more people to like you than dislike you. Mr. Pauli has got a minus 16.

Mr. Shear was also leader of the party for some time. So it's not surprising that he's better known. You know, he's at a minus 12. And then we have Melissa Lansman, who's also in the conservative party. She's deputy leader. she's actually in the positive. So this is good news for them here. Wait, she's, how's, wait, oh, because her positives and her negatives, I see, yes.

So the black, the black is they don't know who she is at 40. The black is they don't know what she is. So less people know who she is, but of those who know her, more like her than dislike her. So that's what's what you want to get to when you look at this. And then so then you got the NDP who are facing a little bit of a crisis of their own making because they are currently leaderless and rudderless. So the people that you looked at were Don Davies, Avi Lewis, and Heather McPherson. Yes, and all three of them have net positive ratings, but they're not very well known, right?

And the big takeaway here, look at Avi Lewis, right? A big chunk of people, 31% have heard of him, but they don't know what to make of him. So there's an opportunity there for him to raise that up. There's also an opportunity for someone like Heather McPherson, who's running for the leadership against him, to come in and say, actually, here's all sorts of things that are really bad about Mr. Lewis and instead get his negatives up, right? So this is the challenge they face. The MVP does not have very many resources and they've got two very unknown leadership candidates.

So who's going to define them? That's the question we're looking at for the year ahead. But you know, I'll be honest as well. I struggle to find coverage of this race anywhere in any meaningful way. Like they're not even punching through on the free publicity they should be getting right now as one of our federal parties that are looking for a new leader. So that's got to be a little disheartening for them. One of the other things, one of the final things you looked at, rather, was vote intention.

And you say, while liberal support has slipped over all strong leads in Quebec in Ontario, would still deliver a majority government if an election were held today. And I got to, I got to wonder, because you probably, the reference to the Supreme Court on the notwithstanding clause was probably not part of your equation when you wrote this or when you studied this. but I can't imagine that the Liberal Party is not going to take a few hits in Quebec because of that. Well, and listen, this poll already has a 4% bump for the conservatives in Quebec, and the liberals beginning to slip. So there would have been some of that in this survey, which was fielded mostly over the weekend. But, you know, there's two things to consider. One is, for the news to impact, you actually have to learn about it.

Yeah. Right. And so it's going to take time for the implications of what they're doing to, go through the Quebec media cycle and really hit everyone. And the second thing is that, you know, people are very solutions-minded. There are Quebecers out there who don't like Bill 21. And I'm sure they're delighted to hear that the government's trying to interfere in this particular way. Right.

So there's two sides to every coin. Maybe it'll pick them up some votes in Montreal, but lose them some votes in the suburbs. And lastly, because we only about a minute left, but if you handed this information to all party leaders. Which one would be more, most emboldened to go back to the polls on the off chance that the government falls on the confidence motion that will be its budget? Well, I think it'd be Mr. Carney, because right now people have a good view of him. Numbers are solid in Quebec and Ontario.

You know, he's got surrogates who are known to differing levels of ability. And, you know, he's been getting in trouble with some of his cabin ministries these last few days. So maybe this is the team he wants to put out rather than some of the others. But I think he'd want to go to the polls at this point. For the NDP, they don't have any resources for the conservatives. I think they would want to have a more united party

have Mr. Paulyov passes leadership review first. And they've got a lot of work to do in fixing their nomination. Yeah, and you have slow and steady, possibly gets him back to a place where the favorables outweigh the unfavorables. I don't know. We'll have to see. I've got friends who say,

they will never vote for Pierre Poliyev because he's too unlikable and I find that very short-sighted because he said it always comes down to the alternative, right? No, you're absolutely right. All right, thank you very much, my friend. I appreciate it.

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