The Daily Signal - Senate Passes 48 Trump Nominations at Once, Accusations of Kimmel FCC Interference | Sept. 19, 2025

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Starting point is 00:00:25 We'd love to talk. Business. The Senate finally pushes past minority leader Chuck Schumer's roadblocks to confirm 48 nominations at once. The House vote to censure Ilhan Omar of Minnesota fails, and accusations of federal coercion in the Jimmy Kimmel suspension are a mile wide and an inch deep. I'm Tony Kennett, host of the Daily Signals Tony Kenned cast, syndicated nationally at 7 p.m. Eastern. It is finally Friday, September 19th, 2025. This is the Daily Signals, top news in 10. With a vote of 51 to 47 yesterday, Senate Minority Leader John Thune finally came to the position of changing a rule in the Senate, which required each nomination to be voted on individually.

Starting point is 00:01:18 After, for months, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had delayed the process, which at this point in a presidential administration is essentially passing any nomination as soon as they hit the floor because, the positions that are being appointed, for example, the ambassador of Greece is not one that's considered extremely critical and highly political and important to quibble over. But as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had stated, he was willing to do anything and everything to hold up every action of the Trump administration, including holding up every single Senate nomination in an unprecedented fashion. As a result, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the rest of the Republican caucus majority agreed to vote on a rule change. It would allow a slate of 48 nominations to be appointed at once. On this vote, the yeas are 51 and the nays are 47 and the

Starting point is 00:02:17 nominations on block are confirmed. Thank you. Thank you. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer responded to this by calling the decision, quote, historically bad, end quote, then suggested that Republicans will later, quote, come to regret and quote, their actions, possibly trying to echo Republican Senator Mitch McConnell's warning to, at the time, Senate Majority Leader Democrat Harry Reid in 2013, when Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option for nominees, only a majority of 51 needed to pass a nominee through the Senate. Senator Thune said, quote, there will be more to come,

Starting point is 00:02:58 and we'll ensure that President Trump's administration is filled at a pace looks more like those of his predecessors." In the House, things did not go as well as Republican leadership had hoped. Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has been criticized for her open lambasting of slain Charlie Kirk post his assassination in a number of instances, not just in one clip or tweet.

Starting point is 00:03:24 Here are a couple of those moments in compilation. I said that the people who are full of shit were the people who were saying that Kurt was civil. Thank you. No, that's true. The person who called for public execution of people he disagreed with is not civil. Charlie was someone who was willing to debate and downplay the death of George Floyd in the hands of Minneapolis police. I think he called him a scumbag?

Starting point is 00:03:58 Right. Have no regard. downplay slavery and what black people have gone through in this country. Representative Nancy Mace filed a measure that would have censured Ilhan Omar, condemning her statements and celebrating Charlie Kirk's assassination while simultaneously saying rather gross and untrue things about him and his family, as well as removing Omar of any committee assignments that she held in the house. The measure failed after Republican representatives Mike Flood,

Starting point is 00:04:29 of Nebraska, Jeff Heard of Colorado, Tom McClintick of California, and Corey Mills of Florida voted to table the measure. Axios has reported that Mills cut a deal with Democrats, thereby suggesting that Mills would not be censured by a Democrat vote later in the week, that vote being withdrawn. Further reporting from the Blaze highlights a more troubled history of Representative Mills and possible connections to beliefs held by Ilhan Omar. You can catch those, of course, over in the exclusive reporting by our friends at the Blades. And last but certainly not least, well, at least if you've been watching any media over the last 24 hours, accusations of federal coercion abound in the Jimmy Kimmel suspension by Next Star and ABC Disney Media Group.

Starting point is 00:05:20 Officials and major comedians, media analysts, journalists have suggested this is a serious breach of the First Amendment. The core accusation suggests that Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communication Commission, had threatened ABC News, media entities, as well as Nextar in the middle of a potential merger, suggesting that if they didn't clear some things up around Jimmy Kimmel and an interview with Benny Johnson, then perhaps the FCC might look into certain investigations regarding FCC violations, for example, through Next

Starting point is 00:05:58 Stars on-Spectrum broadcasts. Carr did clarify and distill his comments regarding the FCC's potential investigation or questions about Kimmel's activities and of course, Kimmel's assertion that the shooter in the

Starting point is 00:06:14 Charlie Kirk assassination was a MAGA individual in a Fox News interview yesterday. Yeah, I mean, you can't avoid radio. At the end of the day, the market is going to be undefeated. In a lot of these corporations, Disney and Comcast, they had been protecting and frankly subsidizing this content. Again, once President Trump smashed that facade, he gave a permission structure to local

Starting point is 00:06:36 broadcasters to finally stand up. And when you're losing money in the case of Colbert, reportedly $50 million, that's only going to go so far. And the same thing with Kimmel, they're now facing the consequences of the choices that they made to appeal to be very narrowed, very narrow audience. Again, you can do that. You can start a podcast. You can go on YouTube. But if you're going to have a license from the FCC, we expect you to broadly serve the public interest.

Starting point is 00:06:59 We sat down with Chris Lesh yesterday to discuss some of the issues around the accusations here and why they may not hold water. So the idea that the FCC had put any kind of pressure on that was completely stomped today when Brendan Carr of the FCC came on my wife's program. So they were saying that Carr himself did it. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, now joins us via video. Mr. Chairman, it's good to see you. I just wanted to get your response to this. So apparently you called up ABC and Neckstar in Sinclair and you personally put pressure on them to get Jimmy Kimmel fired. Is that true? No, not at all, but it does, I guess, tell a better story for partisans on the left. I think it's ironic. I mean, some of these very same people are engaged, and I think we can only be explained as projection. These are the same officials that literally were doing exactly that. What's happening here is we're undergoing a very fundamental shift in the dynamics in the media ecosystem. Most people don't get this, right, but you've got national programmers. That's Disney ABC. That's Comcast, NBC.

Starting point is 00:08:07 they don't have FCC licenses, and they therefore don't have a federal obligation to operate in the public interest. But they produce most of the primetime TV shows that you do see on broadcast TV, whether it's 60 Minutes or NFL football or late night shows. Now, local broadcast TV stations, like your local Channel 7, wherever you are, they are licensed by the FCC, and they've been given a unique opportunity to use public spectrum, this public resource. And because of that, they have a public interest obligation. So the way this is supposed to work is Disney and Comcast can come up with whatever programming they want, and individual TV stations are supposed to decide, should we run this or should we not? Now, that's what Congress intended.

Starting point is 00:08:50 But the last 10, 15, 20 years, that hasn't happened because Comcasts and Disney and the programmers amassed so much power that they could effectively force local TV stations in Utah, in Pennsylvania, to run this progressive foie gras coming out of New York. in Hollywood. What we saw yesterday was really a pivot point because it was the local TV stations that said, I've got to look out for the needs of my local community. I don't want to run this Kimball stuff and we're going to preempt it. And that's a really important moment of local TV stations standing up for their viewers and pushing back against Comcast and Disney. So it's a market correction that's really necessary. But it's people don't want to grapple with that, right? They want to

Starting point is 00:09:31 try to point fingers or try to find boogeymen. But that's really what's going to. on here. And he has been coming on her show for many years. They have a good rapport. And he completely stomped that theory in the ground. He said he put no pressure on any of the entities that made this decision to take Kimmel off the air. And honestly, just like Colbert, if we look at it with a little bit of objectivity, I think we see that these shows were really doing poor in the ratings. the culture in America has shifted more towards the right and their brand of comedy, which Charlie Kirk told us several years ago, I believe it was a tweet in 2017. Jimmy Kimmel's just not funny.

Starting point is 00:10:18 The funniest person that was ever working with Kimmel was Guillermo or Adam Carolla back in the days of the Man Show, which he would cancel himself for in these days, by the way. You can catch the remainder of the first part of that interview in last night's episode of the Tony Kinnettcast, or you can catch the entire interview, which ended up being a phenomenal discussion over a half an hour, Chris being the better half of that discussion, on Saturday. That's when we're going to release that, so a little weekend treat for y'all. So before you go, head down to the description and make sure you're subscribed to the Tony Kinnettcast, so you can get notified when that interview and tonight's episode of the Tony Kinnettcast at 7 p.m. Eastern drops.

Starting point is 00:11:03 love to see you there. We've got a great roundup of the week's news and nonsense. I'm Tony Kinnett and this has been the Daily Signals top news in 10. Take care.

The Daily Signal - Senate Passes 48 Trump Nominations at Once, Accusations of Kimmel FCC Interference | Sept. 19, 2025

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