“Where Was The Joke?” - Did ABC SILENCE Jimmy Kimmel Over Charlie Kirk Murder Claims?
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Summary
Jimmy Kimmel has been fired from the ABC sitcom The Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel Live after a controversial comment he made about the death of Charlie Kirk. Rob and Sarah discuss the firing of the late night talk show host and why they think it s a good thing.
Transcript
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On Wednesday afternoon, we get news that ABC has moved on with Jimmy Kimmel.
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What do you mean they've moved on with Jimmy Kimmel?
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And then news came out that the reason why this happened is because the FCC,
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We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize
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this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them
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and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
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In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.
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On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism.
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But on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.
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My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk.
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May I ask, sir, personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir?
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And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks?
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They've just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House,
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which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years,
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He's at the fourth stage of grief, construction.
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This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody.
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Stephen A. Smith said something very interesting.
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He said, look, aren't late-night show hosts supposed to be funny?
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You're not even doing that, which is the most simple question.
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The only thing that I would say, as it pertains to Jimmy Kimmel,
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And obviously, that has a comedic attachment to it.
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I have no problem with what, you know, he wants to say.
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Go start a podcast and compete with Midas Touch.
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When they had their podcast during COVID, they actually did well.
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Him and his couple buddies, they had their thing going on.
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But, man, we want to watch you and we want you to make us laugh.
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We want you to not get into politics and lose half the audience.
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Many, many years ago, the great, the one and only Johnny Carson,
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People say he'll never take a serious controversy.
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I said, now, tell me the last time that Jack Benny,
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Why do they think that just because you have a tonight show
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Once you start that, you start to get that self-important feeling
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And, you know, strangely enough, you could use that show as a form.
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And I don't think you should as an entertainer.
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Maybe walk us through what happened with Disney, Bob Iger.
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Because, obviously, the story here, when you hear that Bob Iger reaches out,
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Yeah, there's a story that says Bob Iger reached out to...
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Yeah, unrepentant Jimmy Kimmel refused to apologize
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after Charlie Kirk's outrage and planned to double down
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you can go to whatever you got up there with Jesse.
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that blamed MAGA supporters for killing conservative Charlie Kirk
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and said he was going to double down on attacking President Trump's backers
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Kimmel learned in a phone call from top Disney exec Dana Walden
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on Wednesday afternoon that his show was being removed indefinitely.
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During the call, Kimmel reportedly refused to comply with calls from critics
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and the owners of dozens of ABC affiliate stations for him to apologize.
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Another source told Hollywood reported that Jimmy Kimmel Live host also claimed
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that he was planning to call out his critics for the late attack on him
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all while trying to clarify his comments about Charlie Kirk.
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Instead, Kimmel had claimed his comments were mischaracterized
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when he said during a Monday night show, which was the click that we played for you.
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So Jimmy Kimmel's contract is up before the end of this year.
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Late night as a category has been unprofitable.
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These are analysts looking at it, Pat, since 22.
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Since the bounce out year after COVID, late night has been unprofitable.
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You don't need to be a math expert to look at that.
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It's all everybody's watching because it was Trump, 2016 Trump.
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They say in 2022, all of the networks started suffering
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and saying that their late night, they had giant contracts.
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At least Leno kept going at 0.96, 0.85, 0.85, then shows up 1.01.
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And then Fallon, year one, is on fire, 1.5 for 1.18, 1.02.
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And then by year four, he fell below what Leno was and never recovered from it from 17 on.
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And it was affiliates and advertisers that first went to Iger.
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And supposedly, as you just covered, Kimmel is going to double down.
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And Deadline Hollywood and some others were leaking out that some people on the writing staff kind of leaked who are looking for jobs tomorrow, Vinny, right?
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How many people are around, like a comedy show and stuff?
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You've got like 12 people, directors, good people with jobs, right?
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Might they have whispered upstairs that says, hey, he's about to double down tonight.
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And what happened was then Iger's people said, dude, you know, you're not doing this.
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But everybody runs to First Amendment and all that.
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The customers are upset with one of your employees.
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And an employee might get fired or put on the bench for a few minutes.
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This was a – and by the way, Chris Cuomo got it right.
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Last night, Chris Cuomo was saying, hey, he got sideways with this employer and his employer took action.
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But the big thing, Pat, is ABC and everybody else have been looking for a reason to move these off because as a late night as a category is getting killed by Netflix streaming and alternatives because the new generation doesn't want them.
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Leno, they started talking to him about getting off the air because he wasn't doing good with the demographic when he was 59.
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And he fought it until he was 63 when they finally pushed him off.
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Vinny, you had an idea about what you think who should replace a guy like this for them to test something out.
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Like, if you guys think about it, it's – Tom, what are you talking about?
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How much louder do those numbers have to punch you in the face?
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For instance, and I'm happy you did it, in August, Kimmel's ratings was 1.1 million total viewers.
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Pat, it was down around 1.9 million in January.
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The key 18 to 49 demographic dropped about 284,000 in June to 129,000.
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And you had us read the book Blue Ocean Strategy.
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For you guys that have – who wrote the book, Pat?
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Guys, when people are in the Red Ocean fighting and killing and everything and it's not working,
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you go to the Blue Ocean where it's clear and you have a different plan.
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Try a conservative person that's in the middle that's just funny.
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Somebody that's willing to find the Johnny Carson.
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I think – and Marcelo's not even a conservative.
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If you're smart enough to get a guy like him – how old is he, 28?
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Now, they're probably going to wait 10 more years until he gets the job.
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But if I was a guy, I would start working with him and finding a way for him to become that.
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If I bring a late-night show, you know, I think there's a couple of the guys that, you know, I'm a big believer of a lot of these other comedians that are out there.
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But if I'm doing this and you truly want to go to none, bring a guy that's neutral like him and see how he does, how he performs.
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He would be on my top five list if I'm hiring somebody.
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Oh, and I would look to do it now and go back to what Carson said.
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I'm not looking for you to be 38 years old and have depth of understanding of all these issues because that's not what I want you to be.
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Yeah, and mind you, I think, I know, I understand with the waiting, he would crush it right now.
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If they announced that he's there, bro, finally, not the same old white guy that's just like, hey, America sucks, this guy sucks, it's boring.
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And you know what pissed me off about the whole situation was the selective outrage.
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And for all those people out there, please just cry me a freaking river.
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Where was everybody when they fired Tim Allen for being a conservative?
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Okay, Last Man Standing had some of the highest ratings for years, and they canceled it because of his political affiliation.
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Gita Carano, Roseanne Barr, Megyn Kelly, even Jason Whitlock.
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Megyn Kelly fired for making comments about Halloween costumes.
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So I don't want to hear anybody, anybody talking about free speech because free speech is free.
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You can say whatever you want, but there's consequences.
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My question to you is, if somebody had valutainment, okay, you're a free speech absolutist.
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If Rob started going out there and just bashing Charlie's family, I hope he, good for him, and falsely, Jimmy Kimmel, falsely claiming that this freaking Tyler guy was a MAGA guy, you have every right under the law to fire him.
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I would say to him, here's what I would say to him.
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And for example, like on the last podcast, Eric Bolling here said that Candace hasn't spoke at, what do you call it, at TPUSA for many years.
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And a guy sent me a message saying, hey, she did speak at the event.
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I thought she spoke in 23 because she was pregnant last year.
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So she did speak in June of 2024 at Turning Point USA.
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When you do go through it and somebody gets it wrong, all you have to say is, hey, this is what happened here.
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So if Rob all of a sudden is like, no, I'm not going to apologize.
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It's not a, listen, ain't nobody going to get everything right 100%.
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I just wanted Jimmy to, you know, there comes a time in your life, honestly, where I think you pay attention to politics more.
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And you choose a position that doesn't necessarily happen in your 20s like it did with Charlie and a lot of younger Gen Z.
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They're going to rock the world for decades to come.
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Watch what Gen Z conservative kids are going to do the next 10, 20, 30 years.
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We're going to witness what this generation is going to do because of Charlie.
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But to me, when do you start really caring about politics?
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When do you start really caring about politics?
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When do you start paying really a lot of taxes?
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When you start caring about politics, when you're around a lot of other people that are feeding you whatever, he's in it, right?
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But if you want to talk politics, Jimmy, and just say, you know, it would have been more honorable to say, look, I'm at a phase of my life that I think comedy's changed my life.
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But honestly, I've been sitting with my friends and family and a lot of people that I respect.
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And they're telling me, Jimmy, you're talking too much politics every night and it's no longer comedy.
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And this is why I've chosen to go and move away from this.
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And I want to go out there and start talking about issues that matter to me.
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If he would have done that, guess what you say?
00:14:46.680
When is actually the last time you watched a late night show from beginning to the end?
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I think I have watched the full ones of Johnny Carson.
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And by the way, I liked Fallon at the beginning.
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What we need right now, believe it or not, Vinny, we really do need comedy right now.
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The business of laughing should do very well today.
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Do you know which one of our channels is growing that fast?
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This is a great time to be in the laugh business.
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I don't know if people realize there's so much pressure.
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People would much rather watch Vinny do 20 voices of animals running around than freaking
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And I'm being said, yeah, we will sit here, do research.
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Vinny will be running out of somebody doing his thing.
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So to me, the reason why I'm saying this is there is a model for comedy on late night,
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Like the late night people that are running it.
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And the one that was conservative was Liz Cheney.
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You missed out on having all these guys on your show?
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I just think they royally screwed up with a great opportunity.
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You just want to watch Marcelo, matter of fact.
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If you haven't heard of Marcelo Hernandez, he's the young rising star on SNL.
00:18:19.560
You know how they always say, like, in the culture wars, go woke, go broke.
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Like, he would just do his stuff all the time, right?
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And one time I'm like, so what do you want to do?
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I said, so why don't we think about something for you to do here as a show?
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I'm like, Marcelo, let us get a podcast and a show going for you here.
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This guy was, he says, Pat, he says, I would rather take $30,000 from Netflix than a million
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dollars from anybody else just to make sure my special is on Netflix.
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The guy is now in Happy Gilmore 2 doing stuff with Bad Bunny, doing stuff with pretty much
00:19:30.260
But moral of the story with this comedy stuff is it's not over with.
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When you're talking about, you know, he's talking about comments about Charlie Kirk.
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By the way, have we gone to the Keith Olbermann stuff?
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Go to play that Chris clip that you have, right?
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This is part of the stuff that's the controversy of Chris Hayes.
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Because here's a great thing about the Internet today.
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You know what's awesome about the Internet today?
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The BBC made the announcement that Kimmel would indeed be taken off the air indefinitely.
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And this is just the latest chapter in Donald Trump's ongoing campaign to crack down on free speech, dominate the media, and essentially render the First Amendment meaningless.
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So it was for the journeyman cable news host, Tucker Carlson, just fired from his third network.
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He believed he could say anything, no matter how vile, no matter how disgusting, no matter how offensive, no matter how dehumanizing or belittling.
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And if you act like a sociopath over and over and over and over, you will become unpopular on the national stage.
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Over time, probably not going to work out well for me.
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The guy was running the number one show when he got fired.
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And even today, his podcast is a top three, top four podcast on Spotify, ongoing.
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And he goes around the world interviewing guys.
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I don't agree with a lot of stuff sometimes, Tucker says.
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But you can't say this stuff about – by the way, I invited Tucker to speak at the VOL conference.
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We have text exchange he and I three months ago, invited him to come and speak.
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And I said, can you just give the landscape of what's going on?
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He had – I think he had something going on with hunting or something he had going on for himself.
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So the story here is when you hear these, I can't believe what they did – Keith Olbermann.
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Keith Olbermann, there's a story of him calling Bob Iger.
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Are you flipping kidding me to say something like that?
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Now, the problem with this guy is he's been fired so many times, there is no more firing him.
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And yesterday, Destiny was apparently demonetized on YouTube.
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I think that happened because he said something.
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Another clip was circulating that he said, I hope Charlie Kirk's – you know which one I'm talking about right there?
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Liberal stream of Destiny who recently refused to disavow the political motivation of Charlie Kirk has been demonetized on YouTube.
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If this guy doesn't incite violence and say things like that, you'd still be up.
00:23:00.340
All the other stuff people want to make fun of him, how he chose to be married to this other girl, how he chose to be – that's his personal life.
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I don't care what he wants to do with that part.
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But you cross the line and you say something about Republicans and MAGA and capitalists and all this.
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These guys – you know, there's a slippery slope.
00:23:16.660
Vinny's been working on something for the last six months.
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And I want Vinny to tell you about the shirt here.
00:23:26.280
So, guys, like Pat said, I've been trying to work on this shirt for almost a year, Pat, if I'm going to really break it down.
00:23:32.120
And, you know, traveling, Italy, this, that, never got back to it.
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But now I think this is the best time, especially with the battle and everything that we're going through right now.
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Boom, in the front to let everybody know where you're at.
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It's faith, it's confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
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Nobody, nobody's talked to him, but guess what?
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And the greatest story of faith I've ever heard, Tom told me, it was a centurion Roman soldier, and he saw Jesus, and he went up to Jesus, and he said,
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Jesus, my servant, my young servant is at the house, and he's paralyzed, and he's in immense suffering.
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And the centurion, by the way, a Gentile, looks at him and says, Lord, I do not deserve to have you under my roof, but just say the word, and you shall be healed.
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So Jesus turns to his disciples, and he goes, I have not found anyone in Israel with such faith.
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And he says to the centurion, he goes, go and let it be done just as you believe it would.
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So, and if you have faith, and you are a Christian, you have nothing to fear.
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In the Bible, the command of do not fear, do not be afraid is said 365 times in a different variation.
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So if you have faith, guys, if you have faith in God, in Jesus Christ, you have nothing to fear.
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And by the way, you know, like I wear my cross, guys?
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When you wear this shirt, you don't need jewelry because that lets everybody in front of you know.
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00:25:42.000
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