Jimmy Kimmel Fired-Was it Right & Should the FCC have Gotten Involved plus Trump Designates ANTIFA a Terrorist Organization
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Summary
Ted Cruz and Ben Ferguson discuss the fallout from Jimmy Kimmel's suspension, the FBI declaring Antifa a terrorist organization, and the role of the FCC in protecting the First Amendment rights of Americans. Plus, Ted and Ben talk about how to keep your dog healthy and active.
Transcript
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Welcome, it is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
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It's nice to have you with us wherever you're listening around the country.
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And we've got a packed show for you, including one of your best friends, Senator Jimmy Kimmel.
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I mean, are you guys going to have a lot more time to play basketball now?
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Unfortunately, I think that is a fantastic thing.
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I think Jimmy Kimmel was putting out garbage for a long, long time.
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But we're going to break down because there are real questions about why ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel
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We're going to break down the First Amendment implications of that.
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We're also going to talk about a hearing that happened this week.
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Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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And I questioned Kash and I called on the Trump administration to designate Antifa as a terrorist
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And in particular, what I urged the FBI and the DOJ to do is follow the money.
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Follow those who are putting money behind violent protests, riots, acts of violence.
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And and we're also going to talk about how the fact that that within 24 hours, the Trump
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administration announced they were doing exactly that.
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They were going to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.
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And we're going to talk about all of it coming up in a moment.
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Now, Senator, let's go back to how all this went down so people understand.
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Jimmy Kimmel went after our dear friend who was assassinated and went after him and basically
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implied that he's responsible for his own assassination.
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And oh, by the way, he was a Trump supporter referring to the assassin.
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That is why he got in trouble, because he lied.
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It's not because of free speech, which some people have complicated this into a free speech
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By the way, he can say whatever the hell he wants.
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Number one, Jimmy Kimmel had become profoundly unfunny.
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There was a time, I don't know, 15 years ago, that he was a talented comedian.
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You know, he started hosting The Man Show with Adam Carolla, and they were pretty funny
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And when Donald Trump got elected, it broke late night comedy.
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The host of late night comedy, they used to be able to make fun of both sides.
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And by the way, good comedy, it ought to make fun of Republicans and Democrats.
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But Jimmy Kimmel, just like Stephen Colbert, his brain melted when Donald Trump came into
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The vast majority of America doesn't watch it anymore because Jimmy Kimmel would stand
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up and just basically scream, I hate Donald Trump.
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By the way, you know, when I was first elected to the Senate 13 years ago, it was a regular
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Today, none of them, zero, have any Republicans on.
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They just, their entire show is essentially an infomercial screaming that they hate Donald
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On top of that, Kimmel's numbers had plummeted.
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According to Late Nighter, in August, Jimmy Kimmel lost 11% of his audience, down to 1.104
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To put that in perspective, Jimmy Kimmel was getting fewer viewers than we have verdict
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That's like, that's like the real deal right there.
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Like, like he's, he's on ABC in every television in America and verdict was kicking his ass.
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Now, now, by the way, I, I, we will continue kicking his ass and I want to keep, continue
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growing those numbers, but 1.104 million viewers.
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And by the way, in the 18 to 49 demographic, which is the critical demographic for selling
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stuff that advertisers care about, Kimmel was down 15%.
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Do you know how many viewers, 18 to 49, he had?
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With a 16, a report, I think it was $16 million a year salary, by the way, for him.
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And to give that in perspective, Colbert, who was fired, was losing Paramount $40 million
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So, so we don't know what the numbers were, but, but Kimmel had lost even more viewers
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So you have to assume he was losing ABC even more money than Colbert was doing.
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All right, Senator, I want to go back to what you were saying a moment ago.
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And, and one of the interesting things about Kimmel that I do want to break down is so many
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on the left are screaming, this is cancel culture.
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I also think though, that ABC news was looking for a reason to get out for what you just
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described, which is you don't have anybody watching the revenues down.
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And so this was a perfect opportunity to say, Hey, we can get out of this with reason here.
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Page six is even saying they even asked him if you gave some money and made a donation
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That's what they're reporting tonight as well, uh, is that they're saying, Hey, like, you
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know, like he's like, no, I'm not going to apologize to Kirk family.
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So it gave them even an easier ability to get rid of him and can this thing early.
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Look, unquestionably ABC was hemorrhaging money.
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This, this was a smart business decision, but also what Jimmy Kimmel said was reprehensible.
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I want you to, if you're watching online, I want you to watch.
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This is the monologue that got Jimmy Kimmel fired.
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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 and doing everything
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In between the finger pointing, there was a grieving on Friday.
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Today, the White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism, but on a
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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, which is something
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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, demolition, construction.
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This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend.
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This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK?
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By the way, so people understand context there.
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The reporting out of the White House and people I've talked to have said that the president
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was gutted over the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
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It was pretty clear he did not want to talk about it right then.
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And as he was outside, it's not like reporters are his therapists.
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I mean, it was obvious he didn't want to go there at that moment.
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And so he and let me say, Ben, the thing to understand about Jimmy Kimmel, what he just
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So he stood up and said, the murderer of Charlie Kirk was a MAGA Republican.
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If you didn't listen to our last podcast, you should go back and listen to it.
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I went on CNN with Caitlin Collins and she fought me like crazy.
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This murderer, this assassin was a left-wing radical.
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He was living with a transgender man transitioning to be a woman.
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He wrote on the bullets Antifa and transgender slogans.
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The vast majority of Democrats today believe Charlie Kirk's murderer was a MAGA Republican
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because the media is corrupt and they are lying.
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When I was on CNN with Caitlin Collins, she refused to acknowledge that because CNN is lying
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And Jimmy Kimmel stood up with his measly 1.1 million viewers and lied to them.
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Now, ABC, theoretically, ABC News is a news organization.
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They should not be in the business of lying to Americans.
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And Jimmy Kimmel shamelessly lied to them because he has a political agenda.
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The View on ABC is actually, I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, under the news division.
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Kimmel is under, in general, I think, entertainment, but under their news.
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But if you want to know how much propaganda machine ABC News is, this is just an example.
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In 2025, The View has had 102 liberal guests on and not one single Republican guest.
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But by the way, to be clear, Ben, I've been on The View multiple times.
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Now, particularly for the third book, we got into it.
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Whoopi Goldberg and the other cackling hosts of The View insisted...
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That was the nicest way it's ever been put, by the way.
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Look, I got to say, I'm on good behavior, because I went through like nine different
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But Whoopi insisted, she said, violence is only a right-wing phenomenon.
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And I said, well, what about the Antifa and the Black Lives Matter riots all over the
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And she looked at me befuddled and said, I don't know what an Antifa or Black Lives Matter
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You think about the millions of housewives that watch that show that are lied to every
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It went so badly for them that my fourth book, Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in
00:14:29.980
America, available on Amazon, by the way, when it came out, I reached out and said, hey,
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We are in the business of lying to our viewers.
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And when you come on, you make it really hard to lie to our viewers because you actually
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And we're just not good enough to lie in the face of facts and substance.
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You mentioned Caitlin Collins in your interview.
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Just if you missed it, it's up on social media.
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I actually think that you should do more of these because the number of viral clips that
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came out of you going on with Caitlin Collins and people seeing your grand debate with her,
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which is an important one, and calling her out for saying we don't know the motive and
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the death, the assassination of Charlie Kirk is one that now has just exploded.
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It may be worth it for you to do this like every week because then you get to call them
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out every week and they are held accountable because otherwise they just go on TV and they
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Jimmy Kimmel was fired because number one, he's not funny.
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Number two, he was losing ABC massive amounts of money.
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And number three, he flat out lied on an incredibly important issue, which is who the murderer of
00:15:55.660
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So let's get to this issue, Senator, about the FCC.
00:18:16.300
This is, I want to be clear, I believe it's controversial.
00:18:23.120
And you and I actually really haven't talked about this much, so I genuinely want to know
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I don't like people tipping the scales and pushing too hard.
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Because if we do it, they're going to do it when they get back in power.
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And it will happen 10 times harder than what we're talking about right now.
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I don't want someone shutting me down in what I do for a living or free speech.
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You and I have not talked about this before doing the podcast.
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But I'm not surprised that we're on the same page.
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I want to play, because a lot of the media is very much focused on this, particularly
00:19:10.900
But Brendan Carr, who's the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, he did an
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But he leaned in hard on Jimmy Kimmel, and he threatened government retaliation for what
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So I want you to give a listen to this interview, and then we're going to talk about it.
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I mean, you go back to Representative Swalwell.
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He had a tweet out last week where he was saying that, you know, emphasizing that Charlie
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Kirk's killer was a straight white male from a Republican family that voted for Donald Trump.
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In some quarters, there's a very concerted effort to try to lie to the American people about the
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nature, as you indicated, of one of the most significant, newsworthy public interest acts that
00:20:03.160
And what appears to be an action, appears to be an action, by Jimmy Kimmel to play into that
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narrative that this was somehow a MAGA or Republican-motivated person.
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If that's what happened here with his conduct, that is really, really sick.
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From the moment that I have become chairman of the FCC, I want to reinvigorate the public
00:20:29.260
And what people don't understand is that the broadcasters, and you've gotten this right,
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are entirely different than people that use other forms of communication.
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They have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate
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And we can get into some ways that we've been trying to reinvigorate the public interest
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But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or
00:20:54.820
These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you
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know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.
00:21:07.640
I, at the very least, would like to have an on-air apology from Jimmy Kimmel to the Kirk
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family, to all of those who he slandered because he did say that Charlie Kirk, he is effectively
00:21:20.820
saying that our movement did this, our movement killed Charlie, that Charlie was deserving of
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This happens quite regularly, actually, on MSNBC and on other networks where they're
00:21:38.520
And what that does, Mr. Chairman, respectfully, is continues the lie and continues the threat
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level to say effectively that we have no share in this problem at all on the left.
00:21:59.140
Well, look, I think what you said there strikes me as a very reasonable, minimal step that can
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I mean, obviously, look, there's calls for Kimmel be fired.
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I think, you know, you could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this.
00:22:14.800
And again, you know, the FCC is going to have remedies that we could look at.
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And again, you know, we may ultimately be called to be a judge on that.
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Hold on, for people that are listening, because this is going to be, quote, controversial, so
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When you say no and it's dangerous, explain and run this out, the slippery slope that
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this can open, so that people understand why we're saying it.
00:22:53.640
So the Federal Communication Commission is in charge of granting broadcast licenses.
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So ABC, NBC, CBS, they have licenses from the FCC.
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It is true that under statute, they're required to be in the public interest.
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And his lying to the American people is not in the public interest.
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And so he threatens explicitly, we're going to cancel ABC's license.
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We're going to take him off the air so ABC cannot broadcast anymore.
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He says, we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.
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And I got to say, that's right out of Goodfellas.
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That's right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, nice bar you have here.
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Jimmy Kimmel has mocked me so many times, I cannot count.
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But let me tell you, if the government gets in the business of saying, we don't like what you, the media, have said.
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We're going to ban you from the airwaves if you don't say what we like.
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It reminds me of, you and I are both fans of the Lord of the Rings.
00:24:29.760
It's sort of like conservatives are saying, wait, wait.
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Again, going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again, wins the White House.
00:24:45.880
They will get rid of every talk show host in America that's a conservative.
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They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly.
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And by the way, in the Biden administration, they tried to go after and revoke Fox's license
00:25:04.980
because they didn't like it, and they say everything they say on Fox is hate speech.
00:25:09.080
I'm sure they say everything you and I say is hate speech.
00:25:13.360
They've defined anything counter to the leftist narrative as misinformation.
00:25:20.100
Now, we just talked about Jimmy Kimmel was lying.
00:25:25.760
Brendan said, well, gosh, they slandered Charlie Kirk and his family.
00:25:32.800
If they slandered him, there's already a remedy.
00:25:38.540
And by the way, you get a defamation lawsuit, you could pay millions of dollars.
00:25:44.600
I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying,
00:25:51.460
we're going to decide what speech we like and what we don't,
00:25:54.720
and we're going to threaten to take you off air if we don't like what you're saying.
00:25:58.460
And it might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel.
00:26:02.860
But when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.
00:26:08.320
And so, again, I like Brendan Carr, but we should not be in this business.
00:26:14.420
It's fine to say what Jimmy Kimmel said was deplorable.
00:26:20.040
And he should be off air, but we shouldn't be threatening government power to force him off air.
00:26:29.640
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Senator, I want to get to something else that happened earlier this week, and that was the questioning of the FBI director, Cash Patel.
00:27:05.340
You had the opportunity to talk with Cash on a number of different issues.
00:27:08.600
Obviously, one of them that was in front of mine was the assassination of our friend Charlie Kirk.
00:27:17.020
So this week, Cash Patel, the director of the FBI, testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:27:21.440
And I took the opportunity to question him on a number of topics, but front and center to urge Cash Patel to follow the money and, in particular, to go after Antifa and to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.
00:27:38.960
I want to encourage you, in the course of this investigation, absolutely go after anyone who aided and abetted.
00:27:48.960
But I want to more broadly encourage you, follow the money.
00:27:52.860
The violence we are seeing is not purely organic.
00:28:01.060
There is, I believe, significant money that is spreading dissension, that is spreading violence.
00:28:09.160
Do you believe Antifa is a terrorist organization?
00:28:14.900
I believe Antifa is associated with a lot of violence in this country as to its designation.
00:28:19.460
I'll leave that to the appropriate authorities.
00:28:20.880
So I would encourage the administration to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization, to go systematically after Antifa.
00:28:27.440
They've committed acts of violence all over the country.
00:28:31.600
And the shell casings have multiple references to slogans that Antifa has popularized.
00:28:36.880
I believe there is considerable money funding it.
00:28:41.340
I would note that I've introduced legislation called the Stop Funders Act.
00:28:45.320
Stop Funders Act would add rioting to the list of predicate offenses under RICO.
00:28:51.400
I believe the money should be tracked and prosecuted under RICO.
00:28:57.140
And both the Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots of a couple of years ago and the pro-open border riots in Los Angeles and other cities of this past year.
00:29:08.800
I believe there was significant money behind those riots.
00:29:13.100
I'm not the only person who noticed at the anti-Semitic protests and violent protests on college campuses that many of the tents all matched.
00:29:22.960
And so I would ask, would it aid your ability to prosecute these matters if Congress passed into law the Stop Funders Act and if rioting was added to the list of predicate offenses for RICO?
00:29:39.260
Talk to me about the efforts of the FBI to go after the funders of the anti-Semitic protests on college campuses, the pro-open border protests in cities, and potential LGBT violence.
00:29:55.420
Talk to me about the efforts to go after the money of those who are funding and promoting violence.
00:30:01.240
As I've always said, Senator, money doesn't lie, and we've been following the money.
00:30:04.720
And so that's what we're doing, issuing lawful process to organizations involved with criminal activity because the money's got to come from somewhere and it has to be funded somehow.
00:30:12.700
So we have extensive investigations ongoing into numerous organizations that are related to violent criminal activity.
00:30:20.220
Cutting off the money will make America much safer, and that is the core job of the FBI, and I thank you for doing your job.
00:30:26.960
Now, you look at what you just said there in the back and forth, Senator, and this turned very quickly into a new policy from the Trump administration as well.
00:30:44.300
The very next day, President Trump announced he was doing what I was calling for, which is designating Antifa as a terrorist organization.
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he will designate Antifa, a left-wing activist group, a major terrorist organization.
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Trump described the group as, quote, a sick, dangerous, radical left disaster in a truth social announcement.
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The president added that he will be strongly recommending that those funding Antifa be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices.
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The announcement comes just days after Trump said he would 100 percent consider the designation.
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Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office Monday, Trump accused Antifa participants of being, quote, professional agitators in response to the administration's recent crackdown on illegal immigration.
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They're throwing bricks at cars of the ICE and Border Patrol.
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What they're doing in this country is really subversive.
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And I will say this goes right to the heart of a distinction that I've tried to lay out repeatedly, which is free speech is protected.
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You can say things that are vile, that are hateful, that are horrible, that we hate, and the First Amendment protects it.
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When you engage in violence, it is not protected.
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What Antifa is doing, engaging in violence, engaging in harassment, engaging in threats, that is not protected.
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And so what I urge Kash Patel, follow the money, go after the money.
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And look, I believe there's money that is coming from foreign nations.
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There may be money coming from communist China.
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And there's also money coming from the gazillionaire left-wing funders of the Democrat Party, people like George Soros and his entire organization that are funding these radical organizations.
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And it's one thing to go and prosecute the individual criminals.
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But if you want to solve the problem, it's why I've introduced the legislation, the Stop Funders Act, because RICO is an incredibly powerful tool to prosecute not just an individual defendant, but a criminal organization.
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And criminal organizations are usually structured with a hub and spokes.
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And so following the money is how you get the people writing checks that are sitting in their Manhattan penthouses funding the anti-American, anti-Israel, communist, jihadist agitators that are destroying this country.
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I've been pressing in the first Trump administration.
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I pressed for years for the first Trump administration to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.
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There was a lot of openness to that argument, but it never succeeded.
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This time, when I pressed on Tuesday, the next day, the president came out and said, we're going to do that.
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It's going to have a huge impact going forward.
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And, of course, you know you're doing something right when the left is losing their mind.
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They're saying, oh, this is the president trying to silence political organizations.
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There's a big difference between a political organization and a terrorist organization.
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And Antifa has all the markings, as you described it, of a terrorist organization going all the way back to 2016 when you first were calling for this.
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And, by the way, anyone who commits violence should be prosecuted and go to jail.
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And that's true whether you're left-wing or right-wing.
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I might agree with what you're saying, but if you engage in violence, that is not acceptable.
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We ought to protect speech, and we ought to prosecute violence and put the violent criminals in jail.
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