Hmmmm

 

Colbert response to Kimmel suspension

 

Better than Jon Stewart's response, which was pretty good.

Colbert's monologue.

No poking fun at the king

When Trump praised CBS for canceling Stephen Colbert, he said "I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next."

Late Wednesday, the network pulled the plug on Kimmel’s show before he took the stage by claiming, “Jimmy Kimmel Live will be pre-empted indefinitely."

That followed a statement from media powerhouse Nexstar Media Group, which owns hundreds of television stations, claiming, “Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views or values of the local communities in which we are located.”

  Raw Story

Those people are not watching Jimmy Kimmel. Obviously there is a government watchdog policing speech on TV. Pure authoritarianism. Fascism at work.

[T]he banning of Kimmel was set in motion by Donald Trump’s handpicked FCC Chair Brendan Carr who previously threatened ABC/Disney on a podcast by stating, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

[...]

[H]e took a completely opposite view about censorship in years past.

Everything changed when Trump 2.0 began.

[I]n 2019 [Carr wrote on X (Twitter)], “Should the government censor speech It doesn't like? Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in. The name of the public interest.”

“In 2021 he wrote, quote, ‘A newsroom's decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official in 2022.” Brzezinski read.

In 2023 he wrote, "Free speech is the counterweight. It is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian's dream.

[...]

Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people into the discussion. That's why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship.”

So what did Kimmel say about Kirk anyway?

"We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was, uh, grieving on Friday − the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this. "Yes, he's at the fourth stage of grief: construction. Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend; this is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK?"

  USA Today

Reveling in Kimmel's cancellation, Trump is going after two more comedians: Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.

"Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done," Trump wrote. "Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT"

  TV Insider

Just a few months ago, MAGA was screaming about "cancel culture." Now, they're loving it.

In a couple of months, the only thing we'll have to watch is state TV propaganda.

In reality, ABC claims Kimmel is suspended "indefinitely".  I guess they're waiting to see how much of a backlash it causes.  

Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr took to X earlier on Wednesday to praise Nexstar for not airing the late-night talk show on its ABC affiliate networks in response to Kimmel’s comments about the death of Kirk: “I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing. Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community.”

The news came after Nexstar, which owns dozens of local ABC affiliates, announced its intention to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! episodes starting Wednesday night.

[...]

Carr said, “Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it’s time for them to step up and say, ‘This garbage, to the extent that that’s what comes down the pipe in the future, isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities.’ But this sort of status quo is obviously not, not acceptable where we are.”

  TV Insider

Apparently, Carr is a whore to power.

BTW, Stephen Colbert won Best Talk Show a few days ago.

And, reminder...

UPDATE 03:23 pm:  The orange god king is looking really unhealthy.

Legally, they are.

The Trump administration is full of hateful, evil, vengeful nut jobs.  

UPDATE 09/19/2025:

Apparently, the law is whatever he thinks it is.

And what exactly did Jimmy Kimmel say? Reports are making it sound like he said something objectionable about Charlie Kirk. But that's not true. He said something objectionable about the Orange God King and his minions.

"Thank you for joining us here in Los Angeles, the second largest city in a bitterly divided nation where, like the rest of the country, we're still trying to wrap our heads around the senseless murder of the popular podcaster and conservative activist Charlie Kirk yesterday, whose death has amplified our anger, our differences," Kimmel said on his show last week.

"I've seen a lot of extraordinarily vile responses to this from both sides of the political spectrum. Some people are cheering this, which is something I won't ever understand," he said in the opening monologue.

"We had another school shooting yesterday in Colorado, the 100th one of the year. And with all these terrible things happening, you would think that our president will at least make an attempt to bring us together. But he didn't," Kimmel continued.

"President Obama did. President Biden did. Presidents Bush and Clinton did. President Trump did not. Instead, he blamed Democrats for their rhetoric," he said, shifting his monologue to attack Trump for his past behavior on matters such as the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

[...]

Kimmel said in his opening monologue on Monday that the U.S. had "hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it, but in between the finger-pointing, there was grieving."

He noted the White House "flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this."

Kimmel added: "Yes, he's at the fourth stage of grief: construction. Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend; this is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish?"

  Axios

UPDATE 09/25/2025:

Kudos to someone in London

 

UPDATE 09/17/2025:

The images on the castle, where King Charles is scheduled to host Trump during his state visit to the UK, were labelled a “public stunt” by police. The projection was reportedly done by campaign group Led by Donkeys.

Arrests were made on suspicions of malicious communications following the “unauthorised projection”. Images of Prince Andrew , who has also been linked to Epstein, were displayed too.

[...]

Trump’s UK visit has already been met with a range of protests across the country.

  The National

President Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, were greeted by the British royal family on Wednesday at Windsor Castle outside London, beginning a two-day state visit swaddled in the kind of pomp and grandeur that so thrills this president.

The state visit is part of an effort by the British government to engage with a president who has returned to office less interested than ever in maintaining the post-World War II order, and possibly divert him on key issues affecting the two nations. The fact that Mr. Trump has been invited to Britain for a second state visit — after his first in 2019 — is itself a rare diplomatic gesture that no other American president has enjoyed.

[...]

The Trumps traveled by helicopter from London to Windsor, where they were received by King Charles III. Mr. Trump and the King rode in a horse-drawn carriage through the Windsor estate as Queen Camilla and Mrs. Trump followed in a separate carriage. The state dinner at the 900-year-old castle will take place on Wednesday night. A number of Trump officials, friends and allies have traveled to England to attend.

  NYT

To be fair, the first time Trump was invited was under Queen Elizabeth, but shame on King Charles. I understand playing to Trump's vanity to get what you want out of him, but a royal visit is too much. Besides, he only acts according to petty grievances and whoever talked to him last. Somebody will come in behind you, so the thing to do is phone him on a regular basis.

“My relationship is very good with the U.K., and Charles, as you know, who’s now king, is my friend,” Mr. Trump said from the south lawn of the White House on Tuesday morning before departing for Britain. “And it’s the first time this has ever happened where somebody was honored twice, so it’s a great honor.”

[...]

“They say Windsor Castle is the ultimate, right?” he asked. (Buckingham Palace, where his first state visit took place, is undergoing renovations.)

[...]

After the royal extravaganza on Wednesday, the president is scheduled to travel to Chequers, the prime minister’s country estate, on Thursday to meet with Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The two leaders are expected to sign a handful of deals, and to hold a joint news conference.

[...]

Last week, Mr. Starmer fired his ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, over his ties to Mr. Epstein. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Starmer were expected to face questions about the ongoing Epstein saga.

Typical Trump with his nose in the air. The picture makes it look like Camilla has only one leg.

Hopefully, some British reporters will not be afraid to take on the Orange Ass.

Reportedly, the deal the Brits are most interested in making is help building nuclear plants.

UPDATE 09/18/2025:

Even though ABC bends the knee.  When will they learn?

ABC bends the knee

 

A free and independent press

And Trump finally has a legitimate Time Magazine cover to hang on the walls of his golf clubs instead of the fake one he's been using.

Also... "G-d"

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/15/2024:

And warn others of the dollar amount they might be facing in the event of any lawsuit.

A couple independent sources:

As far as I'm aware, McClatchy papers are still decent.  They have the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, and the Sacramento Bee, among other local papers.  Media Bias has rated McClatchy DC as "left-center" in editorial bias, and "High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact-check record."  (A detailed report is included at the link.)

Consider Democracy Docket for information on voting rights.

And, of course, the BBC is still better than US mainstream. 

UPDATE 12/15/2024 03:11 pm:  Oh, what a surprise...

UPDATE 12/16/2024:

[T]he 1964 case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan [...] involved an ad that criticized the police force in Montgomery, Alabama for its treatment of civil rights protesters. The ad contained a few factual inaccuracies, such as misstating the number of times Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested. The police commissioner sued the Times for libel and won based on Alabama law that was satisfied by a showing of falsity.

The Supreme Court unanimously reversed. It held that a public official alleging libel had to prove what has come to be known as actual malice or constitutional malice. The First Amendment precluded a libel claim by a public official based on mere falsity; rather, the plaintiff needed to show a media defendant knew the statement was false or at least recklessly disregarded its falsity.

Justice Brennan justified the actual malice standard as critical to safeguarding freedom of the press and preventing self-censorship based on fear of legal repercussions for criticizing public officials. As Justice Brennan wrote, “Erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate, and it must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the 'breathing space' that they need to survive.” The Court further explained that the standard was critical for ensuring accountability for government officials.

NY Times v. Sullivan immediately gained canonical status and the actual malice standard has been widely accepted as a cornerstone of constitutional law. (Recently, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch criticized the decision’s underpinnings, which provoked the equivalent of gasps among court watchers.)

So, had the [ABC/Stephanopoulos] case gone to trial, the jury’s focus would have been on whether Stephanopoulos’s statement— “Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury. It’s been affirmed by a judge”—was false and, if so, whether Stephanopoulos knew it or was recklessly indifferent to its falsity.

[...]

The case that Stephanopoulos and ABC would make to a jury is that it was literally true to say, “Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury. It’s been affirmed by a judge.” That statement, which was the initial assertion from which the others emerged, most sensibly relies on Kaplan’s judgment that the jury found Trump guilty of rape in the more common usage of that term. The Washington Post headline—“Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll”—straightforwardly affirmed that interpretation.

An extra cushion of protection from liability is that Stephanopoulos manifestly believed the statement was true, which is why he cited the headline. Trump’s argument would need to be that Stephanopoulos’s subjective impression was reckless. But it’s a hard sell to a jury, I think, to say that taking the word of the judge on the case is reckless.

Finally, there’s the question of whether the whole brouhaha matters at all because there’s no damage to Trump’s reputation, which is a necessary element of a defamation claim. Trumpalready has been publicly accused of sexual misconduct by 26 women, spanning incidents dating back 50 years. He has denied them all, and the public seems to have largely given him a pass. Conversely, members of the public have long since taken him to be an incorrigible sexual offender. It’s hard to see why the Stephanopoulos interview would damage his reputation among either cohort.

The decision permitting the case to go to trial by Judge Cecilia Altonaga of the Southern District of Florida recognized and basically endorsed the argument that Stephanopoulos’s statements were not actionably false.

[...]

Since Stephanopoulos’s statement relied expressly on the judge’s finding, that conclusion could have been enough to grant the motion. But the judge ultimately decided that there was an issue of fact that a jury needed to resolve, namely whether Stephanopoulos was relying on Kaplan’s statements or whether he was relying on—and misconstruing—the definition of rape under New York criminal law.

There is one more material fact that possibly bore on the settlement. A magistrate handling discovery had ordered both Trump and Stephanopoulos to sit for four-hour depositions in the coming days. That’s always an attractive opportunity for lawyers in cases involving Trump, who is erratic, lacks self-control, and is always at risk of committing perjury. On the other hand, it’s also true that Stephanopoulos’s deposition could have been damaging for ABC’s case, as Trump’s lawyers could have asked him 25 versions of the question: “Isn’t there a difference between rape and sexual assault?”

All these details demonstrate that Trump was by no means on a glide path to victory when ABC settled. And given the traditionally vigorous litigation of defamation claims by the large media companies, the expectation was that ABC would have fought hard and to the end. Indeed, if this case had been brought a few years ago, or if it were brought today by a prominent public official other than Trump, it is very likely that ABC would not have agreed to the settlement.

[...]

The settlement comes on the verge of his return to the White House and coincides with a series of startling aggrandizements of his own power. All in all, it clearly strengthens Trump’s hand in bringing the media to heel and deterring negative but truthful reporting about him.

[...]

It means that Trump has new wind in his sails for his continuing threats to make trouble for media that criticize him. He has threatened not just defamation claims (which he has continued to file, including a $10 billion case against CBS for a supposedly too-cozy interview with Vice President Harris). He also suggests that major networks—whom he refers to as “the enemy of the people” and “fake news”—such as ABC should lose their broadcast licenses and that journalists should be imprisoned if they refuse to name confidential sources.

[...]

One might think that the most mainstream media companies would be the least likely to kowtow to Trump’s threats. But here, I think there is a very unfortunate throughline between ABC’s buckling and the conduct of other media behemoths like The Washington Post and The LA Times, both of whose owners scuttled expected endorsements of Kamala Harris.

[...]

And it can be argued—and I’m sure it will—that the settlement was a reasonable business move for ABC and Disney [and their stockholders]. The $15 million in damages is essentially pocket change, and the statement of regret was sufficiently lawyered and muddled to be not too damning. But the whole package of money, legal fees, and a somewhat muddled statement of regret clearly amounts to a solid win for Trump.

[...]

Trump’s settlement has likely succeeded in recalibrating the President’s relationship to the media it way that increases the probability that members of the Fourth Estate will stay their hands rather than risk a defamation suit for reporting important, truthful material that provokes the ire of the maximum leader.

[...]

We are watching the initial degradation of democratic rule.

  Harry Litman

He's not been elected

And the GOP is already doing his revenge business for him.

Everything they "want to investigate" is something that involves helping Donald Trump.  I doubt they'll actually do this one.  It's just THAT stupid.  broadcasts are edited all the time.  And if you want to stop any broadcast or publication from editing candidates' interviews or speeches, Donald Trump is going to lose the protection of the sane-washing they all do for him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.