00:00Speaking of free speech issues, let's talk about the enormous elephant in our office, which is the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel.
00:09Yeah, that's yeah, it's it's Thursday right now.
00:12Yes.
00:13So normally we would be we'd be prepping today's show, which is happening right now.
00:18And as hosts for next week, start thinking about that.
00:20But this this news broke last night.
00:23And so we're all sort of here digesting that, trying to craft a show of it, try to craft a point of view around all of that.
00:30But pretty scary slash outrageous news to awaken to.
00:35Absolutely. It's I saw it right before I went to bed, which is the worst possible time to find out about news that might throw your own job into jeopardy.
00:44Sure. What was your first feeling when you when you heard about it?
00:47It's I I was like, well, I I thought that maybe they had just like taken down the episode, the one episode in question.
00:56And it took me like a little while scrolling through stories to be like, oh, no, wait, it's his show is off the air indefinitely.
01:01And I have a couple of friends who write there.
01:03So I texted them and they were like, we're finding out all of this at the same time as you are.
01:08They're obviously not pumped about it.
01:09So it's it's just so bizarre that it happens so suddenly and everything is still up in the air and it's coming off the heels of the Colbert cancellation, which at least had the fig leaf of it being for business reasons.
01:24Whereas this one seems to be much more explicitly for political reasons.
01:27It's it's pretty darn clear.
01:29Even I think the the response Trump has had since then has been like, great, one down.
01:35Yeah. On to the next one.
01:36And Jimmy next. So, you know, he's he's showing his hand right there.
01:40It's it's it's not about anything that was said.
01:42You've got to squint pretty hard to see what line was crossed other than being somebody who's outspoken and not standing up for the the narrative that the Trump administration wants.
01:50And then you have the FCC flagging people down about how the administration feels about this and business leaders lacking any kind of spine and kowtowing.
01:58Yeah, I think it's it's shocking.
02:01It's incredibly frustrating.
02:03It's scary to me how spineless so many people are at the higher levels.
02:07The CEOs are like we're we expect the sort of attitude from the the administration.
02:12But you have an entire political party who is based so much of their identity on on being free speech absolutists, being anti cancel culture.
02:23At the very least, you'd hope the parts of the Constitution that uphold the ability to have whatever opinion you want.
02:30Those things should be protected in many different ways.
02:34And to see this happen, not completely surprising, but I think the swiftness of it has caught a lot of people off guard.
02:40I I spent some time in Hungary.
02:42We did a special in Hungary and I think we've gone from zero to Budapest faster than a lot of people expected.
02:48Yeah, that means we're going to get some great baths, though.
02:51Budapest, beautiful public baths.
02:53Wonderful baths.
02:53Yeah, let me tell you.
02:54And like heavy, heavy stews.
02:56Oh, yeah.
02:57So, yeah.
02:58So get ready.
02:58So, yeah, we are going to have OK.
02:59Speech is going to be limited.
03:01There's going to be state run media.
03:02That's just around the corner.
03:05You know, rights are going to be restricted.
03:08But baths better.
03:09Stews thicker.
03:11Yes.
03:11And that seems like a fair trade to me.
03:14I do like a thick stew.
03:15Yeah.
03:16One thing that's been frustrating about this whole thing to me is that both with the Colbert thing and with this new Kimmel thing is like I as a regular consumer of media or like me trying to explain like what's going on to my parents or my friends who are not in television or anything at all.
03:32It's like so much of this is motivated by like mergers and businesses.
03:35And then I have to explain like now it's like, OK, I got to know who the parent company of the local affiliate station in Florida is.
03:43And it's it isn't it.
03:46I think on Trump's level, it is very much about like I don't like what I don't like him.
03:50I don't like what he said.
03:51But then like explaining it from the business interest side is like it's it's stupid in a different way that is much harder to like articulate to people who aren't like, OK.
04:01So the way that ABC works is ABC is the network, but then there's the affiliates.
04:06And it's I think you got to cut to the chase.
04:07You can be like, here's the deal.
04:08The world is made up of billionaires who are assholes and only care about themselves.
04:12They pretend to have a morality that they speak with and they use their platforms for a certain truth.
04:18But in the end, they're soulless capitalists who only care about a bottom line.
04:22And in the moments where they could stand up for themselves and be a voice for good and reason, they instead retreat, become nameless, faceless beings who only care about their bottom line and will allow a country to disintegrate and democracy to evaporate because they want to buy another beach house.
04:38I'm going to have our editors clip that and then I'm just going to send that out to anybody.
04:43Send that out to anybody who's like, what's going on with the mergers?
04:45It's like, oh, billionaires want more money and they don't give a fuck about what people have to say or our democracy being strong anymore.
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