now. Would I like some revenge? Yes. Yes, I would enjoy that. But that doesn't mean I get it. That doesn't mean I should pursue it. Doesn't mean the world's a better place if it happens. Yeah. I'd like a little shot of Schadenfreude because remember I got canceled. I got canceled for something I said. Very similar. Do I think I should have been canceled? Nope. Do I think Roseanne should have been canceled? Nope. And I'm not going to change my mind because it's Jimmy Kimmel. Did he say something offensive and incorrect? Yeah. Did it make the world a worse place? Probably.

But let's talk about all the things. There are a lot of elements to this, but I would be very hypocritical if I were to be opposed to free speech.

All right. So just as a review, the only speech that's not legal would be inciting violence and immediately it's not even illegal to incite violence over time with some cumulative effect, which is what the Democrats have done. The cumulative effect of all the Hitler, Hitler stuff is that it incites violence. But the law does not recognize cumulative effect. It's only what did you say just right now and did it cause somebody to do some violence right now. That would be illegal and it's not because of the speech, it's because you'd be inciting violence. It's the violence that's the illegal part, the inciting it. So that's your little background there.

The best joke I've heard about it so far was from Joel Pollak who posted on X, "First they came for the bad comedians." I was laughing out loud at that this morning. First they came for the bad comedians.

Anyway, a lot of people are speculating because we're suspicious people. We never believe anything in the news is real. A lot of people are saying that Jimmy Kimmel's bosses, ABC, I guess ultimately Disney who owns ABC, who owns the show, etc. So some people are saying that they probably wanted to cancel him anyway because the show probably loses a ton of money. So maybe it really was a business decision having nothing to do with anything except it was an opportunity to get rid of an expensive asset. Maybe. I don't know. I would guess that it's not unrelated. Meaning that if he were making a billion dollars a year for ABC, do you think they would cancel him? Now let me ask you, if he made a profit of one billion dollars per year for his corporate owners, do you think they would have said, "Oh that's a bad thing you did. We got to get rid of you." I would say not a chance. If he was losing money every week and it looked like there was no chance it was going to reverse, would they possibly find a convenient reason to get rid of him? Maybe. Well it might not be enough. Yeah they might. All right. So I wouldn't rule that out at all. That's certainly follow the money always works. So I wouldn't say it's the only reason but it's probably in there somewhere.

He implied, and I guess some people said it was satire or parody or something, but it didn't look like it to me. It looked like he was intentionally saying they believed that some MAGA person was responsible for killing Kirk. And by the time he said it that was known with pretty high level of certainty that that was not the case. And the person who did it is almost certainly, I put it at 95 to 98 percent, that it's a left-leaning person who just hated the Trump administration and Charlie in particular.

So here's the question. How in the world is it legal for the Trump administration, the government, to put pressure on a private industry to maybe cancel somebody, which would look like a violation of free speech right now? Here's what would be a violation of free speech. If the president said, "ABC, if you don't fire this guy and shut him up I will punish you in some specific way." That would be completely illegal. Everybody understands that, right? If the government tells you you can't talk, that's illegal. That would not be allowing free speech.

But suppose, as FCC chairman Brendan Carr explains, he was on Hannity I think explaining this. The FCC has a very specific job within the government. And what it does is it's responsible for making sure that the public airwaves, which are limited by nature, right? There's not infinite TV networks. There's not enough room on the airwaves for much more than we have. So because it's a public good, the major networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, they operate at the pleasure of the government. Now that's different from almost anything else. So if Fox News said something that the government didn't like, the government has no role with Fox News because Fox News is cable. So cable is not using a limited public good which is the airwaves because the airwaves are limited. But ABC, NBC, CBS, if they violate what is the phrase, the public interest. The public interest. If they violate the public interest, then the FCC could act. And that could include potentially removing their license.

So what do you think the courts would say? Let's say that went to the Supreme Court. Do you think they'd say that has nothing to do with freedom of speech? The FCC's job is to say, "Hey, that thing you're doing is either in the public interest or is not." So if you said that's not in the public interest, would you be violating free speech? I feel like not. I feel like that wouldn't be a violation of free speech, but only if you're talking about ABC, NBC, CBS, because the FCC specifically has the responsibility to make sure they don't get out of line. And what they're accused of is a pattern. So it's not just this one thing. It's a pattern of misinformation, political especially.

Now is that a good enough reason to pressure him to come off there? And let me say this. If the government is pressuring somebody, even if it's not stated but it's obvious, let's say the entity wants to do a big merger, and I think that's part of what's going on here. The entities involved don't want to make the government mad, and the government's making it pretty clear that they don't like this Jimmy Kimmel situation. So does the government have to say directly if you keep him on we'll punish you? You know that now. Remember the FCC is a special case but just talking generally if a government said to somebody you should quiet down or else we won't approve whatever it is you ask for next. But if they say it directly, now that I got this from Grok by the way you all know that I'm not a lawyer right? So anything I say that sounds like a legal opinion, probably wrong. So do your own research on this one, I'd say. But I'll do my best.

All right. So if the government makes a direct threat, if you, outside of the FCC that's a special case. But if they made a direct threat, shut up or we'll do bad things for you. That's totally illegal. That would be absolutely a violation of free speech. But what if they don't make a direct threat but you just think they're the kind of people that would get revenge? I don't know. Because at some point it's just an opinion. Suppose the president said, "It's my opinion that Kimmel should be fired." Doesn't he have the right to just have an opinion? If he said, "You should fire him or I'll punish you," totally illegal. Totally illegal. But if he just said, "It's my opinion. They should get rid of him. The country would be a better place." Is that illegal? It's sort of a weird gray area, isn't it?

Because especially with Trump you kind of say to yourself, well I mean he's clearly not going to be friendly with them when they come to get some approval from the government, right? Would you expect the Trump administration to be fully cooperative with an entity that wasn't doing what they wanted in a fairly, what they might consider an important way? I don't know. That would be, I don't know if that kind of case has ever been tested, but some lawyer will tell me. Somebody will fill me in.

All right. So the part I don't know is if Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman, has a solid enough argument that in the special case that is the FCC doing his job to make sure that the public interest is being met. Does this meet the standard of violating the public interest? Well, maybe not because some people would say he's a comedian and it is completely legal to lie. It is completely legal to lie in the service of a joke or just entertaining the public. You're allowed to lie, unfortunately. I mean it has to be that way because otherwise everybody would be in jail. If you made it illegal to lie there'd be nobody left. So it has to be that way.

So I don't know the answer to the FCC part. If it turns out that that's completely ordinary then I might alter my opinion. But as a humorist cartoonist who has been canceled for something I said, I'm not going to be in favor of it. In fact my preference is that conservatives defend Kimmel on free speech. Now we might encourage him, you know, because remember this is private companies. Private companies can fire anybody for whatever reason they want. So the private company is in completely clear territory. It's just a business decision. So can't go after them. But I think the world would be a little better and it would change the news cycle in a way that would really flip the minds of the Democrats. I think we should support him and just say, "Nope, we do not want to go down the path of getting somebody fired."

Now keep in mind I don't believe that FCC chair Brendan Carr, I don't believe he would be taking these moves unless he knew that at least the base would be happy with it. Would you agree? Do you think the FCC would put any pressure on Kimmel unless the public felt the same way? No. No, there's not really any chance of that because remember he's operating quote in the public interest. If the public had no interest, I mean I'm using interest differently here, but if the public said we don't care he said that, that doesn't bother us at all. If they had said that, well then there'd be no reason for the FCC to be involved and I'd have a problem with it. But the fact that there are a lot of people, almost entirely on the political right, who say, "Yeah, yeah, that guy's got to be punished and it looks like there's a sort of a special case here where maybe he could be or at least pressure could be put on him. Go ahead and do it because we like the revenge and we like the Schadenfreude." I like the revenge. I'll bet aside from Roseanne there's nobody who likes this more than I do. Right. There's nobody who likes it more than I do.

But I asked Grok if Jimmy Kimmel ever mocked me for getting canceled because I didn't know. A lot of people did. And Grok says no. I need a fact check on that. Is it true that Jimmy Kimmel never mocked me for getting canceled? A lot of people did, you know, public figures, but I'll ask separately. Maybe somebody can. So Grok says no. Says there's no evidence that he ever mentioned me at all, which counts because that was a national story. And if he just wanted to pound on some conservative types, there I was. I mean I was an easy victim. But if he said to himself, and I don't know this, this would be purely mind reading speculation. If he said to himself, you know what, I'm not going to go after a humorist. I don't know if he did that, but if that's the reason he didn't mention it, I would respect that. And I'm going to return the favor. I don't want to live in a world where jokes are punished. You'd have to be a really bad joke for me to do it. So I know this is very unpopular, but if you want to be on the side of the angels, I think we got to give him a pass. I don't think it'll make a difference. I suspect that this is a decision they're not going to reverse. And I also don't think there's any chance that the majority of the political right will say, "Yeah, give him a pass" because I don't think people are thinking at it beyond the revenge level. And by the way, like I say, I'm totally in favor of revenge and mutually assured destruction so that there's a little balance and stuff. Totally in favor of that. I enjoy it. It feels good, but it's not the world I want to live in. I don't want to live in that world. So even though I believe I was treated unfairly in a similar situation I just can't live in that world. So that's my take.

All right. Here's what I mentioned this when I was on Tucker's show the other day. There's something different about the lies that are being told today compared to the old times. And it used to be that if you said, "Oh that Reagan is Hitler," people understood that as just hyperbole. They didn't think, "Oh he's actually Hitler." But when you're doing it 24 hours a day, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, and every time you turn on CNN or MSNBC, every time somebody's comparing them to Hitler or Nazis, you should assume that young people who are exposed to that and it's all they know and they're not watching Fox News or just watching those networks, of course some of them would reach the point of violence because they'd think, well you know everybody thinks they're Hitler as far as I can tell, so if I take out Hitler I'm fine.

So the laws as they were written were about slander. You can't do slander, but you can lie and you can exaggerate and insult and all those other things. So if the cumulative effect of wall-to-wall Hitler accusations creates a situation where violence is guaranteed, is that inciting violence? The answer is not legally. No, because it has to be immediate. There's no such thing as a cumulative over time. A lot of people did a lot of things and the cumulative effect was that somebody got killed. Charlie Kirk in particular. That's not illegal. Should it be? Well it makes me wonder because when our free speech rules were created this wasn't really an option. There was no such thing as mass brainwashing that was coordinated through the government and in my opinion the news networks. So it's a danger of free speech that simply didn't exist, at least at this level until fairly recently in history. So there might be something we need to rethink about that. But in general I'm going to be biased toward free speech if there's any gray areas. This one's a gray area so I'm biased toward free speech.

Let's see what else. So what Kimmel actually said might be a little different from what people are imagining. He said the MAGA people were trying hard to make it look like they were not responsible for it. But you can interpret that two ways. One, he's saying that MAGA is responsible for killing Charlie Kirk. But would you take that seriously? The other way you could interpret those exact words is that he's not saying MAGA was responsible. He's only saying that they're trying to make sure you know they're not responsible. That's not so bad. So do you cancel somebody because they said something that could be taken two ways? You see this gets a little personal at this point. Something that could be interpreted differently than it was intended. Is that how you get canceled? That's what Roseanne got canceled for. Roseanne got canceled not for what she thought or what she said. You know that, right? It wasn't for what she thought, wasn't what she said, it was what other people misinterpreted as her intention. She got canceled for that.

I would argue that although I was intentionally trying to cause some trouble, I was trying to do it for a positive purpose, including for black America, but because people chose to interpret what I said a little bit out of context because the larger context was DEI, etc. Should I be canceled because someone else interpreted what I said in a way that's not the way I intended it? Is that a good enough reason to be canceled? I don't know. But there's some chance, and I wouldn't know because I can't read his mind. There's some chance that Kimmel was trying to walk close to the line but he wasn't quite blaming MAGA for maybe doing it.

I'm looking at a comment. It's the fact that he ignored the horror and instead went political. That's just something you don't like. That's not why you lose a job. I get what you're saying that he wasn't showing the, oh no. Actually I think he did at some point I believe he did at some point say the right words about the horror. I think he did actually. Just a different day.

I saw that Dave Portnoy weighed in on this and he said it's not canceling it's consequences. And that would be true if we're only looking at a business decision and or the FCC doing its job for the public interest. If you think that getting rid of him is a public interest. So but I do think that Dave is sort of leaving out that the FCC is part of the government and you don't ever want the government trying to directly or indirectly impinge on free speech. But I understand what Dave is saying. So he's not wrong that it's primarily a consequence situation more than a free speech situation. But if it's got a little bit of free speech in it I'm still gonna go with the free speech. You know if you say, "Well Scott it's 90% he was a dick." Okay. If it's 10% free speech I'm going to still be biased for the free speech.

Eric Swalwell was defending Kimmel. But of course the Democrats feel they have to swear and they're so bad at it. Listen to this swearing from Eric Swalwell. So he's talking about Kimmel and sort of defending him for his free speech but he says it this way. Quote, he's a comedian. Now Eric let me give you a little advice. Swearing is good if you use it right. Like Trump is just an expert at swearing in a way that people will laugh. When he swears during a rally speech people laugh because he puts it in just the right place. You don't expect it, etc. And he's also used it to make a really important point. So you know okay Trump's not kidding about this one. It's perfect use of cursing. But Swalwell is just sort of randomly throwing it in a post. He's a comedian. You know what would have worked just as well? He's a comedian. Do you think that adding the f-word made his point better? Do you think it made him look tougher? Did it make him look stronger? Did it make him look like a better politician? Didn't do any of that. No that was just a mistake in communication. And I feel like they don't even understand the point that you can definitely get away with some swearing if you're a little bit wise about when you do it. This is not wise. It's not even close to wise.

So I responded to Eric Swalwell who said he's an effing comedian by responding and I said so is Roseanne? And then I said do cartoonists count? Depending if you call me a comedian or not.

Let me give you a little micro lesson now on something I've been meaning to discuss. Trump has a technique that I don't think I've ever talked about and it's really really good. It's really good and I've never seen anybody use it. So this is one of the most persuasive things he does and he does it sort of all the time and it goes like this. He always favors strength over getting something necessarily done. So for example when he says I'm going to do this with immigration and then maybe the court blocks him and let's say it blocks him totally he doesn't win in an appeal. That would be him acting strong but he got blocked. What you remember about that is the strength. And then the next thing comes up and once again he takes the most, I don't want to say extreme because that's the wrong thing but the strongest, the firmest strongest take. I will send the National Guard into your city to stop crime. That's the strong take. Now suppose it never worked. Suppose the courts or something else blocked him from doing it. What you would remember is how strong he was in trying to stop crime. And I could give you a hundred more examples that he always takes the strong point of view even if the odds of that succeeding are low because then you remember the strength.

And the reason that that's so important is that whenever the new thing comes up, whatever the new thing is, you're going to respect how hard he's going to go at it. And that's going to modify how you respond and probably in a way that's good for Trump. So framing yourself as always the strong one in the conversation, the strong one in politics, that really works. And if I were to advise somebody say, "All right do you want to be right about everything? Do you want everything you try to do to work? Or do you want to be seen as somebody who is stronger than a typical president?" Now the risk is you get called an authoritarian and all that which we see happening. That's a risk. But I would say that the supporters of Trump are probably triggered more by the strength because you want to know that the person who's got your back, you know the one who literally has your back, you want to think he's the strongest person. So if you said to me who do you want protecting you? Because this president he tried to do something with