The shooter was a MAGA conservative
MAGA conservatives were out trying to convince people the shooter was not one of them (that he was left wing).
The first statement turned out to be false (but could not have been shown to false at the time), the second statement is easily proven true.
In any case, saying something false is not generally (or in this case) a violation of any law or regulation.
> 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 grieving.
"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 with everything they can to score political points from it."
This was his exact quote and he's 100% right. The entire admin had called out the "Radical left" as the perpetrators before we even had a photo of the shooter. Can we please go back towards the reality where we actually read and understand the words being said instead of having them all parroted to us by media headlines?
Wow, how does law work over there?
§ 73.1217 Broadcast hoaxes. No licensee or permittee of any broadcast station shall broadcast false information concerning a crime or a catastrophe if:
(a) The licensee knows this information is false;
(b) It is forseeable that broadcast of the information will cause substantial public harm, and
(c) Broadcast of the information does in fact directly cause substantial public harm.
Any programming accompanied by a disclaimer will be presumed not to pose foreseeable harm if the disclaimer clearly characterizes the program as a fiction and is presented in a way that is reasonable under the circumstances.
Or maybe start with all the people who kept on claiming that migrants are eating people's cats and dogs.
etc. etc. etc. I can go on and on.
Applying the most strictest of strictest interpretation of the law for your enemies while being exceedingly lax with the law for your friends is one if the key hallmarks of authoritarianism.
edit: in a sibling thread I've literally pasted an USA regulation related to spreading false information by broadcast stations...
‘Inciting imminent lawlessness’ aka starting a riot is not protected speech, making threats against the US President is also illegal. There might be other items of speech that are forbidden that I am not remembering.
You can be sued for defamation, but it’s very hard to prove as you must prove the speaker knew what they were saying was false, which is hard to prove.
But lies? You can lie all you want as a private citizen and the government cannot stop you.
1. There are a lot of times that Trump says things that people take for granted that what he meant was... but that isn't strictly what he said. It seems to me that maybe 60% of the time, what people are up in arms about are things they're sure he meant, but strictly speaking he didn't actually say.
Look, I'm not a Trump apologist. But if you're going to condemn Trump for what it sure looks like he's saying (but he technically didn't quite say), then don't be surprised when other people get condemned by the same standard.
2. If I understand correctly, the shooter's family was fairly conservative. So the right's reaction of "no, he was left" was, at the time, a baseless deflection of baseless accusations.
Even more so given that all of this pinning on extreme-left groups started before they even found Tyler Robinson and that they did the same in Minnesota a few months ago. I think it's basically accurate: they are desperately trying to characterise it on anyone but their own, and have no regards for any facts. Even if Robinson really is far-left in every way (certainly a realistic possibility), they will be "correct" merely by accident in hindsight.
"A separate study from the organization claimed that 92 percent of the jokes Kimmel made on his show since January 2023 were at the expense of conservatives, and 97 percent of his political guests were left-leaning."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/media/article-15117605/jimmy-kim...
Is this warranted? I don't know.
Why do we hold women and comedians to some sort of high standard but there is a whole montage of right wing grifters actively calling for liberal lives?
And it wasn't even a joke, it was a statement about what was going on. It isn't even about what he said, or even Kimmel. Unless he wasn't slathering all over the fake mythos of white washing this Kimmels racist, bigoted hateful grift, the right was going to go after him for literally anything.
Kimmel's crime is laughing at Trump and pointing out his brain dead hypocrisy.
This is it, the whole thing. https://youtu.be/U6NJJ0FcvYY?t=252
I think “as anything other than one of them” could be interpreted that way…maybe.
With the context cues in how he said it, I see how some people could interpret it that way. He profession is being a high context speaker, so I think this interpretation is reasonable.
But, I don't think the interpretation matters, either way. It's not reasonable to use either as justification for his show being cancelled.
I mentioned this in another thread: I think the phrase "anything other than" really messed with people. In the context of his sentence, it does not necessarily mean "obviously he's MAGA", in contrast to how it's often (but not always) used in English. He's using it to emphasize MAGA's behavior, not to emphasize his own opinion of the killer's politics.
Also, it simply wouldn't have made sense for him to declare that the guy was MAGA (or anything else), unless Kimmel is more unreasonable than I thought. I don't know much about him, so I could be wrong on this point, but it just seems like a misinterpretation to me that is fixed by Occam's razor.
All I’ve seen so far is a million sides harping on one minor point of the existing evidence and using that to claim their political opponents are at fault.
The new meta from the past few shootings appears to be just instantly claiming the shooter is from their political opponents side, and then double down on the claim no matter what happens
Yes, assuming Spencer Cox, Utah law enforcement etc. are not lying.
He is said to have been in a relationship with an MtF partner, and to have communicated repeatedly with that partner, showing sympathy for LGBTQ issues in general, alluding to being part of a left-wing support community, and describing Kirk as a "fascist" and "hateful". His mother has stated that he has shifted towards left-wing politics recently, specifically as regards LGBTQ issues. Much was made initially of his "MAGA" father — who turned him in, and there is much evidence of political disagreement between the two (including in the above-mentioned communications). Cox asserted the suspect to be a leftist in an interview with Meet the Press on the 14th (https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/utah-gov-spence...).
There’s bit and pieces here but nothing conclusive so actually yea I kinda do distrust those figures in government coming out and strongly stating it was one of their political enemies.
I don’t think the conservatives had anything to do with Charlie Kirk dying, but I would not be surprised if they had a playbook ready to go for such an event given how strong of claims they were making about the shooter when the evidence at that point in time didn’t exist.
Never waste a good crisis and all that
That's why the Disney+ boycott / cancellation response mattered: it forced them to put losing their ABC network affiliate broadcast rights from the government on the T-sheet against losing their expensive bet on Disney+ (and all the consolidation power and direct-feedline money that brings in). If the viewers hadn't acted to put something on the other side of the T-sheet, it'd be an easy choice for the company.
But if he were solid he'd do a Johnny Depp and be like "never working with you fuckers again".
Granted, he has a lot more support staff whose jobs he needs to worry about, too.
Conan O'brien also notably ensured his entire team was account for during the whole Tonight Show debacle, and onward.
The host of the show doesn’t really decide what he’s going to say. He reads the script the writers deliver (with his approval, I’m sure). He’s the talking head of a production team.
Jimmy Kimmel the person didn’t get taken off the air. Jimmy Kimmel the show did.
That makes it relatively easy to go back on the air, if they simply give new direction (constraints) to the writing team that satisfy the network.
If I were to guess, I doubt Jimmy Kimmel the person cares what the team is or is not allowed to write in the script.
Censorship. It works.
But yes, apparently everyone hates Disney and wants them to go bankrupt. So finally the left and right agree on one thing.
Unfortunately for Kimmel, late night TV is irrelevant dinosaur so he better extract as much money as he can before he inevitably ends up like Colbert.
This FCC action was censorship, not cancel culture.
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/disney-says-j...
From today's statement: "Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country" [1].
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/09/22/nx-s1-5550330/jimmy-kimmel-ba...
When Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr suggested Jimmy Kimmel should be suspended and said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” ABC and its local affiliates were listening.
On Wednesday afternoon, Carr tapped into preexisting MAGA media anger about a Monday night Kimmel monologue and used a right-wing podcaster’s platform to blast Kimmel and pressure ABC’s parent company Disney.
This is mind-numbing goal-post reconstruction.
If they'd issued an order, it wouldn't be final until it reached SCOTUS! Most regulatory interaction happens informally. A regulator tells a regulated entity to do something, and they do it. Public statements by the FCC commissioner are significant enough to make it into court cases as evidence of the Commision's intent.
Nope. You're confusing regulatory actions, broadly, with official actions. The FCC didn't take any official action. The FCC Chair absolutely conveyed a credible threat of official action in response to specific political speech, and that absolutely constitutes regulatory action.
Like, the SEC announcing they're going to launch an investigation is a regulatory action. The Fed Chair saying they believe the job market is cooling is a regulatory action.
There have been market panics ended by the right words at the right time. It's a different kind of speech entirely from criticism of the government by those without direct political power.
If we exclude the people advocating violence and discrimination against others due to their immutable characteristics, we find that its not such a "long" list after all.
The list I keep seeing from people on the right is Rosanne Barr and Tim Allen... who were "cancelled" in 2018 and 2017 respectively.
My memory is bad, so.. who was the wokie leftist President in office in 2017 and 2018 again?
Don't care.
We've got two groups of people in this country: those willing to sacrifice our republic for personal enrichment and those who won't bend the knee. (The former need to be heavily investigated over the coming decade, mostly so we can write statute that makes their behaviour criminal in the future.)
Disney content, financially motivated or not, is some of the most left friendly media there is.
Even failing to speak up clearly _against_ ”censorship recommendation” is bad neigh that the business should frankly be cancelled to bankruptcy - including parks, cruises and the rest of it.
This is kind of true, but it isn't correct to color this as Disney doing a favor to the left. The reason their content is "left" friendly is that most people are pretty aligned with the "left" when it comes to social issues.
They are offering this content because it is popular with the majority of people (and thus profitable), not as some sort of favor to their friends.
Disney made a preschool-level bad choice. Grade schoolers have figured out that capitulating to a bully is how you signal you want more bulling.
Disney also had examples of law firms and universities that bent the knee to the whitehouse - and how that turned out for them. The reward for tanking their reputations was more whitehouse demands.
Selling in itself tends to be impartial. The experience can be something else. The place I buy tires from proudly advertises their fandom for the WH occupant. They also treat me better than the neutral-appearing, sanitized tire shops.
If my county harassed them for their advertised orientation, the bad actor in that equation would be my county.
Ah, years of hate sermons leading to people terrorizing parents of grieving school-kids is of course equivalent to half a sentence about a movement of braindead idjits making a martyr of a loudmouth idjit.
Just like Trump is a poor man's idea of a rich man, Kirk is an idiot's idea of an intelligent debater. He deflects, he trolls, he ragebaits his opponents, and people eat that as "good debater"?
And no, there's no need for politeness, because the assassination victim was an asshole: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/charlie-kirk-assa...
Jones was defaulted before trial in both cases because he wasn't complying with discovery. The defense asked for documents and testimony which his company refused to provide. Documents like the finances for the company (totally normal). You are correct that he was given multiple chances to fix the problem. He'd literally fire his lawyers between almost every deposition so that they couldn't provide the requested documents.
But the actual fines came from the jury from the trial. civil cases have 2 parts, are you guilty and if so for how much. Jones lost the "are you guilty" by default and the how much was determined by a jury of his peers after a trial (and accepted by the judge).
I think with Jones it's important to get everything straight as he likes to claim that he was silenced and steamrolled. He was neither. He lost that much money because his actions were horrendous.
I mean, did you see what he was wearing? He definitely had it coming.
I wasn't a fan of his, but if your source about what Charlie Kirk was out there doing and saying is The Nation of all places, you're not exactly informed on the topic.
I collect propaganda videos on Instagram. Here's a couple examples that were floating around recently: Seeing a lot of hate for a trans person here? https://www.instagram.com/p/DOfU33FDEwp/
Also, weird for the supposed "Christian Nationalist" to be arguing against... Christian Nationalism, no? https://www.instagram.com/p/DOlpE-rEWFZ/
https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1701259614077989121
So it's nice that he managed to be superficially polite to one trans person once (while not actually saying anything of substance except that they should just stop being trans), but let's not pretend that he had any kind of sympathetic view of trans people.
Overall, his attitude to the 'alphabet mafia', as he would have us, reminds me rather a lot of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQf5jL3a4iU
... is not an invitation to contribute your own top-level polemic.
> Station owner Nexstar helped pressure Disney into suspending Kimmel's show last week when it announced its ABC-affiliated stations would not air the show "for the foreseeable future."
This is Disney doing damage control for their streaming platforms and other properties while Kimmel is still censored from a large % of audience he used to reach.
I hope he comes back with a show that burns Trump and Carr to the ground and dares them to try something like that again.
If Disney had any sense at all, they would have realized back when Sinclair was first forcing all their affiliates to air right-wing propaganda,* that their association with Sinclair is an existential threat.
Back then, they should have started dropping their affiliation with Sinclar one tower at a time, as they secure alternative broadcast arrangements in each area. Starting to do it now is better late than never, but I bet Disney execs are too clueless and spineless to stand up to Sinclair is any real way at all, in part because it will cost them a few $$$.
* https://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/19/sinclair.kerry/
Its deeply troubling to see the priorities of the FCC shift from expanding things like access to broadband to instead prioritize podcast appearances and fascistic threats. Expect more of this, as Carr seems to only be emboldened by the outcome.
now we have another take on the story, this time the crafted PR spin from Disney retconned for damage control.
The Trump appointed FCC head, who is currently evaluating multiple multi-billion dollar requests, said about Kimmel 'we can do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way'.
throwaway48476•1h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin
tomrod•1h ago
63•1h ago
[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
throwaway48476•1h ago
tomrod•1h ago
Sounds like you're confused, or disingenuous? I prefer to give benefit of the doubt though. Which part of the Nazi policies and anti-semitism that he advocated do you consider peaceful?
throwaway48476•1h ago
SketchySeaBeast•1h ago
throwaway48476•1h ago
tomrod•1h ago
63•1h ago
> After making attacks on Jewish bankers, Coughlin began to use his radio program Golden Hour to broadcast antisemitic commentary. In the late 1930s, he supported some of the policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The broadcasts have been described as "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture".[5]
mullingitover•1h ago
> During his radio broadcast on November 20, 1938, while reports of the Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany were still on the front pages of many American newspapers, Coughlin defended the Nazi attacks as justified. Claiming to merely be a “student of history,” he traced “the causes of the effect known as Naziism” [sic] for his listeners, concluding that Nazism had “evolved to act as a defense mechanism against the incursions of Communism.”
[1] https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/pe...
delecti•1h ago
janice1999•1h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Joyce
dingnuts•1h ago
> In the late 1930s, he supported some of the policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The broadcasts have been described as "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture".[5] His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious, using the slogan "Social Justice".
Thanks for sharing, I hadn't heard of this jackass
mullingitover•1h ago
[1] https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/radio-act-of-1912/
throwaway48476•1h ago
coderintherye•1h ago
throwaway48476•1h ago
How exactly did the FCC exist before him?
legitster•1h ago
Coughlin's show coincided with the creation of the FCC and they never really tangled. His show was pulled off the network a full 5 years after the FCC was established. FCC regulation may have had a part in that, but there is no reason to believe he in particular was targeted and certainly not that the law was passed to target him.
ajross•43m ago
...the actual page linked doesn't mention Coughlin at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934
[1] The habit of throwing discussion bombs like this from throwaway accounts is another sign of HN's decay.