https://pastebin.com/25ZmRNwj

By design. If it was actually offensive Fox would be playing it non-stop. The offense has been excavated from inside an implication of a phrase in a nested clause in a sentence saying something unrelated.

Kimmel said (as part of an argument that republicans were playing politics by pointing fingers) that republicans were trying to prove that Robinson was not a republican , from which you have to infer that Kimmel meant to say Robinson was a republican.

Nobody checks what he actually said, they're just angry because they were told to be angry.

What Kimmel said[0] was fairly innocuous and not all that big a deal. What he said was actually true, in general, about conservative discourse, regardless of what the shooter's politics are.

Carr directly threatened ABC's broadcast license over protected speech, even in the context of the FCC's mandate and the rules around broadcast licensing.

Kimmel's ratings are irrelevant. Murdering someone with terminal cancer is still murder.

[0] There still seems to be a bunch of confusion and misinformation about what Kimmel said, so: "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it." If you truly believe that's the kind of thing the FCC should be threatening a network's broadcast license over, I'm not sure it's possible to have a productive discussion with you about this.

My immediate reaction was similar, I'm not sure he's saying that it is wrong though, he said "can be".

The FCC should not be threatening ABC over this, but the statement is, on the available evidence, wrong, irresponsible and inflammatory. It's wrong because it insinuates that the killer was "one of them" (completely untrue per Utah state investigators), irresponsible because there was no good reason to believe it (the alternative narratives require some deep reading into cryptic fringe political groups) and because of the timing, and inflammatory because of the nature of the allegation (it's not a nice thing to say about anyone even when it's demonstrably true).

> What he said was actually true, in general, about conservative discourse, regardless of what the shooter's politics are.

The statement cannot be evaluated for "truth in general" because it referred to a specific incident. If he'd wanted to assert something about what "the MAGA gang" generally does, he could have done so. But the point was specifically to tie into current events.

(I also don't really understand the objection. What, are conservatives not supposed to disavow political violence? Is everyone on the right supposed to accept responsibility for the consequences of every other right-wing political philosophy? Please be careful about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity .)

You're drifting into lalaland. It's very clear it was cancelled because of government action. Why are you making up weird stories. Everything has been reported.

For whatever reason you're trying to justifying government censorship. This article isn't about Kimmel it's about another show MAGA hates apparently. And the cult leader guy blew a hole threw your convoluted thesis yesterday when he openly admitted he disagrees with the first amendment.

Was it really though? Paraphrased, Kimmel said that the killer was a republican. He had a republican background, but it didn't motivate the killing which didn't seem to have any particular ideology beyond (maybe) trans identity politics and/or edgelord memery. So yeah, that was wrong.

But if that's "irresponsible and inflammatory", then isn't it equally so to blame "democrats" or "the left", also groups with which Robinson has no documented affiliation? And we can all agree that this is happening pervasively on the right, at all levels.

The double standard here seems troublesome to me, and likely deliberate. Which, I'll add, what actually the point Kimmel was trying to make.

> now I get to do 3 hours of reading to say "it never really existed in broadcast television and also yes, this is bad, but not nearly as bad as you think" and boom now I'm the fascist

You're not a fascist, but you do seem to be sort of an apologist. Doesn't the linked article directly refute the "not nearly as bad as you think" bit? It's happening again!

He literally didn't though? Why does this mistake keep being made. Kimmel made 0 assertions about the shooter. He did make assertions about the President and his conduct, however.

The sentence is convoluted but clearly implies that "this kid" was "one of the MAGA gang".

Is that what Kimmel meant? No, his point was that they (the MAGA gang) were exploiting the tragedy to "score political points". But it's not what he said, really. So arguments over meaning can at least happen in good faith. If someone says they're offended, I think it's not unreasonable to clarify and offer an apology.

...but not obviously to be sacrificed at an altar to the FCC commisioner.

What? This is crazy “find the authors purpose” gymnastics. The quote does nothing to imply that the kids is Maga or not. It does however directly commentates on “Maga gang”’s actions to try to paint him as anyone other than someone who could be MAGA. Thats the entire point of what was said

In every universe where the shooter is not "MAGA" (which, on the available evidence, includes ours), "trying to paint him as anyone else" is truthful, and not wrong. The entire point of a critique of this sort is to allege that someone did something wrong. The sentence does carry the implication that Kimmel is calling the shooter "MAGA" (i.e., either believes it, or wants to insinuate it) because otherwise there would be no reason, in Kimmel's position, to say any of it.

True.

> because otherwise there would be no reason, in Kimmel's position, to say any of it.

Untrue. In context, what he's saying (this is clear in the sentences before and after) is that MAGA is playing politics by arguing about attribution. Remember in the early hours it did look like the shooter might have been a groyper, and even Fuentes himself came out to disavow violence. By Kimmel's monologue, the trans angle had diluted that obviously. But if we're playing interpretation games you can point out he was using past tense, right?

The "offensive" content needs to be deliberately inferred, and the appropriate response is to clarify and apologize. We all know what actually happened isn't about what Kimmel actually said.

Arguing about attribution would only be wrong, or worth pointing out, if they had a "MAGA" dead to rights about it. The context is a show that frequently bashes "MAGA", Trump and that entire political alignment, and only gets significant viewership when doing so.

> in the early hours it did look like the shooter might have been a groyper

This was a strained interpretation essentially based on the idea that groypers immerse themselves in 4chan political memes, as if it were exclusive to them. They have an /lgbt/ board.

But even if that had panned out, groypers are a separate, barely-comprehensible "far group". Rounding them off to "MAGA" would still be wrong.

> The "offensive" content needs to be deliberately inferred

No, it doesn't. It's an ordinary reading of a common idiom on these sorts of political punditry shows. If you're accusing someone of "trying to characterize X as anything other than Y", this accusation has force because you allege that X is Y, that the truth of this is plain, and that the person you accuse is trying to hide an inconvenient truth. And we know that this was intended as an accusation of doing something harmful because he described the "MAGA gang" as "hitting a new low" in doing so.

Kimmel's statement projected an unjustified and irresponsible confidence in something that now appears to have been clearly wrong.

> and the appropriate response is to clarify and apologize.

I see no reason to suppose that this would have happened. It also would have to be a retraction, not a clarification, because pointing out that the argument about attribution was justified cannot be a "clarification" of describing that act of attribution as "hitting a new low".

> We all know what actually happened isn't about what Kimmel actually said.

I agree that other reasons existed to fire him, mainly, declining ratings.

The guy also just isn't funny. He doesn't demonstrate any wit. He was just providing a space where people who wanted to mock Trump (or hear such mockery) could feel validated. There isn't exactly a dearth of such spaces.

But not the only reading. Which you seem to agree with because you dodged that point. So if there are two interpretations, one offensive and one not, surely you agree that the reasonable reaction is just to discuss things like adults, right?

And not for the FCC commissioner to go out in public and threaten an unconstitional censorship of political speech, right?

Because you agree that Kimmel could have been innocent of the terrible crimes he was accused of.

Look, I'm not telling you that you aren't angry. I'm telling you that you're letting your anger lead you into some very scary places. Because those same tools can destroy Hannity too.

Look I don't even pretend to know the truth. But the sitting governor of Utah, the highest authority on the investigation (which is being done by Utah state investigators), said the shooter had a "leftest ideology". NYT source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/us/kirk-shooting-suspect-...

Now its fine to not believe the governor, but I am not one of the investigators so thats as good as I can get unless I believe in a conspiracy by the state of Utah itself, which I think warrants evidence.

Personally I don't believe in "group X verbed Y", as I do not believe that groups can act. Liberals didn't shoot anyone, conservatives didn't shoot anyone; a single individual person shot someone. Group identity is not interesting to me, nor do I find it helpful. I do find it very inflammatory tho, and think is a deplorable thing to say to uninformed viewers at home.

By "not nearly as bad as you think", what I mean is, the FCC has always policed content on broadcast television. Shows have been cut mid-air due to foul language. We have never had "freedom of speech" on broadcast television. And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action, that it was actually ABC's distributors who caused the ruckus, then this is bog-standard "cancel culture", which, while bad, is hardly the death of free speech. I'd be perfectly unbothered if broadcast television died completely, thus reducing the FCCs ability to control the media period.

Yes, I'd love to live in a world with less censorship, less stupidity, less government control, but that's not the world we live in, and its not the world we used to live in, either.

For boring stuff like sex and profanity! When was the last time a show was pulled under threat of FCC action because of political speech? Has it ever happened before? And it's happening again, just days after it worked the first time.

Your cynicism, whether it's deliberate or not, is serving you very badly here.

> And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action

Good grief. Brendan Carr literally made the threat on camera, in public. That's the way extortion works. You don't have to take the action because the target submits.

I absolutely agree the FCC is overstepping and that the FCC Chair is doing a bad thing by making such comments, but until the FCC as an organization actually issues a fine or pulls a license, nothing has actually happened. If what I'm saying puts me into some particular camp that you're opposed to, well, the scissor statement worked. And that makes me much more upset than any of this drama.

Two things - firstly, it wasn't a comment, it was a threat to kill ABC's ability to broadcast by the person with power to revoke their license. There's a difference.

Secondly, if you don't want to have the appearance of responsibility for your thumb on the scale, don't put your thumb on the scale. Don't just say that your thumb was one of many and it could've been anyone's pressure that caused the cancellation. There should be no confusion.

What on earth are you saying here? It worked. Obviously it "counts", it actually happened! The show was pulled from the air! You're saying that censorship isn't "technically censorship" if in some alternative universe Disney fought back and won? They didn't!

As for your opinion about the reach of the FCC's powers or the risk to broadcasters of regulatory action, clearly Bob Iger's lawyers disagree with you, and I'm going to bet they're rather better at their jobs than median HN commenters.

Edit: I'm going to call it here. The final reply below seems like 100% apoloigsm to me. The argument seems to be that somehow this is all a mistake, that Disney just got the wrong idea and torpedoed their own show by no fault of the government. And we all know that's not what happened. I don't know how to reply, so I won't.

What about political incentives? The conservative media sphere was falling over themselves to rush to label the shooter before any evidence or even a statement of "ideology" was given by the Utah gov, such that the WSJ posted and retracted an article about how the shooter was trans. An observation of that was what got Kimmel turned off the air. It wasn't what the Utah gov eventually said, it was all that had taken place before then.

> And, if you notice that it's not even clear the FCC took any action, that it was actually ABC's distributors who caused the ruckus

What if the chair caused the ruckus with the distributors by making public comment and explicitly threatening to pull ABC's status, on a timeline before the distributor made the call? Why is this explicit threat of removal, not just taken against the show, but against the entire network, not considered an action?

Curious as to whether you've revisited this (surprisingly strongly-held) prior given todays reporting: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/no-evide...

I agree that we should be disavowing violence.

The problem is that for 10 years democratic lawmakers and media figures are disavowing violence on both sides, while republican lawmakers and media figures are doing the opposite: stoking the flames, promoting the idea of civil war, telling everyone that the country is stolen from them, that immigrants are out to get them, that democrats are out to get them, etc. According to this rhetoric, democrats are to blame for all of this. When something bad happens and it's not democrats who caused it, they come up with a conspiratorial explanation for how it's still democrats.

So when one side keeps constantly disavowing, and the other side keeps constantly attacking, at some point disavowing becomes literally the wrong thing to do. You can't lay down your weapon while the other person just keeps hitting, and expect the hitting to stop.

What we are being shown repeatedly by republicans is that violent, divisive rhetoric actually leads to electoral victories, and grants free license to become "president for one side only" and do whatever that side wants. If democrats continue to disavow and apologize, they will end up simply extinct. This is why some democrats stopped doing that.

It was not a Republican media figure who made that video of herself holding "a mask styled to look like the severed, bloody head" of the POTUS.

Among the biggest-name political Twitch streamers, it's not the right-wingers who are being shown to have all sorts of clips calling for political violence, making threats that include brandishing firearms on stream, doxxing people etc. — all of which are blatant TOS violations, but which never seem to get them banned. From the evidence available to me, the CEO of Twitch seems to be quite friendly with the most egregious of those streamers.

> So when one side keeps constantly disavowing, and the other side keeps constantly attacking, at some point disavowing becomes literally the wrong thing to do. You can't lay down your weapon while the other person just keeps hitting, and expect the hitting to stop.

I can assure you the other side feels the same way. There are even supercuts out there of Trump repeatedly disavowing violence that he was still accused of not disavowing.

There are only 2 sides on twitch right now, both illiberal. One side has the political philosophy that amounts to "if Trump does it, we support it". The other side is a fringe far left (e.g. tankies).

Except the former "philosophy" is supported by 90% of republicans, and the latter is ostracized by democrats. Even AOC (the once symbol of far leftism) shifted towards more mainstream liberal democratic values. These twitch lefties don't vote. They are politically nowhere in this country.

And you are comparing president of the country to twitch streamers. President is not supposed to be an edgy instigator and influencer, he's supposed to be president for everyone.

And yet, every disavowal that Trump made, he ended up blaming democrats in the same breath. He constantly berates everyone on the left, sues, destroys politically, or otherwise silences anyone who criticizes him. I'm supposed to feel like he's my president even if I didn't vote for him, but I cannot, because he makes that distinction very clear.

I disagree that this is an accurate characterization of the side that isn't the "fringe far left".

> and the latter is ostracized by democrats.

It looks to me like, far from being ostracized, Hasan Piker is getting to do another round of puff pieces in sympathetic outlets.

> And you are comparing president of the country to twitch streamers.

No; you are the one who spoke of "lawmakers and media figures", so I am comparing media figures to media figures.

The evidence is there. Trump has been thrashing back and forth on tariffs, explaining 2 mutually-exclusive reasons to have them, and they justify it each time. Trump has been infringing on free speech and due process at levels beyond anything democrats have ever done (if you don't count republican conspiracy theories), and they justify it. I have listened to a lot of debates, and nobody can answer a question "what would Trump do that would make me vote for democrats instead".

> Hasan Piker is getting to do another round

Again, these people are not voters.

> I am comparing media figures to media figures.

I'm sorry, I should've been clearer. You said "It was not a Republican media figure who made that video […]" and "it's not the right-wingers who are being shown to have all sorts of clips". I understood that as you making a point that democrats are worse than republicans in general because of these examples. Which cannot be true because the entire Trump cabinet and most republican lawmakers are now doing the most heated and divisive rhetoric constantly and unapologetically, as though they are influencers and agitators, not government of a 2-party nation. Their actions speak even louder than words. So what you're pointing out in totality pales in comparison to what republicans are doing. And I'm saying: you cannot point to leftie twitch streamers that don't have any political power, and compare them to the literal White House and republican lawmakers, to judge the magnitude of the problem on each side.

However, even if we single out just the media figures, it's absolutely insane how much conspiracy, lies, and divisive rhetoric has been fed into right wing minds. And it's almost awe-inspiring how lockstep all republican pundits are with each other. Nothing like that exists on the left.

You can always find anonymous Twitter/Bluesky posts and go "see they're violent!!" but the situation on the left is clearly much different than the right.

0: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/charlie-...

  > The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh is, like Kirk, a high-profile right-wing media influencer and podcaster. He wrote a provocative post on X on Wednesday calling for “the entire Right” to “band together” because “we are up against demonic forces from the pit of Hell.” Walsh called the struggle “existential” and “a fight for our own existence and the existence of our country.” Today, he added: “I woke up even angrier.” Walsh rejected calls for reconciliation and characterized the coming struggle as self-defense: “They want us dead. They’re killing us. Now is not the time for kumbaya stuff. This is real.” 

  > “They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming here. And we don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street,’” Trump added, appearing to nod to instances of right-wing vigilantism in recent years.


  > “The radicals on the left are the problem. They’re vicious, and they’re horrible,” Trump said. “And they’re politically savvy, although they want men in women’s sports. They want transgender for every one. They want open borders.”

Exactly which words were wrong/irresponsible/irresponsible? Do you have a video clip and timestamp of the specific statements?

> - Clearly the market was already deciding that Kimmel's show is irrelevant (Nielsen ratings quite clear on that).

Quite the coïncidence that this is the second comedian that has been canceled, the first being Colbert. As Timothy Snyder, a historian on Central/Eastern Europe, the Holocaust, and totalitarians regimes, commented: General pattern in regime change: the comedy gets better and then it gets banned.

* https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/196846639438465036...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Snyder

> - ABC's distributors threatened to stop airing the network, which is what actually caused Disney/ABC to act, it's hard to say what impact the FCC Chairs comments actually had.

The owner of many ABC stations is looking to fulfill a $6.2B merger/acquisition:

* https://www.nexstar.tv/nexstar-media-group-inc-enters-into-d...

* https://deadline.com/2025/08/nexstar-acquires-tegna-local-tv...

They need to get FCC approval.

Instead of deciding the deal on its merits, the Trump administration has made it known if you rub its tummy you will get what you want (export policy isn't decided on (say) national security evaluations, but if you give money: Nvidia 15% export tariff, UAE buying $2B of Trump-family crypto).

Instead of procedural government decisions (i.e., rule of law), you get government decisions based on the temperament of the boss.

This is the type of nonsense that really bothers me with this site. It’s an attempt to “both sides” everything in a pathetic attempt at seeming logical.

What have you got against their elk?