In this episode of Sekulow, we dive into the controversial suspension of Jimmy Kimmel by ABC and its implications on free speech and censorship. The conversation highlights various reactions from both political spectrums and discusses how this situation affects late-night television. We also examine the financial motivations behind such media decisions and whether they are indicative of a broader shift in entertainment industry trends. The episode further delves into the role of the FCC in regulating broadcast standards while balancing free speech rights. The discussion also touches on historical comparisons such as the Fairness Doctrine, emphasizing the importance of
SPEAKER 01 :
Today on Sekulow, we have breaking news as Jimmy Kimmel is suspended indefinitely by ABC.
SPEAKER 04 :
Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110.
SPEAKER 01 :
And now your host… That’s from a spokesperson from ABC who hosts that show. What we’ve got here now is people on the right cheering, including the president of the United States, and people on the left crying censorship, including the former president of the United States, Barack Obama. And we’re going to break this down. We’re going to talk about what it is, what it isn’t, some opinion about what it may be. As we see, the second most highly rated late night television now indefinitely suspended. This comes on the heels of Stephen Colbert’s program being completely canceled by CBS News just months ago. So what does this look like? A lot of this stems from Jimmy Kimmel making a statement in a monologue on Monday night. I’m not going to play the statement, but he effectively said that the people on the right did a lot of work over the weekend. to try to say that the Charlie Kirk assassin was a member of the left, when in reality, he was a member of the right. That was a demonstrably false statement, but you started to see kind of a grassroots movement among the providers, the local… the local station owners, including Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting, that own the ABC affiliates across the country, say, we are going to preempt this show. We didn’t like that statement. We’re going to play something else. Now, that has a lot of things tied to it, whether it be their FCC license as broadcasters, they are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, or it may be that in the parts of the country where they operate, That’s not the content that their audience wants to see. As a reaction to that, ABC, the parent company, Disney, decided to pull him indefinitely from air. Now, there’s a lot to get into this. Is this a financial decision by Disney? Is this censorship, as many on the left are trying to say? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s censorship like they want you to believe. But I also want to hear from you. What did you think about this? Do you think that America needs to be careful as there are a lot of knee-jerk reactions in the wake of that horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk when it comes to speech? Something that Charlie Kirk fought for, free speech, free open debate. So I want to hear what you think about this and we’re going to get into it. But I think the ACLJ is uniquely positioned to talk about this and have these conversations at this time because we are an organization that has been fighting for the First Amendment rights and free speech rights and freedom of religion of Americans for more than 35 years. That is what this organization was founded on. And we still fight for the freedom of speech for clients daily. Last week, we won in Chicago where we had clients that were to be criminally charged for preaching the gospel outside on the sidewalk in Chicago. We represent a pro-life advocate in Colorado that was brutally assaulted outside of a Planned Parenthood clinic. You may have heard stories like this from around the country where people exercising their freedom of speech are attacked or are threatened with prosecution. That does more to chill free speech than whether a private company decides to pull a television show off the air. We’re going to get into more of the details in the next segment. But once again, I want to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110. We’ve got a lot more ahead, including Rick Grinnell joining us, as well as Jordan had a special sit down with Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee to talk about crime in this country and how members of Congress are working with the president and the administration to clean up our american cities but once again give me a call 1-800-684-3110 and if you want to stand Welcome back to Sekulow. We’ve got a full bank of calls, which I’m very glad to see because I want to hear from you on this today. And we will be getting to those calls very shortly. But one thing that we also have to look at with this is the right cheers that Jimmy Kimmel is no longer going to be on air. And as the left cries censorship and government overreach in this case, I think we need to also look at. at the entire medium of late night talk shows at this point, because we already know that Stephen Colbert was canceled his entire program. And he was the leader of late night talk shows had the best ratings, uh, or just a few months back. And there were already articles starting to come out about what happens to Jimmy Kimmel. He was in second place, didn’t have as much viewership. It was about 750,000 viewers average less for his program than the Colbert show. But I do want to start off by saying I believe that the art form of comedy, In and of itself, many times is designed to push boundaries, to make people uncomfortable. There’s obviously different styles of comedy. There’s different things. But in the history of late night television, especially in the modern era, many times, especially if you think back to Jay Leno and things of that, their mockery would be of those in power not based off party. It was pretty uniformly across the board that they took shots at all of the different people in in power and that their comedy was made to give commentary on those in power in a different way, in a lighthearted way, in some ways, and sometimes in a very jarring way. A lot of that had shifted over the past decade. five six ten years where it became very one-sided and was pointed mostly at the right and the left was given a fair pass now i don’t believe that there was anything wrong with that decision by these writers and monologues that they that was their choice to make you have the choice to watch or not watch the the The fact is, though, Jimmy Kimmel in the second quarter of this year averaged about 1.7 million viewers a night. That was about 750,000 less than the leader, Colbert. Only 220,000 in the target ad demographic, 18 to 49 years old. That’s where they make the bulk of their money. We know that year-over-year viewership… Late night shows were down 9% in total viewers and 21% in the demo. When you think about that people were already talking about, is Jimmy Kimmel gonna be the next one to fall? Forbes wrote in July of this year, the fate of late night TV may now be with Jimmy Kimmel Live. The host, Jimmy Kimmel’s contract with Disney is set to end in 2026 and its renewal or lapse will say something about the genre more generally. So when you look at what happened, where Nextar and Sinclair Broadcasting started to say, we’re just going to preempt this show. And Disney made a decision to preempt it indefinitely. So right now he is not fired by the company and the show has not been officially canceled. I genuinely think that this is a business decision by Disney. I think it may be opportunistic that this is something, a moment, We can use and not even have to get to the painful negotiation process of renewing or not renewing. We know that the Colbert show cost over $100 million annually to make, and it lost about $40 million a year. And that was the number one show. Now, let’s say that Jimmy Kimmel Live, a fraction of the cost to produce. Still… Probably not making very much money for the company, if not losing. I think that this is a medium and an art form, the late night show, that is going away. But the left is still calling censorship. We see this from Washington Post, this headline. Censorship fears deepen after ABC suspends Jimmy Kimmel over Kirk comments. It goes on to say right wing campaign to shut down perceived detractors of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk reverberated on Thursday after ABC announced it would indefinitely suspend late night host Jimmy Kimmel. The news announced late Wednesday rocked Hollywood, prompting many in the entertainment industry to to accuse ABC of buckling to a censorship campaign. We also see former President of the United States, Barack Obama, put this out about two hours ago on X. After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like. He goes on to say, this is precisely the kind of government coercion that the first amendment was designed to prevent and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it. Here’s my question for the former president. Where was this tweet taken? when we knew that his vice president, who was president of the United States at the time, was putting pressure on social media companies, something that isn’t regulated by the FCC, to silence one side, one opinion, to de-platform individuals, to throttle the reach of individuals, including Turning Point USA. We actually found out about that, that not only was it the censorship campaign they push on social media against Turning Point USA, but we found out during the hearings that actually under Operation Arctic Frost with the FBI, they were investigating organizations that were conservative, including Turning Point USA. Where was that outrage from the former president at that point? when that was what was actually happening. The government itself was going to these companies and saying, here’s what you need to do. We’ve seen the communication. We’ve seen the lists that were sent from the Biden administration to these companies to try and censor American speech. The FCC is different. There are standards that these affiliates have to uphold. namely being obscenity, profanity. You can’t be on broadcast news on ABC, NBC, CBS, those channels and use certain language. We know that there will be a heavy fine from the FCC. There are things that are regulated over the public airwaves. This broadcast is on terrestrial radio. There are things that we could not say on terrestrial radio that the networks that carry us would get in trouble for that. Because they have an FCC license. They have a license to broadcast. Now, we do need to be careful in this situation. The ACLJ has for a very long time, we fought against something called the Fairness Doctrine. That was where the FCC would push for if there was an opinion that the other side of the opinion, if it was in the public interest, would have to be presented. So a lot of opinion was kept out of the public view when it came to the broadcast channels. That is partially what gave rise to the cable networks because they don’t have an FCC license. They aren’t regulated in that way. Now, I do want to be careful because the fairness doctrine was was stopped being enforced or repealed, reversed by the FCC back in 2011. That was a victory that the ACLJ had fought for a long time on. So I want to be careful that the FCC doesn’t all of a sudden. uh regain some of the footholds some of the victories for free speech the aclj has fought for and in turn that can be weaponized against conservatives by the federal government in the future we have to be thinking forward thinking not just knee-jerk reactions when it comes to speech in a time like this because there is a lot of offensive disgusting speech out there And private employers, they have the right to say, I don’t want to be associated with you as your employer for the speech you are putting out there publicly. And many of these things are going viral. You’re seeing it across the country where teachers are losing their job because they were celebrating The death and assassination of Charlie Kirk. And that is offensive and terrible speech. The federal government should not be going in filing charges against these people. But a private employer has the right to say you shouldn’t work here anymore. So this is a time where we have to be very careful when it comes to what we want our government to do and what we want us as citizens and have a responsibility for. Because we don’t want there to be a time where free speech and rules that the federal government comes up with in future administrations, that’s turned back on conservatives. Because 99% of the time in history, that’s how it plays out. We know this. We know the bureaucracies are more favorable to the left and to their speech and not to the speech of conservatives. So we’re going to keep talking about this. I’ve got almost a full bank of calls. If you want to join me, 1-800-684-3110. I’m going to start taking them in the next segment as we continue this discussion. But I think that’s what’s important to remember is that An individual being fired or suspended by their private company is not the same as the government regulating out speech or criminalizing speech. And we are fighting for those that are facing governments, not the federal government, but state governments, Local governments all the time where those governments are deciding to put their thumb on the scale of the Constitution and say, your speech isn’t protected and that’s not constitutional. So whether it be people that are pro-life advocates or street preachers, ACLJ is there fighting for robust free speech and protection of that. Go to ACLJ.org and support us today as we continue to fight for the First Amendment across this country. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Seculo. Will Haynes here. And I’m going to go straight to your phone calls. Still got a couple lines open if you want to join us today at 1-800-684-3110. Let’s go ahead and go to Linda calling from California on line one. Linda, you’re on Seculo.
SPEAKER 03 :
I need to take a call. Sorry. Hi, this is Linda.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, Linda. You’re on the air.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, thank you. I applaud the decision by the FCC and ABC. I think… And you alluded to this. There’s one thing about comedy when you’re, it’s fine if you’re actually making fun of everyone, then it’s funny. But his remarks have always been very slanted, a bit disrespectful, hateful. And I don’t think that was good for younger people to be hearing all the time. I think it sort of, you know, confused them and thought, oh, that’s okay to hate this group because he was very slanted that way. And unfortunately, I did have an issue one time. I had an opportunity to be in his workplace and they didn’t foster a very respectful environment. So I think it’s a good decision.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, and Linda, I think at the end of the day, that’s the decision by ABC and Disney. Disney has been course correcting over the past few months, really ever since the president of the United States, Donald Trump was reelected where they have seen, okay, we leaned so far into this culture of, of the left and, And they were starting to see it hit their bottom line. And I think that is one of the most powerful ways that Americans can vote with their pocketbooks, so to speak, when it comes to these businesses is that if you’re not watching it, if you’re not paying for their services, they’re going to change what they’re doing. Now, I’m not someone that is advocates of these large boycotts and things of that nature, but. When they realize they’re not making content for their audience anymore, they will start to course correct or they will start to lose money. And at the end of the day, these are businesses. They need to survive. They have shareholders. They have responsibilities. But I would say that with the FCC, I think it is something that we need to be careful with right now. I know that FCC Chairman Carr was making the rounds. He was on Hannity. He was on Benny Johnson’s podcast and was saying things that I don’t want us to get back to a fairness doctrine situation because in the future that will be used against conservatives. I think it was a moment where Where even like we talked about yesterday, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who’s doing a fantastic job across the board, made a statement about hate speech that was pretty across the board criticized. Now, her clarification on it was talking about statutes on the books. That you cannot you cannot threaten people. There are laws against making direct threats, credible threats against individuals and things of that nature that yes, that is those are laws. Those are enforced. Those are good. But we do need to be careful that we don’t have a knee jerk reaction. where things are put in place that limit the First Amendment in the way that it should be robust, and then it gets turned on conservatives whenever there is a swing in the political momentum of this country. And that happens. That’s the history of the United States. That’s why… these rights are enshrined in our constitution to protect them no matter who is in power and so while i understand what uh what the attorney general through her clarification said i do think and and once again the fcc commissioner uh saying things that uh you know we need to look at these licenses things of that nature they are regulated by the fcc and so if there are things that need to be done within the proper framework That is one thing, but we shouldn’t overcorrect. And I think that’s a key here. And once again, with a comedian, they can say what they want and people can watch it or not. There are definitely limits on what you can say on the public airwaves. And so a lot of that comes down to, though, this decision was made by ABC and Disney. The FCC had not taken action against ABC or Disney or Nexstar or Sinclair, any of those affiliates. So at this point, this is a business decision by a private employer. Let’s go to Justin calling in California on line two. Justin, you’re on Sekulow.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thanks for taking my call. Yeah, Jimmy Kimmel’s freedom of speech has not been violated in any way. I mean, he has always been able to say whatever he wants, and he still can. But like you said, he works for a company, and that production company can choose to end his show if they believe, and rightfully so in this case, that his comments were insensitive and outrageous.
SPEAKER 01 :
Exactly. And and in reality, what we have seen is we have seen horrific speech across the country and not a single individual that has been going much further than than Jimmy Kimmel even did. People that are celebrating the assassination of an American, of a father, of a husband celebrating it. They’re not being arrested by the government. No, but are they losing their jobs? A lot of them are. Why? Because the employer thinks it’s disgusting and doesn’t want that to be a part of their workplace culture or something that they want representing their company. And I think that that’s fair. I think that the private employer has the right to decide that. And to your point, there are consequences to speech. It doesn’t mean that the heavy hand of the government is coming down and prosecuting you or silencing you if your private employer decides, I don’t want to be associated with you anymore. You don’t have that right to say whatever you want and there not be consequences in your personal life. So I just say that, that I agree with you, Justin. But I also want to make sure that we are careful with the First Amendment. We do stand for robust speech. Even speech that is considered disgusting or hateful is not criminalized. People have the right to say things and they can suffer consequences in the public arena. And we can combat that speech with more speech by pointing out their speech. So we just need to make sure that the United States doesn’t overcorrect in certain places and end up in what you see, like what is happening in the United Kingdom right now, where they don’t have the free speech protections that we have in the United States. And speech that would be allowed here, that would be fine here. People are suffering. They’re having arrests. They’re having protests put down. They’re having a lot of things happen. They’re being barred from entering the country. And we don’t want that in the United States because we do have these protections that are enshrined in our Constitution. So we’re going to get to some more calls the next segment of the broadcast. Stick with us. If you lose us here, if you’re listening on terrestrial radio and your station doesn’t carry the full hour, you can watch us on YouTube, Facebook, Salem News Channel, Rumble. We put this program as many places as we can because, like many issues you see now, we are an independent media. We put our show out there, not behind a paywall. We are on terrestrial networks. We are on Salem News Channel. We are on YouTube. We’re on places, but we want to get this out to as many people as possible. Also, so that… If people disagree with our speech and decide they don’t want it on their platform anymore, we’re not only beholden to that because we defend people for their free speech. We defend street preachers that are being arrested in Chicago, trying to be prosecuted for free speech, free speech activities, first amendment activities. And we get victories in that as well. We don’t just talk about it. We don’t just say this is wrong. This shouldn’t be this way. We go to court. We defend them. And we also file lawsuits against places like the city of Chicago for weaponizing their statutes against the First Amendment and against Christians and against street preachers. Join us at ACLJ.org. Support us today.
SPEAKER 04 :
keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever. This is Sekulow.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome to Secula. Will Haines here. I’m going to get right to phone calls as we start this second half hour. And we’re talking about the decision by ABC News, or sorry, ABC and Disney, to indefinitely suspend or preempt the Jimmy Kimmel program. This is after there was backlash from companies that own the affiliate stations across this country. And so let’s go ahead and get to the phone calls now. Let’s go to Jamal calling in North Carolina on line four. Jamal, you’re on Sekulow.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hi, Will Hayes. Thank you for taking my call. Great station. I listen to you all all the time, and good topic. Thank you. You’re quite welcome. When you mentioned Charlie Kirk and what kind of stance would he take, I felt compelled to call because Charlie Kirk, he did believe in free speech. However, I don’t think he would celebrate… and support people who are celebrating anybody’s death. If we go down that road, if we’re celebrating somebody’s death, then I think we’re going to allow other measures and other forces to kind of push that needle even forward. And furthermore, the late night, I guess, set up for comedians, Kimmel and other guys might not have done well. But last time I checked, Gutfeld was doing pretty well in his ratings.
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s actually correct. That is the only program that was seeing an increase in audience share. In the second quarter, I mentioned all those ratings earlier. Gutfeld was up 31.5% among total viewers and 24% among viewers in the demographic. But I also think it’s showing you is that… People got tired of the format that was only talking to one side, and so they went to another format. But Gutfeld was still only talking to one audience. It’s not like it’s the old style of late night show where it was making fun of everyone or having a laugh at everyone’s expense. So I do think there is some sort of not a knee-jerk reaction. It’s a compelling show. People love to watch Gutfeld, but it is sort of that… Division in the country where people are tired of being preached at by late night host on broadcast. And so they went to something else. So Jamal, thank you for your call. I agree. I mean, Charlie Kirk was a free speech advocate. That was his entire program. platform. He would go and have open debate about opposing views. I don’t want to speculate or say what he would think about this entire situation. But I do think that private companies deciding this isn’t the direction we’re going anymore is not the same as government censorship. And we should be aware of that. Let’s go ahead and go to Samantha calling from Illinois on line five. Samantha, you’re on Sekulow.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hello. Thank you for having me. I’ve had a lot of thoughts about this, the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel. And, I mean, I think it’s pretty concerning that this occurs on the back end of Mr. Carr appearing on a podcast and saying that the FCC had a lot of avenues and remedies they could pursue in specific reference to Kimmel’s statements. which I think creates the implication that the administration and specifically the FCC might have taken action if ABC hadn’t. And we saw this with the last administration where there were these big statements put out by administrative agencies that certain things shouldn’t be happening and using that to pressure social media companies. And now we’re seeing this administration using those tools to pressure traditional media companies.
SPEAKER 01 :
Samantha, I’m only cutting you off because I have about a minute left, but I don’t disagree with most of what you said. I think there was some concern in some of the ways that the chairman of the FCC, Mr. Carr, brought up some of those issues. I’m not an expert on the FCC and what specifically he was talking about with those avenues, but I do agree to some point that we don’t want the FCC to go back to the fairness doctrine, something that we fought against in the history of this organization. And that I do still believe this was a financial decision by ABC and Disney, and this was a very opportunistic time for them to make this decision. They had contract negotiations coming up in the next year. This medium is declining as a revenue source for them. So I think it was most likely that. But I do think we need to be careful, as I’ve said throughout the show today, about what steps the government takes. We’ll be right back. Welcome to Sekulow. Will Haines here. And we should be joined by Rick Grinnell shortly. We’re going to talk about that state visit by President Trump to the United Kingdom, as well as this issue with Jimmy Kimmel. And I want to start off with a phone call before we get Rick. Let’s go to Gavin calling in Indiana on line three. Gavin, you’re on Sekulow.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, Will. How are you? Doing well. Okay. Yeah, I’ve been hearing about how Jimmy had been. It wasn’t fired. What was the word you used?
SPEAKER 01 :
He’s permanently preempted indefinitely the show at this point.
SPEAKER 05 :
I really do agree with your theory about it being related to how he has that contract that’s supposed to be renewed in 2026. But I also feel that it has to do with just how things are going right now. Ever since Charlie was assassinated, there has definitely been a lot of people that have said their points on it, and then those people have suffered consequences such as losing their jobs and of the sort. So I always wonder if you were a big company like Disney, you would see what Jimmy has said and then preemptively say, So removing him like that would be a means of just trying to saving themselves before anything like that happens to the company itself, like sort of bleeds into their direction and not just that happened to Jimmy.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, yeah, Gavin. So I think that what your point is taken. Yeah. And obviously this was a moment when their affiliates were saying they were not going to be running it, that this is. A time that Disney could take action if they so felt that it was necessary. I mean, you did see even MSNBC fired some commentators in the wake, the direct wake of their reporting when the incident, when the assassination took place. So. People are sensitive right now to the speech. You are seeing people across the country, whether they be teachers, whether they be university employees, there are lots of things happening where people are having knee-jerk reactions and deciding to put that on the internet. which is beyond me. Why that you feel like you have to just get out there. Everyone wants to hear your opinion about this. It’s ridiculous. And that is part of what our culture has bred through the social media platforms. But yes, there are people that are seeing consequences to putting out speech into the ether, if you will. That doesn’t mean that the government is censoring that. You haven’t seen the government go threaten social media companies and say you need to take down all of this you need to throttle these accounts i mean there are people like keith olbermann that are saying horrific things i mean you may have forgotten that name used to be on tv uh but there are people out there that are putting out horrific things disgusting things and you’re not seeing the government go after the social media companies and say de-platform them Throttle their account. So I think that we should take care that the First Amendment is respected. However, that doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences in your personal life. But we have Rick Grinnell joining us now. And I first wanted to turn to this, Rick, where the president of the United States is on this historic state visit, second state visit. to the United Kingdom. This is kind of, we love to talk to you about the diplomatic issues as that is one of your areas of expertise. But this is almost like the Super Bowl of the diplomatic world. And this is, President Trump is now a repeat visitor to this Super Bowl when it comes to a state visit to the United Kingdom. What are your top line takes and what do you make of this historic second visit to the U.K.? ?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, first of all, they really did roll out the red carpet for him. It was amazing from the Royals to the government. It’s just been incredible to see how they’ve welcomed President Trump and that the entire Trump family is really taking advantage of building this great relationship with Royals and with the government. So I think that it’s pretty historic and pretty amazing. I can’t help but also think that the big headline is how President Trump made news back here in America by saying that Antifa would be targeted as a terrorist organization. I think that’s an amazing move. I can’t imagine another president being able to have the courage to do that. It’s overdue. We know that they have been fomenting violence. Let me just point out one obvious thing that everybody is saying, but not in the media. And that is it’s been more than a week since they assassinated Charlie Kirk. And we haven’t seen any riots. We’ve seen prayer vigils. We haven’t seen buildings being attacked, looting, or fire bombed. What we’ve seen is prayers. What we’ve seen is people gathering for vigils. to say uh pray for charlie pray for his family pray for our country uh drawing the line that this can’t take place and i’ll tell you i’m sick and tired of seeing the left really justify in many ways that Charlie was taken out because of his beliefs. There’s too much narrative going on with, well, he stowed this and he deserved it. They don’t get to say that and then at the same time complain that they are being fired from their jobs for their radical beliefs. You don’t get to kill someone for their beliefs and then say, you can’t fire me for my beliefs. And this is the temperament, this is the spirit of what these people are trying to say. And I think we’ve moved away from cancel culture. People aren’t canceling each other just because they don’t like something. They’re not running out of the room with their fingers in the ears. They’re not trying to debank people. What is happening right now is the consequence culture. When you say something that is targeting someone and really pushing the mentally ill to take violent actions because you’re saying that that person is a fascist or a threat to democracy, the left has got to take responsibility for what they’re doing because they’re encouraging weak and mentally unstable people to take action when they’re pointing the finger that certain people are fascist or racist or undermining our democracy and some of this incredible language that is making unstable people take terrible actions.
SPEAKER 01 :
Rick I also wanted to bring up because for the majority of this broadcast today we’ve been talking about Jimmy Kimmel’s preempted indefinitely status right now which I assume will lead to a separation from ABC and the Disney company but you had a tweet that you put out that I thought actually really echoed what I’ve been saying in this broadcast today and that’s that The left wants people who lose money and who only play to half the country to be protected in their jobs. Responsible leaders can’t keep paying for losing shows or programs. Businesses can’t be socialist programs. And you went on that you had to make same decisions at the Kennedy Center. The former President Barack Obama is calling this cancel culture and saying that it’s the administration pressuring these organizations to fire people. But in reality, they may just be seeing a… pretty prime opportunity to clean up their bottom line when these this medium is going away people don’t like these shows anymore and now is maybe the time to just part their ways
SPEAKER 08 :
Look, they’re making decisions over their balance sheet, not over politics. And that’s where Barack Obama doesn’t get it. He’s turned everything into politics. When we at the Kennedy Center say we don’t want politics, what we mean is we want supply and demand and capitalism. If you can’t pay for a show through ticket sales or a sponsor or a donor, or you’re not going to pay the difference yourself, don’t ask the Kennedy Center. Don’t ask. ideas. This is literally a typical supply and demand rule. If you don’t have enough demand, then it’s shameful for leaders to look the other way on losing programs and be able to go in the hole or financially have to make terrible decisions. Look, at the Kennedy Center, the previous leadership made terrible decisions to do deferred maintenance. They decided to let the building of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the premier arts institution, to literally suffer. We’ve had massive problems with the boiler. We’ve had the sewer system break, the water system break, the chairs. We’ve had rooms at the Kennedy Center that haven’t been updated, touched, or renovated since 1973. And somehow they are turning their losing ideas and making the Kennedy Center suffer and pretending like the rest of us have to protect them. We’re not going to protect bad ideas anymore. It’s a consequence culture. You make bad ideas, decisions, you’re going to suffer the consequences.
SPEAKER 01 :
Rick, thanks for joining us today. And thank you for those words. I mean, it was fascinating. I like that. I like consequence culture as opposed to cancel culture. It’s not just canceling someone because of their ideas. It’s taking someone that’s making bad decisions and them having consequences. There are consequences to your actions. So thank you for joining us today, Rick. In the next segment, Jordan had the opportunity to host Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee in our D.C. studio. So we recorded that yesterday afternoon. We’re going to play it for you in the next segment. But if you want to support the work of the ACLJ, go to ACLJ.org as we stand for free speech and protecting the First Amendment to the Constitution. Welcome back to Sekulow. Now we’re going to go to our Washington, D.C. studios where Jordan sat down yesterday afternoon with Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee. Let’s take a listen.
SPEAKER 07 :
We’re in our Washington, D.C. studio. I’m with Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee. We’re both Tennesseans. And Senator, something you’ve been working on for months has been the safety of our cities. And This has been a discussion President Trump has been having about Washington, D.C., our capital city. Now we’ve talked about places like Chicago. We’ve talked about Los Angeles and New York. But there are cities in our home state as well, the city of Memphis, which is getting some attention now. And I wanted you to talk about kind of the efforts to make Memphis safe again for its residents and for those visitors, too.
SPEAKER 06 :
It’s also a problem that’s challenged Memphis and West Tennessee since I was a kid. to just share a very personal story. When I was 14 years old, my godfather was assigned his first ministry in Memphis. His son was my age. I was invited over during the summertime. I’m from Gallatin, Tennessee, a small town in middle Tennessee. And, um, I was invited over to, to, um, spend a week or so in the summer. And my parents ultimately decided that they were concerned for my safety and they did not let me go. Um, you roll forward. I recruited when I was commerce secretary of Tennessee, a major employer, uh, to come, to come to the state. The average salaries range from 90,000 to $120,000 per job. Okay. And this was over a decade ago. The CEO called me and he asked if I could get him crime statistics for Tennessee that suppressed Memphis. So this is an issue that has been going on and it’s been troubling us. We’ve been trying to attack it in different ways. And many of my predecessors and colleagues have worked on this. But through the pandemic, we’ve seen it step up dramatically. And during the pandemic, Shelby County schools basically did away with truancy requirements. They’ve yet to reinstate them. You’ve got a lot of kids that have been out of school for years now. And you’ve got some very hardened gangs, hardened criminals there that are running these younger boys, basically, and committing heinous crimes, which has resulted in Memphis attaining a very unenviable place on the roster of crime. And that is on a per capita basis, one of the highest crime rate cities in America. The time has come to do something about it. Immediately after the 2024 election, I began talking with the mayor of Memphis. And also with the sheriff of Shelby County and with a number of leaders there in Memphis, Tennessee, they definitely want to see something done. And my view was that we’re in a position to actually bring federal resources to bear to help. Our decision was to work quietively, but very, you know, very much work together to try to leverage federal resources to see if we could make a difference. And my hat’s off to Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, who, as they went through the confirmation process, you know, and the Senate has to confirm members and the FBI director. They both agreed with me that they would prioritize Memphis, and they absolutely have. Last Friday, we just finished the first major phase of this federal effort. We more than trebled the number of FBI agents in Memphis previously. That started in late July, and it took a while to plan all of this. But again, we’ve done this in collaboration with the Memphis Police Department and with the Sheriff’s Office.
SPEAKER 07 :
Has there been good support there from the local leaders in Memphis, from the mayor, from the police department?
SPEAKER 06 :
At the ground level, I couldn’t ask for better collaboration. The FBI has done a great job working together with the police department, with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. We’ve added DEA resources to this effort as well. But this initial effort resulted in 500 arrests, Jordan. And you understand this process better than most, over 105 federal indictments already. And that number is going to grow as these cases are worked up. Again, the effort just came to an end. The initial effort just came to an end on Friday. President Trump has been supportive of this all along. When he saw the initial success, he said, let’s make every resource available from a federal level. Because what I want to see happen, Jordan, is I want these hardened criminals, these gangsters out of our state. To do that, we need to charge them federally. So the memorandum of understanding that came out. explicitly names the agencies that will be involved. And it’s every three-letter agency that you know. That includes HUD. That includes the IRS. You think about these criminals that have illicit income. The same as Al Capone. We can get them on IRS federal charges. If you think about criminals that are utilizing HUD facilities or SNAP benefits, you just sort of go down the list.
SPEAKER 07 :
You’re talking about cleaning up a city completely.
SPEAKER 06 :
We’re talking about cleaning it up. And federal charges means they’re not in the Shelby County Jail near Memphis. They’re in Leavenworth, and they’re there for a long time because federal charges are very different. You don’t have the same lenient bail situation, and certainly you don’t have the same lenient parole situation that you do at a state level, at a local level.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I mean, Memphis has a professional basketball team, and I’ve heard from former players who said they would tell new recruits not to play in Memphis because of the crime. I mean, we’ve heard that on a lot of the NBA podcasts. And, of course, if we can turn that around quickly— You know, that change that can change in a matter of weeks.
SPEAKER 06 :
It looks like of the many resources that are coming to bear. One of those is the National Guard. Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee at President Trump’s request is going to deploy the National Guard to Memphis. I think that has caused a lot of consternation. And I think from sort of the. The business class in Memphis worried about what does that do to the city’s reputation? Can we recruit people here? I think a lot of politicians are going to call this an invasion. They just watch what Gavin Newsom is saying or what Governor Pritzker is saying in Illinois, and they’re copying that. But at the end of the day, when these resources come in, and I’ve talked extensively with the mayor about how you might deploy the National Guard. He’s talked with me about urban blight. It affects every major urban city, but it’s an issue in Memphis. The National Guard can help with that. They’re not there for law enforcement, but they’re there to support the entire effort. And I think the neighborhoods, just as they have in Washington, D.C., will welcome the presence. I think the most important thing is that as we come in and we put heavy up on law enforcement there, I’m talking about DEA, ATF, the FBI again, is we heavy up the law enforcement and we really take a major step to clean out the hardest core criminals here. incumbent upon me as a member of the Appropriations Committee in the Senate and on the governor. We’re going to look for the federal aid and the federal resources, I should say, and the state-level resources that Memphis needs to sustain this in the long term. Because Memphis has been historically short when it comes to law enforcement resources. They’ve had recruitment difficulties because of a local elected DA that George Soros got behind with $600,000 and put into office, who then proceeded to basically not try people and let them go. That has been demoralizing to the local police. That’s going to change, and we’re going to make certain. The governor and I have spoken about this extensively, and the mayor has been very clear with us. He’s actually given me a list of what he needs. That’s great. The resource requirements are significant, and we’re going to do everything that we can to put those resources in place long-term so that Memphis is sustained as the safest place Hopefully the safest, certainly one of the safest cities in America.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah. I mean, Tennessee is becoming such a dynamic state. You don’t want Memphis to be left behind with, you’ve got cities like Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, all kind of moving forward. I mean, you keep going through the list. Memphis isn’t on that list right now because of the crime. If Memphis is on that list, I mean, the state becomes that much more dynamic.
SPEAKER 06 :
I pose the question to one of the new industries coming in, the folks running XAI. That’s the big hyperscaler that’s in Memphis. It’s a huge investment that’s coming in, $70 billion thereabouts that’s coming in, and a lot of other companies that are interested in being part of that ecosystem. And the management of XAI said, in response to the notion of having, for example, National Guard resources there in Memphis, would that be a deterrent to those companies that are thinking about coming? And the response was, no, everybody knows there’s been an issue. This actually shows that you care about it. That you’re doing something to fix it. And that is absolutely the truth. And I have to compliment local leadership who’ve been willing to work alongside us. I certainly compliment the governor who’s been willing to put the resources to bear. And you know, and you’ve got to pledge for me that I’ll continue to work my heart out with my colleagues in the Congress. David Kustov, Congressman Cohen from Memphis, certainly Senator Blackburn. We’re all working together.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you. Thank you, Senator. Thank you so much. To support the ACLJ, go to ACLJ.org.
