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Trump: Kimmel Suspended Because He's "Not A Talented Person"; ABC Suspends Jimmy Kimmel After Threats From FCC Chairman; Trump Lashes Out At Australian Reporter For Question; Dems Warn That Trump Will Use Kirk Murder To Stifle Dissent. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 18, 2025 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today, on Inside Politics. President Trump is celebrating ABC's decision to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air indefinitely, while suggesting other late night hosts, should be next. This on the same week, he sued the New York Times and threatened to dismantle left-wing groups (audio blip) culture wars.

I'll speak to a Republican Congressman calling for the firing of anyone he thinks is celebrating Charlie Kirk's heinous murder. And settling for plan B. Kamala Harris is divulging that she really wanted Pete Buttigieg to be her running mate, but thought it was too risky to have a black woman and a gay man on the same ticket.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

We start with the media move, sending tremors across the globe. During a news conference in Great Britain this morning, President Trump weighed in on ABC taking Jimmy Kimmel's late night show off the air indefinitely.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk. And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago. So, you know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now, network late night ratings are declining across the board, but it is not accurate to characterize Kimmel's ratings as bad. In fact, his show was the top late night program, the top rated among young viewers, which is what advertisers care the most about. That was in the most recent quarter. Now, Kimmel also didn't actually say anything bad specifically about Charlie Kirk. We're going to play his comments in full in just a moment.

But first I want to get to CNN's Alayna Treene, who is in Windsor. Alayna?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: I actually found that moment about Jimmy Kimmel coming up during this press conference to be one of the most notable, Dana, part of it is because not a single American reporter who was actually in the room for the press conference asked about this. Of course, this is one of the biggest stories right now happening inside the U.S.

And I remind you as well that this is an issue that the president ran on this idea of protecting the First Amendment and free speech banning government censorship. It was actually one of the first executive orders that the president signed when coming into office for his second term. It was actually a British reporter who posed this question about Kimmel to the president.

Now, as you heard there in what he had said and what you played from the press conference, the president kind of dismissed it, tried to blame it on bad ratings, but he did not mention the intense pressure we know that there has been on some of these companies, specifically on ABC after Kimmel's remarks regarding Charlie Kirk from the FCC Chair, Brendan Carr.

Now we did hear Brendan Carr this morning, discussed some of this. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRENDAN CARR, FCC CHAIRMAN: They went from being court jesters that made fun of everybody, that should happen. You should parody everybody. Trust me, I'm getting my fair share of parodies. That's fine, but they started replacing that and becoming court clerics and enforcing a very narrow world view. And I think that just tanked the business model. Again, President Trump has sort of unlocked the ability of companies to say, you know, we need to go a different direction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Look, I mean, clearly, I think this is a very major story, obviously back in the U.S. right now. And part of this, again, is because this has been such a big issue for the president, even if you think about the vice president when J.D. Vance has come to the U.K., come to Europe, he's brought up free speech.

We also know, of course, free speech is one of the things that the British prime minister is battling right now. A lot of criticism over how he is handling that here in the U.K., all to say, it clearly has been something that has been on the president's mind as well. He posted about Kimmel just after 1 am. He was actually inside Windsor Castle behind me when he did that.

[12:05:00]

One of the few things he posted about while being here in the United Kingdom for this state visit. And so, for him to dismiss this, of course, try to downplay it as bad rating, saying Kimmel has bad talent. Completely, I think dismissing the pressure we've seen from his FCC Chair Brendan Carr. Dana?

BASH: The right to free speech is part of why United States is not part of Great Britain anymore, but we can talk about that later. I want -- thank you so much, Alayna. I want our viewers to hear for themselves exactly what Jimmy Kimmel said on his show Monday night, and then what the FCC Chair Brendan Carr said yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY KIMMEL, ABC HOST, JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE: 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. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism. But on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. May I ask, sir personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half, sir?

TRUMP: I think very good. And by the way, right there you see all the trucks. They've just started construction of the new borough for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years, and it's going to be a beauty.

KIMMEL: Yes. He's at the fourth stage of grief, construction, demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend.

This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish. OK.

CARR: They have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest. And we can get into some ways that we've been trying to reinvigorate the public interest and some changes that we've seen. But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here at the table, CNN's Stephen Collinson, Tia Mitchell of the Atlanta Journal- Constitution, Zolan Kanno-Youngs of The New York Times. And Frank Sesno, former CNN Washington bureau chief, anchor, White House correspondent and now professor at the George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs.

Frank, the floor is yours.

FRANK SESNO, PROFESSOR, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY'S SCHOOL OF MEDIA & PUBLIC AFFAIRS, FORMER CNN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: The floor is mine. First of all, to Kimmel. It's just not funny. You know, you don't make jokes out of someone's death. You don't make jokes and try to make political hay out of a situation like that. There may be some on the left who found that amusing or said, well, you go -- you go, get you. But it's in terrible taste. It's incredibly painful. And if I were his producer, I would say, just don't do that.

So, the uproar is not surprising. The cost, however, is unacceptable. And I have to look at that cost in conjunction with everything else. It's not just Jimmy Kimmel. It's a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times. It's a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register because we don't like a poll. It's settlements with George Stephanopoulos are 60 minutes because we don't like the way you edit.

I come back to Brendan Carr, the chair of the FCC, who said, and I quote, in 2022 -- 2023 censorship is the authoritarians dream, and what I worry the most about after a career in this business, which has been built on, my job is to try to tell the truth. My job is to give voice to other people, even when the voice is unpopular, sometimes wrong, sometimes hurtful, to see a government sponsored effort like this, not just in one case, but across the board to crack down on free expression, odious and wrong and unfunny as it may be.

BASH: And just to go back, Jimmy Kimmel did separate and apart from that that moment in his monolog on Monday issue a statement after Charlie Kirk was murdered. And said, instead of the angry finger pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: He did. He did. And I also think it's important to call attention to the president's reaction after this, after he posted on social media, celebrating this action on Kimmel, but also saying that other late night hosts could be next, which -- Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers, which undermines the idea that this is exclusively just about these comments that were said on Kimmel.

You were saying this is part of something broader. I would say it's even broader than just a crackdown on media companies, but more so a broad crackdown on dissent, using the machine of the federal government to crack down on dissent. We've seen numerous examples, including recent examples this week.

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The Trump administration has foreshadowed going after the tax-exempt status of NGOs. Basically, claiming, without evidence, that this -- there's a network of these Democratic groups that are encouraging or facilitating violence. They have gone after bureaucrats as well that have expressed dissenting views and ousted them from the federal government.

Trump has, without clarity, talked about investigating different groups and designating without specifying anything, groups as domestic terrorists. Even though there's really no legal mechanism to do that. He's pulled in different cabinet officials to do this as well. Marco Rubio with increased vetting on visas for people that express dissenting viewers. BASH: And yet, I just want to follow up on that, because it's -- there's kind of a chicken or the egg situation here when it comes to the people Trump cares about, and those are the people who voted for him. You were out and talking to conservative voters yesterday.

KANNO-YOUNGS: 100 percent.

BASH: They support what he's doing.

KANNO-YOUNGS: That's right. I went to rural area just an hour outside of Detroit, where the vice president was going. It was originally advertised as talking about Trump's, Trump's domestic policy bill. You may not be surprised to hear that the vice president talked about this as well, and the actions that they could take after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

And I got there early to talk to some of the supporters there, and they welcomed this, right, there is and from the grassroots up in the MAGA circles, there has been a thinking of, you know, the responding to what they deemed was the cancel culture perpetuated by the left. And now are welcoming the federal government backing an effort to retaliate here in their own way. And look, people at that speech said, they wanted to see this.

Bahs Yeah. But it's responding to cancel culture with a different flavor of canceling, which is--

KANNO-YOUNGS: What the administration would deem is different too. They called it consequence culture. And even in cancel culture that might have been social pressure on social media. What we're seeing is the federal government actually investigate people here and criminalize them.

BASH: Let's just drill down, because you gave an important kind of broad brush and you were focused Frank on media. I just want to drill down just in the last 48 hours. Of course, we're talking about yanking -- ABC yanking Jimmy Kimmel show, indefinitely from the air following a threat from Trump's FCC chair.

There's an Australian broadcaster who was barred today from Trump's U.K. press conference after clashing with the president. New York Times, of course, was sued after reporting on articles questioning his success, and this exchange that we played earlier this week when the president lashed out at John Carl for asking a question about hate speech. That was something that Pam Bondi had said. I want to drill down on that moment with the Australian reporter and show our viewers what happened there. This was at the White House a couple of days ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Should a president, President Trump, a president in office should be engaged in so much business activity?

TRUMP: Well, I'm really not. My kids are running the business. I'm here. You know what the activity -- where are you from?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

TRUMP: Why the Australians. You're hurting Australia, right? In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now, and they want to get along with me. You know, your leader, is coming over to see me very soon. I'm going to tell him about you. You set a very bad tone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Steven?

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: You know, it's getting worse and more overt, the attempt to crack down on the media. This has been a long-time theme of Trump's politics. He's used the media as a foil, but twice in two days, we've seen him, you know, get in the face of reporters and that's something new. But there's also another dimension to this.

The administration is not just going after reporters. It's going after the corporate parents of media firms. That's what happened in this FCC case. It was the administration trying to make companies that want to make a profit, pay a price if they don't adopt the administration's vision of the public interest,

BASH: Right. In this case, a very important note. The media company NexStar, which has a 30-something of the ABC affiliates, really wants a merger, and it's important for them, for their bottom line. And the FCC chair knows that very well.

COLLINSON: And there might be a case--

BASH: And it's up to him.

COLLINSON: There might be a case for some of these rural stations in Trump country. They probably don't have a good business case, case for continuing to keep Jimmy Kimmel standing up every night, doing an anti-Trump monolog. It's different in the cities. That's a reflection of our split political society, but they're trying to make these corporates pay a price, and as they do that, the corporates make their decisions, and then you have a consequent erosion of democratic standards, the media freedom and everything else.

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TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL- CONSTITUTION: Yeah. I just struggle with the inconsistent messaging on this over the years, because again, for so long, Republicans conservatives have said, we don't want wokeism, where we're policing what everyone says, and people are too soft, and all these snowflakes and cancel culture.

And now, the minute they see someone on social media saying something they don't like about a person that they admire or whatever. Now they're saying, fire the person, get rid of the person. It's inconsistent. The same thing about how long we've heard about free market society, you know, I think about if the roles were reversed, and this was Joe Biden cracking down on speech he didn't like and using it to block corporate mergers.

You know, there would be an uproar. You know, it's one thing to say if the FCC truly doesn't think that these mergers make business sense for the American people, or if the company -- if ABC decided Jimmy Kimmel is not funny, not getting the ratings, shouldn't be on the air. But that's not what's happening, and it's just hard to reconcile that

BASH: We need to sneak in a quick break. You wanted to make one last point.

COLLINSON: Go ahead.

BASH: OK, all right. So, because we have a lot more to talk about. Coming up, former President Barack Obama is diving into this controversy. Doesn't do that a lot, but he is on this. Stay with us.

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BASH: Democrats are warning that ABC taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air is a red alert moment for free speech and democracy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump, in the wake of the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk has decided to exploit that tragedy to try to silence his political opponents. I think Kimmel is just the beginning. I think you're going to see a potential dizzying campaign of political repression against anyone who opposes this president.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): We saw the government step up and give a hard shove, and then we saw a compliant company turn around and suspend Mr. Kimmel, and that truly undermines the whole premise of the First Amendment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And now, former President Barack Obama is weighing in, blaming the Trump administration for threatening media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn't like, and urging media companies to stand up to Trump instead of capitulating.

Back here at the table, Frank, I know you had things to say about what we saw the sound bite I played with the Australian reporter, trying to -- asking a really legitimate question about the crypto money that his family is making. But if you kind of combine that with what we're hearing from Democrats and the Barack Obama of it all, how do you think that's going to play?

SESNO: Well, I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, there's very little public outrage. This is how it's playing that you can walk with on almost anything these days, people are shell shocked. To be honest. It's impossible to keep up with all of this stuff. The point I wanted to make about the reporter, and it ties into this, is sometimes we need to kind of take a step back and remember what this is really all about, because we get so close to it and we talk about it so much. The reporter's job, the journalist's job is to give everybody a hard time, right? We challenge everybody so that's not outrageous. That's not terrible.

The comedian's job is to try to be funny, and sometimes they really flop. They're really terrible. What free speech is all about is you have a right to be bad. And when I think about what you were hearing from conservatives, and all the rest, a company has a right to make its business decision when you're making about who's on the air or is not.

We do not want the government doing that. We don't want a government when it's a conservative government. We don't want a government when it's a liberal government. We want the -- you know, this is enshrined in our First Amendment, and we get very high and mighty about this, and we forget what people are actually saying.

And sometimes the media and the coastal elite really do sound like the media and the coastal elite, which is why people don't like them very much. But there is a lot going on here. There is a lot at stake, and there's a lot to be very worried about.

BASH: And part of why this continues to happen is, unlike Trump won where we heard the president lash out at reporters all the time, President Trump all the time. The difference between then, one of the many differences between then and now, is that, A, there were fellow Republicans still on Capitol Hill and elsewhere who said, please don't do that. That doesn't exist.

And once again, or at least now, Republicans have those -- Republicans have total control of Washington. Hakeem Jeffries released a statement he's the top Democrat in the House, calling for Brendan Carr to resign. You know, another strongly worded letter. In fairness, what else can Hakeem Jeffries do?

MITCHELL: He can't do much. And quite frankly, there's all the indications are that Brendan Carr is doing exactly what President Trump wants him to do. That's another thing. One of my main takeaways is a lot of this is performative for an audience of one. And so, when J.D. Vance, Brendan Carr, Kash Patel, you can go down the list. Pam Bondi, they're doing things to either curry the favor or keep in the favor or carry out what they believe is what President Trump wants, and that's what we're seeing even in these crackdowns, I believe.

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SESNO: Yeah. I think the Democrats have the same problem over and over again, is that, in a very populist era, they keep trying to fight emotion, which is what Trump's politics is based on, with the reason. So, someone needs to be making these constitutional arguments, right? The problem is politically do they work?

I think that's partly what Gavin Newsom has been trying to do a little bit is to become a little bit more Trumpy, yeah, emotional populist, try and play politics as it is played now, not for example, when President Obama used to come out and give a speech, and he would create an argument, and he would give language for all the Democrats to use, and it would work. But that's not necessarily how politics works anymore in the post Trump era. It's a real problem I think for me.

BASH: We mentioned Gavin Newsom. Let's just show how he reacted. He said, buying and controlling media platforms, firing commentators, canceling shows. These aren't coincidences. It's coordinated, and it's dangerous. The GOP does not believe in free speech. They are censoring you in real time.

And as you were saying, Gavin Newsom is one of the people who has been saying, look, we need to, you know, stop trying to stay within the status quo and give good speeches here. And we actually need to meet the Republican Party and Trump that and sort of fight back against what they're doing here. And that comment isn't in line with that.

I think you're also seeing Democrats see an opportunity here to say, to call out what they describe as hypocrisy, to say, look, we heard a lot about censor, censorship and this party being the party of defending free speech for years, particularly in the Biden years, particularly during the pandemic. And now look at what's happening, right? But I think your point is right. Often, I hear from voters who support Democrats of, OK, we heard what you said, but what are you going to do? What are you going to do here?

SESNO: I think we're also in a period of absolute -- absolutism in politics, right? So, the Republicans are saying, this is terrible. This needs to be shut down. The Democrats, we're hearing them saying, this is a party of censorship, and they just want to shut. There is a place in in the middle folks, and we're not very good at getting there anymore. There is a problem.

BASH: The system is not set up to support people in the middle, which is a whole--

SESNO: --and the public doesn't often want to hear it.

BASH: Well, they do, but then they don't. Another conversation. Thank you all. What a great discussion. So good to see you, Frank.

SESNO: Good to see you.

BASH: Up next. Republican reaction to the Trump administration's call to crack down on criticism of conservatives.

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