Jimmy Kimmel, free speech and the crackdown after Charlie Kirk’s death
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the week since Charlie Kirk’s death, public officials including Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi have called for Kirk’s critics to face consequences. People seen as celebrating his killing online have lost their jobs or faced harassment.
That crackdown has extended to media figures, with ABC deciding to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air “indefinitely” over Kirk commentary, shortly after Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr called out the show on a conservative podcast.
In response, public figures and elected officials on both sides of the aisle have voiced concerns about whether the government is encroaching on the First Amendment. Some conservatives are even quoting Kirk’s own words to advocate for the protection of free speech.
Host Colby Itkowitz sits down with Washington Post chief political correspondent Karen Tumulty and Dan Merica, co-anchor of The Post’s Early Brief politics newsletter, to unpack all the latest developments in the case against Kirk’s alleged shooter, the efforts to pursue Kirk’s critics and his upcoming memorial service.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So guys, I have a controversial hot take. |
| 0:02.4 | Let's hear it. |
| 0:03.2 | Robert Redford's best journalism movie up close and personal. |
| 0:07.8 | What in the world is that movie? |
| 0:11.0 | I insist that you go home tonight and you find it streaming somewhere. |
| 0:16.8 | It is a lovely love story about Robert Redford as a old news anchor who now runs a TV station |
| 0:24.5 | in Miami and he kind of plucks Michelle Pfeiffer out of obscurity and trains her up to be a TV anchor too. |
| 0:31.5 | And they fall in love, I'm assuming. |
| 0:32.7 | I don't want to spoil it for you. |
| 0:34.6 | I remember watching all the presidents as a young person and thinking, God, he looks so cool. |
| 0:40.8 | Journalists are so cool. |
| 0:42.5 | Like the coolest. |
| 0:43.2 | And then I became a journalist, and I realized there are very few journalists who look like Robert Redford at all. |
| 0:53.8 | Today on the show, we're going to be talking about the efforts to punish critics of Charlie Kirk. |
| 0:58.6 | And then later in the show, we're going to be talking about this debate over free speech |
| 1:02.8 | and civility in our politics. |
| 1:04.8 | So from the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Report's weekly politics roundtable. |
| 1:09.8 | I'm Kolby Ekowitz. It's Friday, September 19th. |
| 1:12.6 | I'm joined today by two fantastic guests that I'm so excited to welcome onto the show. |
| 1:16.6 | First, we have the post-chief political correspondent, Karen Tommelty, |
| 1:20.6 | and we have Dan Marica, co-anchor of our politics newsletter, Early Brief. |
| 1:24.6 | Thank you both so much for being here. |
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