>> Donald Trump was so deeply offended.
His feelings were so hurt by Jimmy Kimmel's jokes about him that he tried
to get him canceled and had government officials look into making it happen.
This is according to a new report based on two former Trump
administration officials who said that Trump was again, so
upset by Jimmy Kimmel's jokes that he directed his White House staff to call
up one of Disney's top executives to complain and demand action.
Now Disney, of course, owns ABC where Jimmy Kimmel live airs.
Here's what the former officials told Rolling Stone.
In at least two separate phone calls that occurred around the time Trump
was finishing his first year in office,
the White House conveyed the severity of his fury with Kimmel to Disney.
Trump's staff mentioned that the leader of the free world wanted the billion dollar
company to rein in the Trump-trashing ABC host and that trump felt that
Kimmel had in the characterization of one former senior administration official,
been very dishonest and doing things that Trump would have one sued over.
So he was president of the United States when he did this.
For those who are concerned about government encroachment on our
First Amendment rights, here it is.
>> And by the way, for all of those hosts who are super worried about comics being
canceled, that's they think that's the number one issue in America, not that
45,000 people a year die cuz they don't have health insurance, not because 100,000
people die cuz they're on fentanyl and meth etc., because of addiction issues.
The number one issues comics getting canceled.
Well, here's your beloved trump.
He wanted to cancel a comic.
So next time we talk about cancel culture, you're gonna talk about this.
Isn't it weird how they never talk about right-wing cancel culture?
>> Government officials hitting up executives of whatever company to
silence or censor anyone.
I don't care if they're Democrats or Republicans, it's wrong and
it is against the First Amendment, okay?
No one cares about your hurt feelings, Trump.
As a government official, as the president of the United States,
you don't have the right to censor a late night host who's
making fun of you because your feelings were hurt.
>> Remember, Trump then later in the 2020 ran his entire convention for
reelection on freedom of speech.
It was mentioned in almost every speech in the major speeches and
those nights we covered the entire convention.
The number one issue was freedom of speech while Trump is going, they made fun of me.
I don't want him to have freedom of speech.
Third thing is right-wingers, pick a man.
And then by that, I don't mean gender wise.
I mean, just pick someone who isn't such a little bitch, okay?
He's such a cry baby.
>> He really is.
>> How do you not see it?
>> No one wants more. >> Everything is crying, crying, crying.
I make 7 million.
>> Okay, more details.
So a third former official Trump administration official who worked
in the Trump White House, of course, recalled,
at least one call was made to Disney that I know of.
I do not know to whom, but it happened.
Nobody thought it was going to change anything, but
Donald Trump was focused on it.
So we had to do something.
It was doing something mostly to say to Trump, hey, we did this.
>> That's we've seen that from Trump insiders in story
after story where Trump has this insane request.
Yeah, yeah, you got it, buddy.
You got it.
>> Yeah, and since he's a little baby, they give him a pacifier.
They stick it in his stupid orange mouth.
Did you look at the Jimmy Kimmel getting embarked?
There like we good, we did here suck on this, okay?
So look, at one time, he's like, how about we
increase our nuclear arsenal ten times what it is now, that'll make me so big.
Everybody will know how big my button is and
that's the meaning that his secretary of state Tillerson.
Not a good guy was CEO of Exxon Mobil, right?
But not brain dead, walked out and said, my God,
this guy is an effing moron, right?
And they're like don't worry about it, we'll just tell him we looked into it and
stick a pacifier in his dumbass mouth and then we'll move on with our lives.
It doesn't matter, he forgets, anyway.
>> It's amazing, so one target of the White House's pressure campaign
against Kimmel was a lobbyist for Disney by the name of Richard Bates.
So Trump's staff reportedly reached out Bates to convey his anger
regarding Kimmel's monologues and jabs.
The incident was so
bizarre that news of it spread around the corridors of power in Washington, DC.
Other administration officials who had nothing to do with the pressure campaign
began hearing from their contacts at Disney about how confused they were
that the White House kept telling them Trump wanted Kimmel to tone down his
anti-Trump humor.
>> Okay, so two things about this guys.
One is understand that this is not a thing that just happens to comics or
just happens under Trump.
Government officials do this all the time, okay?
So if you're worried about cancel culture and freedom of speech etc.,
they are real issues, right?
And so you know who got in a sense moved down from prime time to
the weekends, because they were worried about his tone.
Me, okay, literally.
And by the way, Phil Griffin admitted the tone part.
He was the head of MSNBC at the time.
When I was a host of 6 o'clock on MSNBC, the head of MSNBC said,
I was just in Washington and they're not happy with your tone.
Okay, so a lot of times, both Democratic and
Republican administrations call into these media outlets and
they say to them, hey, and that's the code word that they both use.
And Phil griffin said to the New York Times in explaining the situation, no,
it wasn't over substance.
We're just worried about his tone, okay?
That means you're criticizing the powerful and we don't like it.
All right, so now we call them out when the Democrats do it and
they did it to me, right?
Right-wingers, can you call it out when your guy does it?
Or are you that hypocritical that you're only in favor of freedom of speech when it
affects you, but not if you want to get someone fired because they offended
the beloved Donald Trump?
>> I just think when it comes to the whole free speech debate,
both sides are full of crap.
I'm just keeping it real, both sides are 100% full of crap.
Okay, the right pretends as though, they're free speech absolutist, but
they don't hesitate to shut down someone who engages in speech they don't like.
>> A billion times guys, we've given you so many examples.
Hey, you're gonna criticize Israel, that's it.
We're gonna take away your government contracts.
I mean, it's a direct violation of the First Amendment and they're here for
they love that censorship.
Hey, I don't like books in Florida.
That said ban them, etc.
You guys love says just really, but
no one in media says it including mainstream media.
They're like, no, it's only their left that does cancel culture.
Yeah, yeah, and the left, you have these outrageous examples too.
No, I mean look, my favorite example is when, and this comes up ever ever so
often when we wanna, quote, Martin Luther King Jr. and
he has the N word not the really bad N word, but the other N word in his quote.
And we're like what what do we do?
It's Martin Luther King Jr, do we read his quote verbatim or
do we censor Martin Luther King Jr. when we read his quote.
>> Look, I hate to say it, but
I had to do it in my book cuz the publisher asked me to do it.
So there's Lee Atwater did deeply racist Republican admitted how racist they
were in the Southern strategy and use the N word like crazy and I had to put it in,
but take out the middle of the word, but it's a direct quote from a racist and
you're taking away the power of it.
And yet, I- >> You sanitizing what he said.
>> Iin my opinion, you shouldn't sanitize it, but what am I gonna do?
And there's all these folks who wanna cancel everybody based on the slightest
transgression and they said this when they were in seventh grade, and etc.
Know the correct answer is more speech.
And by the way, that means both right-winger and left wingers.
You can't cry about other people's speech criticizing you, right?
Cuz the right-wing is like, man, I got to say whatever I want.
I get to be racist this word, that word, you're criticizing me.
Ban them, ban them, okay?
I mean, recently they started doing book burnings.
What we've lost our mind as a country.
>> 100%, I just want healthcare and
I want people to have better working conditions and better pay.
I wish we could go get to a place in this country where we focus on making
people whole instead of engaging in these fake fights,
right, where both sides are full of crap.
But we're never gonna get there, right, because the culture wars will suck
the life out of us because that's what they're intended to do.
>> All right, last thing, look, we're being consistent on this show.
I defended Don Imus, Megyn Kelly, even Rush Limbaugh, etc.,
when they say outrageous things.
I said the answer isn't firing, it's more conversation etc., right?
But the people who cancel folks the most is corporate media, okay?
So how do they do it?
I have an example in the book tyt.com/justice, if you wanna get it.
You can pre-order now.
Anyway, it's Ashleigh Banfield story.
She spoke out against the Iraq war and they took her off of all their, okay?
And they said, how dare you.
It was in the economic interest of the corporation she worked for
at the time that was General Electric, which was a giant defense contractor.
You are not allowed to say things that are against our economic interest.
That's the real cancel culture and that happens all the time to both sides.