A former writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live! ignited controversy during a congressional hearing after taking pointed aim at Donald Trump. Referring to “the man in the Oval Office,” the writer claimed Trump “couldn’t take a joke,” triggering sharp reactions from lawmakers and viewers. The exchange quickly went viral online, reigniting debate over political comedy, free speech, and the increasingly combative tone inside Washington hearings.
#DonaldTrump #JimmyKimmel #CongressHearing #CapitolHill #PoliticalSatire #BreakingNews #usnews
~PR.460~HT.408~ED.194~GR.506~VG.HM~
#DonaldTrump #JimmyKimmel #CongressHearing #CapitolHill #PoliticalSatire #BreakingNews #usnews
~PR.460~HT.408~ED.194~GR.506~VG.HM~
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I'm a comedy writer. I wrote for Jimmy Kimmel Live for eight years, as ranking member Scanlon said,
00:05and I'm an author who recently got back from a national tour for my picture book series, Buffalo Fluffalo.
00:12So the fact that I am sitting here in a navy blue business suit in the Capitol building,
00:17surrounded by my esteemed co-panelists, at a hearing about the First Amendment,
00:22means something has gone very, very wrong.
00:25I gotta say, I didn't see this coming.
00:28I thought we were entering a new golden age of free speech.
00:32On January 20th, 2025, President Trump, on his very first day in office for the second time,
00:38announced a presidential action called, quote,
00:42restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship,
00:45which was a big relief because I had some concerns about how he felt about speech he didn't much like.
00:51My first brush with this president happened in 2017.
00:55At the time, I was doing a recurring joke bit on Twitter before it was owned by
00:59the world's richest and most online man, Elon Musk.
01:04Every time the president free-associated his feelings, in all caps, I would reply as his concerned mom,
01:10sweetie, you're clearly having a lot of big thoughts all at once,
01:13you need to do your five deep breaths, etc.
01:15It was all fun and games, until one night, the president blocked me after I wrote a joke that hurt
01:22his feelings.
01:23I was confused at first and thought the account had mercifully been deleted,
01:27but it turned out that the man in the Oval Office couldn't take a joke and wanted to make sure
01:33he didn't have to hear one either.
01:35The Knight Foundation sued him to get him to unblock me and several others, without my involvement, though I thank
01:41them.
01:41The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ended up having to rule on this,
01:46and the Supreme Court took the issue up, too.
01:49He quite literally made a federal case of a joke.
01:53The problem here is not that jokes bother this president.
01:57It's that he is in the habit of looking for ways to silence the joke tellers.
02:03I should tell you a little bit about one of my former jobs.
02:06When I wrote for Kimmel from 2012 through 2020, I was responsible for pitching about everyone.
02:12Democrats, Republicans, Kardashians.
02:15This was never supposed to be a job where I'd have to know anything more about the founding documents
02:20than an off-color joke about John Hancock.
02:23For late-night comedy writers, the president is our best and worst audience.
02:30He is our best audience because, unlike most Americans, he watches late-night television.
02:36He cares about what the network men in suits say about him.
02:40He is our worst audience because his inexplicably bruised skin is very, very thin.
02:47He complained about our jokes frequently, often in real time, on his own social media site he invented
02:53so that nobody could make fun of him on it.
02:56This went far beyond social media tirades when this year, as Ranking Member Raskin mentioned,
03:02after Stephen Colbert told jokes about that $16 million settlement CBS personally paid to Trump,
03:08the late show with Stephen Colbert was bulldozed like it was the East Wing of the White House.
03:13Then months later, emboldened by the Colbert precedent,
03:17the administration had Jimmy Kimmel Live briefly yanked off the air
03:20when the show's monologue displeased the president.
03:24I want to be fair.
03:25The Trump administration denies responsibility for these cancellations,
03:29much as the mafia is continuously surprised that so many people end up in the East River
03:35with cement blocks on their feet.
03:37But what can we say, what we can say for sure is that this president,
03:41that so prized free speech and so loathed censorship,
03:45was positively giddy on Truth Social about the literal cancellation of these comedians.
03:51He was so excited, he misspelled the word canceled.
03:55The president wrote,
03:57Great news for America.
03:59The ratings challenge Jimmy Kimmel show is canceled.
04:03Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.
04:08Kimmel has zero talent and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that's possible.
04:12That leaves Jimmy, Fallon, and Seth, two total losers on fake news NBC,
04:18their ratings also horrible, do it NBC, President DJT.
04:23Then he got back to authorizing strikes against ISIS in Syria.
04:27To kill a late night show doesn't just kill an enormous platform for speaking truth to power.
04:33Because late night comedy doesn't just speak truth to power,
04:37it speaks truth to an incredibly large number of people.
04:41I believe late night hosts like Colbert and Kimmel are vital satirists
04:46who shape how millions of Americans absorb the day's news.
04:50At 11.30 every weeknight, millions of people all over the country,
04:54just before their melatonin gummies hit,
04:56listen to what these comedians have to say about what happened in America that day.
05:01And under any administration, they are powerful voices of criticism and dissent.
05:06Network late night hosts like Colbert and Kimmel have used their huge platforms
05:10to make tangible, incremental ideological change through satire,
05:16dressed up in a suit, in the hope that maybe someone who stayed up
05:20after the evening news on CBS or ABC will hear the news reflected back at them
05:25through a lens that is openly critical of the government,
05:28no matter who is in the Oval Office.
05:31And that can shape an electorate's opinion.
05:34And let's be clear, they're also doing interviews with The Bachelorette.
05:37But these permanent and temporary cancellations aren't just about controlling jokes,
05:42they're about controlling criticism of the administration and its corporate bedfellows.
05:48It is the state using its power to shape what is profitable to say.
05:52And we've learned nothing if not this, the bottom line comes first, even before the First Amendment.
06:00I have little doubt that CBS was in part compelled to end Colbert's show to avoid regulatory retaliation
06:07by the administration after CBS's parent company, Paramount, merged with Skydance Media,
06:13which I believe is a trust fund for one of the Ellison kids.
06:16And there is no doubt that this September's retribution against Jimmy Kimmel Live was due entirely to the host's criticism
06:23of our current president,
06:25despite the FCC's contention, that it was for misinformation and sick jokes,
06:30which really just grabs me by the, I'm not going to say that in congressional testimony.
06:36There is no doubt that the president is so personally bothered by what comedians say
06:41that the FCC is willing to disappear any mouthpieces that might hurt his feelings
06:46in a shocking and, according to people with many more degrees and expertise than I, unconstitutional way.
06:53And here's how that trickles down.
06:56The censorship of free speech we have witnessed from the highest office in the federal government
07:01has emboldened Americans in sacred positions of power from the state to the local to the school board level,
07:08which is where I found myself just weeks after Kimmel's suspension.
07:13Talking about my brush with censorship this year might affect my broad appeal and livelihood as a children's book author,
07:20and I have not spoken publicly about this experience until right now in this room.
07:26But I have always said that if something is worth talking about with your family
07:29and closest friends and therapists, it is worth talking about with the ranking members of the House Judiciary Committee.
07:36The best part of being a children's book author is to actually read my books to children
07:42and to see them react and laugh and scrunch up their noses in delight
07:47and to get the kind of uncensored feedback and questions that no comedy writer's room could possibly contrive.
07:53I was once asked if I thought I would win in a race with a buffalo.
07:58Two years ago, when the first book came out, I was sent basically up and down the Amtrak Northeast Regional
08:04Corridor,
08:05but this year, after the books were a number one New York Times bestseller,
08:08the publisher decided to put me on airplanes and bring Buffalo, Fluffalo, and Puffalo to the country.
08:14This fall, through partnerships between school districts and my publisher,
08:19I read to thousands and thousands of elementary school kids in small towns, in suburbs, in Kansas, Missouri, Texas, and
08:29Montana.
08:31In Montana, the tour hit a snag.
08:34The evening before a scheduled school visit in a rural community in a Title I school,
08:39the wonderful school librarian emailed me and my publisher.
08:43A group of parents, who had previously caused a stir at a school board meeting
08:49where they successfully campaigned to ban certain books from the library, decided to ban me.
08:55They emailed the school superintendent en masse with jokes I had written in my life as a political comedy writer
09:02and told the superintendent that if I came to read my book about prairie animals and their feelings to the
09:09kids,
09:10they would show up and make a scene in front of the children until I left.
09:15The visit was canceled.
09:17I should say, the kids they were threatening to do this to are around the same ages as my own
09:23two boys,
09:23who are four and six and a half, and are watching, and I love.
09:29These kids who had never had, these kids in the school who had never had an author visit
09:33and had been reading the book with their teachers and making art projects about a buffalo
09:37and preparing very thoughtful questions for me,
09:40would have shown up for a scary event where their parents barged in to the library
09:46and screamed at the lady in the dress holding up a picture book and doing a buffalo voice.
09:52It isn't some great national tragedy that a story time was canceled,
09:57but it is a harrowing indication of how a joke can be wielded against its writer
10:02by exactly the same movement that railed against cancel culture to defend jokes that punched down.
10:10For the members of the United States Congress who haven't read Buffalo Fluffalo,
10:14someone who went to Kennedy School in your offices should have prepped you,
10:17but I'll summarize.
10:18The book is about a buffalo who was at first tough and blustery and rude
10:24and pushes his friends away,
10:26and then when it is revealed that underneath all his fluff,
10:29he is just a tiny frightened guy who wants to be loved,
10:33his friends support him anyway.
10:35They love him just as he is,
10:37and he gives them gratitude and kindness right back.
10:40It's just left-wing commie propaganda.
10:44I believe that the impulse to censor-free speech
10:47comes from exactly the fear in the book,
10:51the fear of being seen as weak or vulnerable,
10:54the fear of being seen as weak or vulnerable,
11:00the desire to project an air of bravado
11:02and to silence and push off anyone
11:05who might pull the curtain back on that image of imperious strongman.
11:10A true leader is only as strong
11:13as the joke he can take at his own expense,
11:16and there is nothing funny about the fact
11:19that we are living through a time
11:21when a joke about the government is a liability.
11:25In this room,
11:27surrounded by so many people
11:29who are as outraged and heartbroken
11:31by this administration's culture-shifting attack on free speech,
11:35I have hope.
11:41And I want to say thank you
11:44to the school librarians in red and blue and purple states
11:48whom I have had the genuine pleasure
11:50of meeting throughout my book tours
11:52who are at the front lines of these school board fights
11:55over book bans with increasing regularity.
11:57They are tired, they are pissed,
11:58and they just want to be able to give a kid a book
12:01they're excited to read,
12:02even if the character in that book might have two moms,
12:05which as of this testimony
12:07is still a legal amount of moms to have.
12:09Because here's the thing
12:11about those kids across America that I met.
12:14From deeply underfunded Title I schools
12:16where most students were on free lunch,
12:18to immigrant communities
12:19where many of those kids
12:20were the first in their families
12:22to learn to read and speak English,
12:24to fancy schools in oil money suburbs
12:26where I was offered a choice of flat or sparkling water,
12:29I will tell you this,
12:30the kids were the same.
12:32The kids were the same.
12:35When I read my books in auditoriums
12:37and gyms and libraries and classrooms,
12:39some fidgeted, some daydreamed into Wonderland,
12:42laughed and awed at the same parts,
12:44and when I asked if they had a question at the end
12:46to a school,
12:48they all asked me the same one,
12:49why is Buffalo Fluffalo mad?
12:52Why is he mad?
12:54And they also frequently told me the names of their dogs.
13:00I think we know
13:02why the Buffalo Fluffalo in the Oval Office is mad.
13:07But as I was saying before,
13:09I am hopeful
13:10because the members of Congress in this room today,
13:13like Representative Raskin and Representative Scanlon,
13:16who don't just posture and complain
13:18about this administration on social media,
13:20they are going to fight to stop the President
13:22from going unchecked in his vendettas
13:24against those who speak out against him.
13:26As a comedy writer
13:27and generally conflict-averse coward,
13:30I do believe that jokes can be an effective tool
13:32for speaking truth under authoritarianism.
13:34So I take comfort
13:36in the words of my fellow author, J.D. Vance,
13:40when he spoke last year
13:42at the Munich Security Conference,
13:44the funniest of all conferences.
13:46He said,
14:01I'm not sure if anyone in the room
14:03can get the Vice President a meeting with his boss,
14:05but that little whippersnapper from Yale has some ideas.
14:08Vance went on to the crowd in Germany.
14:11Now, within living memory of many of you in this room,
14:15the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy
14:18against much more tyrannical forces on this continent.
14:22And consider the side in that fight
14:24that censored dissidents,
14:26that closed churches,
14:28that canceled elections.
14:29Were they the good guys?
14:31Certainly not.
14:32And thank God they lost the Cold War.
14:34Thank God indeed.
14:37And may God continue to bless the United States.