Diabolical Lies - September 28, 2025


BONUS： Charlie Kirk, Part Deux


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

172.87

Word count

886

Sentence count

45


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 All right. So as we promised, we want to do a little update because
00:00:03.540 the topic we discussed last week was very much ongoing when we recorded. So
00:00:07.720 first order of discussion, Jimmy Kimmel's reinstatement. Katie, have you been following
00:00:12.300 this at all?
00:00:13.220 I saw the headline yesterday when I was writing the Money with Katie newsletter because I was
00:00:16.760 including a story about media consolidation in the U.S. And I saw something that was like,
00:00:23.620 okay, Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air.
00:00:26.120 He has been reinstated with the asterisk that Sinclair and Nexstar are still boycotting, and they are like the affiliate branches, and the stations that operate underneath them account for like more than 25% of Kimmel's audience.
00:00:41.800 Also, when Jimmy Kimmel was reinstated, this is genuinely wild, Trump wrote this post on Truth Social, and I'm just going to read some sections of it to you. He said,
00:00:52.040 I can't believe ABC fake news gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his show was canceled. Something happened between then and now because his audience is gone and his air quotes talent was never there.
00:01:06.400 Why would they want someone back who does so poorly,
00:01:09.420 who's not funny, and who puts the network in jeopardy?
00:01:12.800 He then went on to accuse ABC News of, quote,
00:01:17.320 playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE, all caps.
00:01:21.420 He said Kimmel was an arm of the DNC.
00:01:24.540 And then he said, air quotes,
00:01:27.180 I think we're going to test ABC out on this.
00:01:29.940 Let's see how we do.
00:01:31.540 Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 million.
00:01:34.500 dollars, this one sounds even more lucrative. Okay. Holy shit. I can't get over how much he
00:01:41.760 reminds me of, like, the loose cannon mean girl in high school who you'd, like, try to curry favor
00:01:47.400 with by, like, telling her behind someone else's back, like, you know, Jennifer's talking shit
00:01:51.940 about you, but then at the lunch table, she would just, like, completely out you in front of Jennifer
00:01:55.980 and be like, Caroline told me that you're... Like, you can't try to bribe someone like Donald Trump
00:02:03.960 because he's just gonna talk about it on Truth Social
00:02:06.600 and put your ass on blast.
00:02:08.600 The fact that we're, what, nine months in
00:02:11.200 and we're already at the point
00:02:13.140 where he's, like, openly bragging
00:02:16.020 about the bribes that media companies are paying him
00:02:20.040 and just, like, issuing threats
00:02:21.840 on his social media platform that he owns,
00:02:24.520 it's almost funny.
00:02:26.040 I mean, it is funny.
00:02:26.840 I couldn't help but laugh.
00:02:28.200 Where we live in a circus.
00:02:30.680 You know what I also just realized
00:02:32.140 is that when you're posting on truth social, you post truths. That's their whole thing.
00:02:37.960 Oh, yeah. It's like Trump's truth. It's like a verb.
00:02:42.860 Which is so funny to me. Yeah, it's, I don't know, when I was reading that today as I was
00:02:46.800 pulling together notes for this episode, I was just like, Obama wore a tan suit. And that was
00:02:51.900 like a media moment for a quarter, for like a financial quarter. And Trump is going on the
00:02:57.380 social media channel he created for himself to evade state-enacted suppression of his voice
00:03:03.640 after he basically endorsed violence on January 6th. And now he's saying, let's see what type
00:03:08.860 of bribery I can encourage moving forward. And like, no one's going to do anything about it.
00:03:12.620 It's not even like a news story. It's like, yep, just another day in the White House.
00:03:17.940 Yeah, regrettably, he is hysterical while at the same time being very evil. He is very funny.
00:03:25.940 I think the media consolidation story
00:03:29.020 The most interesting thing that I read about that
00:03:31.280 Was from Matt Stoller
00:03:32.500 Who essentially took the antitrust lens on this one
00:03:35.680 Versus a free speech lens
00:03:38.020 And I actually thought that that was quite astute
00:03:41.740 Clearly Stoller is like an antitrust journalist
00:03:44.000 So like hammer, meat, nail
00:03:45.440 But in this case I actually think he was spot on
00:03:48.240 I learned through his reporting
00:03:50.840 That like there used to be 50 companies
00:03:54.580 that owned all the media in the United States,
00:03:57.660 and now it's closer to five.
00:03:59.680 And that consolidation is continuing,
00:04:02.140 and, like, Larry Ellison is a big player now.
00:04:04.320 Obviously, we know the Barry Weiss thing
00:04:05.920 with CBS and the Free Press.
00:04:08.100 And when you say that Next Star is still boycotting,
00:04:13.600 do you mean that they are just not going to air Kimmel?
00:04:15.840 Yeah, they're refusing to air him, yeah.
00:04:18.340 Oh, unless he apologizes directly
00:04:21.080 to Charlie Kirk's family
00:04:22.780 and donates to turning point usa oh my god so now we're doing extortion who said that who was
00:04:31.360 that brendan carr being like crosses arms apologize apologize to her right now it was sinclair
00:04:38.440 released a statement basically saying that it asked for kimmel to quote issue a direct apology
00:04:44.000 to the kirk family and ask him to make quote a meaningful personal donation to the kirk family
00:04:49.480 in turning point usa uh and then it said it would not return jimmy kim alive to air until quote it
00:04:56.160 is confident that appropriate steps have been taken to uphold the standards expected of a
00:05:00.180 national broadcast platform oh i think the biggest threat and the reason it matters is because