The removal of Jimmy Kimmel’s show is one of the highest profile examples of retribution from the right following the killing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. On this episode of “The Opinions,” the Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle is joined by the columnists Jamelle Bouie and David French to talk about how the right is trying to redefine whose words are free speech.
Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Michelle Cottle: Last week, David, you said Republicans and the right had a decision to make, that after the Charlie Kirk killing, there was a fork in the road. They could go high or they could go low. And it looks like this week we found out which way they’re headed.
Audio clip of JD Vance: You have the crazies on the far left who are saying: Oh, Stephen Miller and JD Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech. No, no, no. We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.
Audio clip of Pam Bondi: There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie in our society.
Audio clip of President Trump: The radicals on the left are the problem. And they’re vicious, and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.
Cottle: So I want to dig into the free speech of it all, both legally and then culturally, especially with all the high-profile firings and other punishments we’ve seen.
But let’s start with the law and the Justice Department’s take on this situation. David, we heard Attorney General Pam Bondi talking about who got some backlash this week for her extremely creative interpretation of the First Amendment. What are your thoughts on the head of the D.O.J. going after free speech?
David French: So Michelle, this was very interesting and very indicative of this moment in American history. Because you had Pam Bondi come out and say there’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, which, spoiler alert, that right there is wrong. That right there is wrong.
Cottle: Oopsie.
French: For decades and decades, it has been very clear that you cannot ban or punish speech because you have deemed its content hateful. This goes back to a case called R.A.V. v. St. Paul. There are strong echoes of that and of cases decades before. So right there, she was completely wrong.
Now, the immediate reaction to it, in a weird way, was kind of heartening. You saw people from all over the political spectrum, including MAGA voices, saying: No, Pam Bondi, that is not right. You need to retract that. And so what does she do? She walks it back. Axios reported that she said: No, no, we’re not going to prosecute people for hateful speech. But nobody told Donald Trump.
So Donald Trump, who’s her actual boss, is asked about this hate speech issue by ABC’s Jonathan Karl. And he says, in response to Karl, that Bondi would, quote, “probably go after people like you” — Jonathan Karl of ABC — because “you have a lot of hate in your heart.” And then he brags about collecting a settlement from ABC. This gets more ominous as the moments tick by, for a form of hate speech.
And so, did you have the same reaction across the political spectrum against Donald Trump when he raises this hate speech issue? No. No. Because in the MAGA-verse, there’s a permission structure for going after an underling who is deemed to have failed Trump. There’s not the same permission structure for going after Trump.
And then, just hours after all of this unfolds, you see F.C.C. commissioner Brendan Carr going after Jimmy Kimmel, ABC’s late-night host, for — and look, let’s just say it: Kimmel was wrong. Or I’ll say he was half wrong. This is what Kimmel said: “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.”
The best evidence does not suggest that this shooter was a member of the MAGA gang. But it is true that there’s a lot of point scoring going on, especially in the realm of free speech. And so Brendan Carr, the head of the F.C.C., threatens ABC. And next thing you know, hours after that, ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show off the air indefinitely.
And so what are we looking at here? We’re looking at a situation where the response from the administration is vengeful. It’s punitive. It’s far outpacing any evidence in the case. We’ve not seen any evidence that this shooter was connected to anybody, much less a network of NGOs or other left-wing organizations.
What you’re seeing here is a pretext for a remarkable crackdown. And honestly, guys, I feel like we’re in the most dangerous point for free speech in America in my lifetime — and I don’t think it’s close.
Cottle: I want to dig into that more, but first, Jamelle, I want to get your thoughts on all of this. It’s a lot to process.
Jamelle Bouie: There’s nothing David said that I disagree with. I think his account of this is right on the money.
The best way I can put this is that these people — the administration, the people eagerly trying to use Kirk’s death to impose state-directed speech restrictions, who are threatening to go after freedom of assembly — when you’re threatening to say, “We’re going to use the state to go after NGOs, we’re going to use the state to go after organizations that do activist work,” you’re threatening freedom of association.
To me, it’s just like: These people hate your freedom. I don’t know what else to say. They hate the fact that you can talk back to them. They hate the fact that you can organize against them. They hate the fact that they cannot control what you say, think and do. I watched Vice President Vance guest-host Charlie Kirk’s show, and I have to say — as a bit of an aside — it’s really strange to have, like, government podcasters. I know, we’re all in front of mics right now.
Cottle: Thank you.
Bouie: But the president loves to go on podcasts. The vice president — if you watch the video feed, it didn’t identify him as the vice president; it identified him as a close friend of Charlie Kirk. Also, I guess, podcaster — the F.B.I. director is a podcaster, right? Everyone’s a podcaster, and it’s very weird. Charlie Kirk: podcaster. And it’s like, this is government by, for and of podcasters. Anyway, that’s an aside.
I watched this JD Vance tirade, this screed — it’s him fabricating, making things up and, I would say, lying directly to the camera about the reality of the situation, about the realities of political violence and everything — and threatening Americans’ basic, fundamental rights: the right to speak freely, the right to associate with whom they please, the right to engage in political activity as they wish. I just find that remarkable.
I also think they’re very much getting ahead of themselves. On the MAGA right, certainly, the image the administration wants to portray is that Kirk was this figure beloved by tens of millions of Americans. But in point of fact, although he had a large and influential audience, relative to the entire population of the country, it was pretty narrow.
You know, talking to my parents after the event last week, they didn’t know who Charlie Kirk was. They’re well-educated, engaged people — they had no idea who he was. And many, many millions of Americans had no idea either. He was not at the head of any kind of social movement. He was not a movement leader. He was a media personality — a popular one within a certain segment, but nothing more and nothing less.
And the administration attempting to turn this slain media personality into a kind of martyr for the country, some sort of state-sanctioned saint, and then using that to go after freedoms that Americans take for granted — their right to talk crap about other people, to say that the president sucks, to just say what they please — this feels to me like an attempt to impose something for which there is no real popular support. I do wonder if we’re not anticipating a real backlash that’s going to come in a strong way.
Cottle: See, Jamelle, you are always more optimistic about the coming backlash than I am. David, are you?
Bouie: This is not optimism. This is just sort of ——
French: I think when we talk about backlash at this moment, we have to talk about what backlash means, because really almost at no point in the last 10 years has Trump been a popular figure with a majority of Americans.
But at this point, I think we’ve learned that you’re not going to see something like — in the absence of maybe some catastrophic economic meltdown — you’re not going to see anything like the kind of low approval ratings that you saw for George W. Bush, say, at the end of Trump’s second term. That he has a higher floor than most politicians because of the dedication of that Republican base. However, the biggest issue in confronting Trump has always been that 60 percent of America was never fully united on getting rid of Trump. Some percentage may not have liked him, but some of them were saying: I’m going to vote for him anyway because I don’t like the present conditions. I don’t like inflation, et cetera.
The key to ending Trumpism isn’t necessarily — and people need to get out of their heads this idea that, aha, this is the thing that will fracture his base. Instead, put in your head: Aha, is this the thing that could finally unite his opposition? Because the uniting of the opposition to Trump would mean a 60-40 sort of arrangement in this country — not a closely divided one.
So that, to me, is the question. The question isn’t: Is this one thing, or any number of things, going to fracture Trump and fracture his base? The question is: Is this one thing, or any combination of things, going to unite the majority of Americans who are dissatisfied with Trump? And this is where I think their overreach comes in.
Bouie: Yes, and can I just add to that really quickly? I think it’s important to recognize that most people who aren’t particularly plugged into politics, I think, for most of the year have not thought of this as any different than a regular presidential administration. They don’t like it. They don’t like the cuts. They don’t like a lot of the stuff they see. They don’t like the ICE raids or what have you, but they don’t think of it as different from something that came before.
If you have the government, the state, the administration saying, Your favorite late-night comedian can’t be on air anymore because he’s guilty of speaking ill of my political allies, that’s the kind of thing that does filter down to regular, nonpolitical, apolitical people. It may begin to show them that this is actually different. This is not just another Republican administration. This is something that is going after things or rights that I take for granted and that I really value. Nothing’s automatic here.
Politics still needs to be done. Like, a political opposition still needs to take these raw materials and turn them into narratives that help people understand what is happening. But the raw materials are there; the materials to show ordinary Americans that the character of this government is not what you think it is and is threatening your basic rights as Americans — that message can be crafted together, and it just depends on an opposition to do it.
Cottle: All right, so that speaks to a question I wanted to ask both of you, which is: OK, we have this moment. I think the Trump administration is working as hard as it can to make the Republican Party the party against free speech, the party of cracking down on your political critics.
But Americans are being told: We are going to crack down on hateful speech, vile speech that is causing political violence. So even folks who philosophically like the idea of free speech — is this something that’s really going to rally them? And again, we’re back to that question of what is really going to move people.
You know, in the last several years, it has been the right that has been fired up about free speech, not the left. This has not been a crusading point for the left or even the center. So how optimistic are we that the 60 percent David’s talking about are going to see this as a major issue to push back on? I’m just not that optimistic.
French: Oh, I don’t think this alone. Look at it this way: It’s a cumulative effect. It’s sort of brick by brick, rather than any one key moment. Because once again, if there was any such thing as one key moment doing it, Jan. 6 is a much bigger deal than any of this.
But Michelle, you hit on something very important, and that is how the right is very good at keeping the troops together. You could have 100 Democratic politicians say all the right things — from Obama all the way through — expressing lament and grief at Charlie Kirk’s assassination. You could have all the mainstream media, you could have The Nation, or was it Jacobin magazine, editorialize against the Charlie Kirk murder. This is Jacobin — that’s not mainstream; that’s left. And then there’s a teacher in Portland who gets on TikTok and celebrates it, and they’re like: Look, this is what the left is doing.
Cottle: That’s what they are doing.
French: That’s what they are, and so they’re very good at that. And it rallies the base. I don’t think anyone has found a way to penetrate that closed loop. But here’s the thing: If you’re looking at the 60 percent, if on the one hand you’re saying we are taking out the worst of the worst, and the NGOs and the terror networks, and that means Jimmy Kimmel, then there’s a disconnect, right?
Bouie: Yeah.
French: I mean, if the next thing you had after this “we’re going after the bad people” was singling out somebody who had done some horrific celebration of Charlie Kirk — who was a television personality — just a horrific celebration of his death, that would land very differently than Jimmy Kimmel.
One of the things you’re seeing on the right is that these guys are extremely hubristic right now. They think all the wind is at their back. They think they are the alphas of the culture. They are feeling their oats, and they are overreaching at a level — and I agree with Jamelle — they are absolutely overreaching.
But here’s what worries me: Can you overreach so much that when you push so far into actual authoritarianism, it has a more intimidating effect than a rallying effect? It’s obvious to me that that’s what they’re heading toward. They’re trying to push all the way through normal American politics and get to a point where they feel like they can dictate the terms of the debate through sheer retribution and intimidation, and cow opponents into silence.
I think that is literally the core theory of the case here, that they can just push through normal politics and achieve sweeping, permanent change through the raw exercise of power.
Bouie: I think that’s right. I think that’s absolutely their theory of change. And I think it’s mistaken in part because their theory of change and their theory of society is very top-down. You see this whenever Christopher Rufo talks about this stuff, and he seems to have this idea that there’s some representative of liberalism that can offer terms of surrender.
When Vance talked about going after NGOs earlier in the year, Elon Musk had similar words: We defunded or we destroyed U.S.A.I.D. We’ve done a blow to the left. What they believe is that liberal politics, liberalism, social justice politics — all these beliefs — are top-down phenomena of elites that they don’t like. So if you get rid of them, if you go after George Soros, if you go after the Ford Foundation, if you go after U.S.A.I.D., if you go after television comedians, then people will stop believing this stuff. You will then secure your victory because none of this is real. It’s all just top-down.
I happen to think this is a bit of projection about the nature of their political movement — that it is quite top-down. It is funded by, you know, secretive billionaires who can allow someone like Charlie Kirk to work out the kind of performance they’re doing without really having to worry about earning money in any way. There’s this huge infrastructure of money and influence on the political right that does what I think they imagine happens on the political left. And I think the weak point in this strategy is simply that the stuff they hate flows organically up from the bottom. The reason George Floyd became a cause for millions of Americans isn’t because a bunch of liberal elites in television studios were telling people, “You have to care about George Floyd.”
This was an organic reaction of society to something that many people felt was wrong. Their feelings that it was wrong, in turn, are a product of organic changes in society. It’s a product of integration among people. It’s a product of scholars and historians doing their own work, slowly changing our understanding of what American history is. It’s just a product of civil society and democratic life happening spontaneously.
That’s not something you can control from the top down. Successful authoritarians know this. Successful authoritarian movements, successful authoritarian countries know that they can’t actually control every thought of the people under them. All they can do is make it disadvantageous to express dissent, and also make life good enough for enough people that no one cares all that much.
Cottle: Well, that certainly could be where the administration is sort of headed, right?
Bouie: That could be where we’re going. I don’t think the “make things good enough for enough people so that they don’t care” strategy is working out for them, precisely because of the economic mismanagement — I think that’s another weak point in all of this.
But I just want to emphasize — and you guys tell me I’m optimistic — I’m not optimistic. My question has always been: How does this actually work practically? What are the mechanics of these things? How is this kind of consolidation supposed to work in practice?
And if the theory of the case is that no one really believes in liberal values, that no one really believes in values of equality and inclusion … if that’s your theory, then you’re going to be surprised when it turns out that, in fact, many tens of millions of Americans believe these things sincerely and are willing to act on those beliefs.
French: There is about a 50-year unfolding genesis of this belief that social change occurs top-down, and part of it is rooted in a very important choice that the conservative American religious community made — sort of slowly at first and then more rapidly, beginning about 40, 50 years ago. And that was: As they looked at social changes around issues of sexuality and other issues, they determined that the way to intervene into the process of social change in America was going to be primarily political and not cultural.
And you began to see emerging — and you see this throughout a lot of American evangelicalism — this idea that the ultimate way of achieving change, what really gets changed, is the attainment of power. That, in turn, began to channel so much of religious activity in this country into the acquisition of power.
There’s a show on Prime Video, “Shiny Happy People,” that has spent two seasons looking at two big religious movements in the U.S. — one involving teens, the other involving home-school parents, and so on. One thing you notice is that a lot of these figures, as they became more influential — many, though not all — ultimately moved into politics. Their cultural influence became merely the prelude to the real thing: politics. This began to imprint itself for a very long time, to the point where it is now fully imbibed in many religious communities in the U.S. that the way to save the country is through the acquisition of power. That is the way to save the country.
And what that means is it is an inherently authoritarian impulse. Because in the absence of your own power, what happens? You lose the country. And so that’s where we are. It is a theory of social, cultural, political and religious change that all culminates in the Oval Office. That is an extraordinarily dangerous mind-set.
Cottle: So I want to step slightly away from the legality. Jamelle, you were bringing up the George Floyd protests. What happened in 2020 with Floyd was more in the cultural realm; we saw people fired for making comments considered racist or promoting violence. We’re talking about an announcer for the N.B.A. Sacramento Kings, a Denver police officer, things like this.
Aside from state intervention, which I think is the big distinction here, once you have the tools of government and start using them to suppress and silence your political enemies, culturally speaking, where does the parallel break down with the extreme speech policing and similar actions that happened around the George Floyd events and what we’re seeing now, just in terms of cultural backlash?
Bouie: I’m not actually sure you can separate the cultural stuff from the state stuff because so much of what we’ve witnessed over the last week is directly encouraged by government officials. On day one, last Wednesday, it was the president of the United States giving an Oval Office speech where he is threatening the political left, threatening liberals and creating this atmosphere of: If you don’t feel about this the way we feel about this, we’re going to go after you. And that just continued to escalate. So I’m not actually sure you can make that separation.
What this past week has been, primarily in my view, is the Trump administration using the organs of the federal government — and its allies — to suppress what it views as unfriendly speech, political opposition, or “wrongthink” about a figure it holds in high esteem. As David said earlier, this is kind of the worst environment for free speech that he’s seen in his lifetime. I was actually trying to think of what would be comparable to this.
There are basically two periods that are comparable: the first Red Scare and the second Red Scare. That’s it. This has more in common with the Red Scares than with speech policing during the Floyd protests, or with cancel culture on university campuses — which, full disclosure, I’ve always thought some of this is overblown. But what I take very seriously is state suppression of speech. And this is exactly what this is.
French: I have long had the position that both in public and private life, we should have a default position to protect speech. Not just the government, which is mandated by the First Amendment to protect speech, but we as people and our private institutions and our private organization should be broadly tolerant of even speech that we strongly disagree with. Now, that principle doesn’t mean that we have to bind private organizations to hire vile people.
For example, there’s a big difference between someone who received an enormous amount of hatred because, say, they didn’t put up a black square on their Instagram page during the George Floyd era, and Roseanne Barr, who made just unbelievably racist — unequivocally racist — statements. ABC let her go. Critically, not because of government pressure — this was during Trump’s first term — but they let her go. By the way, this led to one of the funniest tweets in history: She later blamed her meltdown on Ambien, and Ambien tweeted that racism is not a known side effect of Ambien, which is pretty good.
I do think there are situations and lines. If you have an employee dealing with the public who posted something gross like “I’m not going to mourn a dead white man” about Charlie Kirk, I don’t think the employer has to keep that person employed. But I also think the permission structure should be pretty broad. We should have a rebuttable presumption that a wide range of speech is tolerated.
In the public sphere, when it comes to the government, there isn’t that flexibility. They are bound by the First Amendment. By the way, in a unanimous opinion by Justice Sotomayor, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that government officials violate the Constitution when they coerce private organizations into suppressing free speech rights. There is a very broad prohibition against the government, and it should be rigorously enforced.
That said, where we are right now is that the president of the United States is now every bit as intolerant of speech as the most radicalized Oberlin undergrad, except he’s the president, and he’s employing all the power of the state. That is what makes this so much more alarming than a wave of cancellation in private life.
Cottle: Yeah, I do take Jamelle’s point about it being hard to separate it. And I think it goes well beyond the immediate fallout from the Kirk assassination. It is important to note that Trump was threatening to go after George Soros’s organizations before this happened. This is not something that he has suddenly decided is necessary because of this.
But also, when you’re looking at the universities that have dismissed staff in recent weeks, or the public schoolteachers who’ve been placed on leave, I mean, Trump and the administration have made clear that they have these places under a microscope. If I’m a university administrator, I’m freaking out that he’s coming for me — he’s coming for Harvard or anywhere else. So even if he hasn’t made direct threats yet, already we’re seeing a culture of intimidation by this administration that suggests you better watch your back if you say anything that we don’t like.
Bouie: One thing I want to note here is I don’t think you can separate this embrace of state-sanctioned censorship from the kind of illiberal tendencies that have always been a part of the American right. And I’m using that very specifically — not simply to refer to the conservative movement, but to the reactionary strain that has existed in the United States for quite some time.
I mentioned the first Red Scare, which was under Wilson, and the second Red Scare, under McCarthy. You see a lot of enthusiasm for the second Red Scare among the American right. Over the last 10 years or so, there has been this notion of a post-liberal conservatism, one that isn’t so concerned with liberal shibboleths and claims to aim toward the common good.
From my perspective, what that means in practice is this: When you say we have to orient things around the common good, the first question is, whose common good? Apparently, it’s their common good. And their common good is defined such that if what you want to express violates their intuitions or offends their sensibilities, it’s not just that you get yelled at online; you might face the state itself telling you to shut up, or else you’ll lose your job and your livelihood.
To me, all of this is the natural consequence of a set of ideas that explicitly reject the lowercase “l” liberal heritage of the United States — heritage enshrined in the Bill of Rights, expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, and reflected in F.D.R.’s Four Freedoms. These are basic principles that Americans have long taken for granted as constituting American freedom.
What Vance is saying is: No, American identity is actually about this religio-cultural-ethnic identity. And if you believe or say things that violate the standards of that construct, you forfeit the rights and freedoms you think you enjoy. It’s very radical — radical in the literal, dictionary sense. And frankly, I would call it un-American.
French: Let me just point out for a second — I think that Jamelle and I are locked in this intense competition as to who can quote more of the founders in our pieces.
Cottle: I’m loving that.
Bouie: I’m glad you recognize it, David. I feel like people don’t recognize my founder obsession, but I’m glad you see it.
French: Oh, no, I love it. I love it. I think we lead the league in quoting the anti-federalists as well, which, that’s a particular brand of nerd pride there.
Cottle: I’m just here wallowing in your nerdness. This is what I’m here for, guys. But I’m going to make that the last word on this before we shift to our recommendations for the week. What are you watching, listening to, eating, reading or doing that you want to recommend? David, you go first.
French: I don’t want to brag, but I will never lead our listeners astray on my pop culture recommendations.
Cottle: That’s a bold statement.
French: So you can just fast-forward to this portion of the podcast because this is the meat right here.
Cottle: OK.
French: I’m only two episodes in, but I cannot say enough good things about the new HBO crime series. They have these prestigious Sunday night dramas. It’s called “Task,” and it’s about an ad hoc F.B.I. task force formed to stop a group of home invaders who are targeting homes owned by biker gangs and stash houses, drug houses. It’s kind of like the opposite of a love triangle — a hate triangle — with a twist at the end of the pilot that’s really shocking and gripping. The performances are phenomenal.
Cottle: You have not steered me wrong yet, so I’m going to go in on that one. Jamelle, what about you?
Bouie: The day before we recorded this, I had the real pleasure and honor of hosting a conversation with the historian Eric Foner — the emeritus historian at Columbia University — about his newest book, “Our Fragile Freedoms.” It’s a collection of his reviews of other works of history.
It’s an interesting collection because in his reviews — covering Reconstruction, the Civil War, slavery, Jim Crow and the subjects that have consumed his academic career — you both get a sense of his developing and evolving thoughts over the 25 years or so that the book covers, and you also get a picture of what the practice of academic history has looked like, how it has grown and changed, and how fruitful and interesting it has become over that time.
I’ll also say the book is a great read. Because it’s a collection of essays and few of the essays are longer than five or six pages, it’s perfect for reading a little at a time. The way I read is that after dinner, I’ll read a bit, then set it down and do the dishes or whatever. If you’re the kind of reader who enjoys reading a few pages and then setting a book aside, this is perfect; you can read an essay, set it down and return to another one later. So, “Our Fragile Freedoms.”
Cottle: This sounds very promising. I’ll try this as well. I’m going in a different direction, though — completely different direction. I want to recommend this weird thing I do: the fall purge. Basically, I need to go through the house and do things like throw out the dead house plants that didn’t survive when nobody would water them, throw away the gross chew toys and empty cans of bug spray or suntan lotion or whatever and just clear the decks so that I can then go out and buy mums and just usher in the fall season and just kind of get into the spirit of it all. It makes me feel more organized because my life often feels extremely chaotic and not remotely organized.
French: I like it, and it sounds like a lot of work.
Cottle: I know, but I’m one of those weird people. Plus, I live with pack rats, so this is a bit of therapy for me as well. All right, and with that, thank you so much for coming in.
Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Carole Sabouraud and Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va.
Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle
David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag).
The post Jimmy Kimmel and How the Right Is Overplaying Its Hand appeared first on New York Times.
