Joe Scarborough criticized MAGA’s speech policing on Friday, following the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show under pressure from the Trump administration.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Scarborough raged about MAGAworld’s crackdown on free speech in the wake of the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The cancellation campaign has seen people from all areas of society lose their jobs for making comments accused of being offensive about Kirk, who was gunned down as he spoke at a public debate event at Utah Valley University on September 10.
Donald Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi also said the DOJ would “go after” those “targeting anyone with hate speech.”
The clamor from the right to clamp down on free speech has gotten so extreme, Scarborough said, that even the Wall Street Journal editorial page is pushing back—name-checking columnist Kimberley Strassel’s op-ed “Back to Censor Culture.”
In a furious monologue, he let rip: “Strassel…talks about how it wasn’t too long ago, she said, the right was criticizing the left for canceling people. Now the right is doing the same thing.
“We’ve talked about it before, but think about the madness of all of this,” Scarborough said. “Again, you have got now the MAGA right being champions of cancel culture. You’ve got the MAGA right now trying to crush free speech after being supposed free speech absolutists.”
“You have Pam Bondi talking about going after Home Depot if they won’t print out flyers, certain political flyers, maybe arrest them,” he added, seemingly referring to comments Bondi made about an Office Depot employee who allegedly refused to print materials showing Kirk for a vigil (Office Depot apologized to the customer and fired the worker).
“And again, the idea that squads of people are going around and saying, ‘Don’t worry, Charlie, we’re going to find people who used free speech in a way you wouldn’t have liked and get them fired from their jobs’—are you kidding me?“ Scarborough said. “Are you kidding me?”
“This is the very thing that he and the MAGA movement and the free press were complaining about for a decade, and now they’re taking it in a more extreme way than the left ever did.”
He added: “The fact that they’re actually doing the opposite of what Charlie Kirk talked about in his campus tours says all you need to know about these people.”
Scarborough’s broadside came after the Journal ran an editorial warning about using the FCC to squeeze ABC over Kimmel—“The FCC, Disney and Jimmy Kimmel”—and Strassel argued the right is careening “to Censor Culture.”
“They want to cancel late-night hosts,” Scarborough said on his show. “And it’s really unbelievable.”
ABC announced Wednesday it would “indefinitely” pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air, a move critics credit to pressure from Trump-appointed FCC chair Brendan Carr.
The decision to suspend the show came after Kimmel used his Monday monologue to say MAGA was trying to paint Kirk’s alleged killer “as anything other than one of them,” and was “doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Carr called Kimmel’s comments “truly sick” and suggested that ABC affiliates airing Kimmel’s show could lose their FCC licenses. ABC suspended the show as two affiliate owners denounced Kimmel’s comments.
Trump celebrated Kimmel’s removal—an approach free-speech advocates warn weaponizes state power to punish viewpoints it doesn’t like.
And the “squads” Scarborough referenced are very real.
Right-wing activists and allies have been busy compiling names and leaning on employers, leading to a flurry of suspensions and firings at schools, companies, and agencies.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
The post ‘Morning Joe’ Rages at the ‘Madness’ of MAGA’s Free Speech Crackdown: ‘Are You Kidding Me?!’ appeared first on The Daily Beast.
