A new ad campaign running on podcasts and streaming channels popular with young men is highlighting “manosphere” hosts’ criticisms of Donald Trump’s attempt to browbeat ABC into cancelling comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show.
The six-figure campaign is being spearheaded by Home of the Brave and uses clips from podcasters such as Joe Rogan, Tim Dillon, and Akaash Singh to make the case that Trump and the FCC’s targeting of Kimmel violates the First Amendment.
It will run on YouTube nationwide for one week across 28 so-called manosphere channels and shows, including those hosted by Rogan, Theo Von, Stephen A. Smith, Pat McAfee, the Nelk Boys, Barstool Sports and Bleacher Report.
In one clip used in the ad, Rogan lays into the Trump administration after ABC suspended Kimmel’s show last week.
He says: “I definitely don’t think that the government should be involved, ever, in dictating what a comedian can or cannot say,” Rogan says. “That’s f***ng crazy.”
In another clip, Dillon tells his audience that “no one” would want to “live in a country where a late-night comedian is subject to removal because he says something that the president of the United States doesn’t like.”
A third clip of Singh goes even further, showing the podcaster saying that free speech in the U.S. “is more under attack now, honestly, than I think it has ever been.”
“This guy said at the inauguration, ‘I’m going to pass an executive order to end government censorship.’ It seems this mother f***er lied about everything. If you are a staunch Trump guy, you should be upset about this. This is crazy,” he adds.
The ad campaign is meant to highlight the gulf between Trump’s claims to be a champion of free speech and his actions in trying to shut down speech he dislikes.
Last week, Trump said the nation’s television networks should have their broadcast licenses cancelled because coverage of him is overwhelmingly negative despite his victory in last year’s presidential election.
Speaking in the Oval Office during a question-and-answer session with reporters last Friday, he claimed to be “very strong person for free speech” but he pivoted to complaining about how news coverage and other publicity on television did not become more sycophantic towards him out of respect for his win in last year’s election.
“When you have that kind of that level of popularity or voter support, as I did in the last election. And yet, 97 and 94 … percent of people are against me in the sense of the … newscasts are against me … they’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” Trump said.
“See, I think that’s really illegal. You can’t have a free airway, if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government … you can’t have that,” he added.
Trump continued his litany of complaints about television news coverage of him and his administration and suggested that negative reporting about him by broadcast news falls outside of free speech protections.
“I think that reporting has to be at least accurate, at least accurate, to an extent. Again, when somebody is given 97% of the stories are bad about a person that’s no longer free speech,” he said.
“That’s just cheating, and they cheat and they become really members of the Democrat National Committee. That’s what they are. The networks, my opinion, they’re just offshoots of the Democrat National Committee.”
