The Big Ben Show: Why The Left Has To Lie About Charlie Kirk

Plus Jimmy Kimmel suspended, DC crime, Cocaine is forever

Sep 18, 2025

The latest edition of The Big Ben Show, which you can listen to here or wherever you get your podcasts, features Andy Ngo on leftist online radicals and Peter Hasson on the reaction to the return of weaponized “cancel culture” on the right. Check it out on YouTube if you like:

I hope you’re enjoying the show, and we’ve gotten great feedback for the format shift earlier this year — please let me know your thoughts on guests you’d like to hear from in the future.

Jimmy Kimmel FAFO

The Wall Street Journal:

“‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ will be pre-empted indefinitely,” an ABC spokeswoman said Wednesday. The suspension began with Wednesday’s planned broadcast.
While no return date had been set, Disney was monitoring the situation and saw a path to the show potentially returning in the next several days, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The entertainment company’s move was the latest concession by a broadcaster facing political and commercial pressure over its programming.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said in an interview on CNBC Thursday that Kimmel appeared to “directly mislead the American public” about Kirk’s murder. During an interview with conservative political podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday, Carr suggested the FCC could take action against the broadcast licenses of ABC-owned stations. Owners of some ABC TV stations, including large broadcasters Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair, told the network they were dropping the show.

Was this politics, or just business? New York Mag weighs in. And Charles Gasparino reports for the NYPost:

Jimmy Kimmel’s comments on the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk weren’t just noxiously offensive and seemingly misleading — their timing was also incredibly bad: They threaten to derail Nexstar’s $6.2 billion takeover of rival broadcaster Tegna, telecom insiders tell On The Money.
The already controversial deal — which would combine two of the nation’s largest owners of local TV stations — poses significant antitrust questions and needs a close review by the Federal Communications Commission and its conservative firebrand chairman, Brendan Carr.
Kimmel’s comments made that approval even dicier. That’s why Nexstar publicly announced Thursday that its stations would no longer carry the show, telecom insiders tell On The Money. Ditto for ABC, which produces and distributes “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to broadcasters like Nexstar — and likewise has business before the FCC.
Bob Iger, the CEO of its parent, Disney, was also quick to suspend the show indefinitely.
On Thursday, Sinclair Broadcasting — a rival local TV giant with a conservative bent — upped the ante even further, saying ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel was insufficient and announcing it will yank “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from its stations until the host apologizes directly to Kirk’s family and donates to his political activist group.

Democrats have rushed to defend Kimmel, including Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and other top officials and Hollywood types. On the pro-free speech right, David Harsanyi urges caution in the Washington Examiner:

All these things can be true at the same time about ABC’s pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
First, Kimmel is a dishonest hack who used his show to spread self-indulgent partisan dreck. Private companies, as Leftists pointed out only a few years ago, have the option of “deplatforming” anyone they please. Kimmel has no God-given right to be on television. Syndicates like Nexstar and Sinclair, with significant conservative audiences, had a fiduciary responsibility to drop a show that offended large swaths of their viewers. The other night, Kimmel didn’t merely mock MAGA or criticize Charlie Kirk; he blatantly lied about the ideology of the shooter to his audience. And not only did he intentionally mislead them, he blamed the victims. It was an indecent thing to do. Kimmel, who had plenty of time to apologize, will likely fall back on the fact that he is allegedly a comedian. That doesn’t hold water anymore.
Second, Kimmel is proof that, in many respects, the right is winning the culture war. Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr injected himself into the incident by pressuring syndicators, which only undermines the cause. The government isn’t here to make programming decisions for Americans. If every lie told on broadcast television now constitutes a “hoax,” and thus becomes a regulatory matter, as some conservatives are now arguing, we could see a massive expansion of state involvement. If the administration precipitated the decision, which Carr insinuated on Benny Johnson’s podcast, it is a clear attack on free expression. It’s reminiscent of Joe Biden threatening Facebook to get them to ban vax skeptics. Not long ago, JD Vance noted that the previous administration had “encouraged private companies to silence people … Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square.” Doubtful. But, at least, don’t engage in the same behavior as Democrats.
Third, Carr might gloat over Kimmel being pulled, but it’s unlikely that the administration played a major role in that decision. Which makes his comments even more harmful. ABC is probably losing tons of money on an antiquated talk show model helmed by an insufferable mediocrity, and so it jumped at the chance to potentially pull the plug when two major syndicators dropped the show. Stephen Colbert was reportedly hemorrhaging around $40 million yearly, and he had higher ratings. It’s not far-fetched to imagine that Kimmel, with his $16 million yearly salary, was losing a business proposition. These celebrity gab fests have become prohibitively expensive to produce at this point. Podcasts can be produced for a fraction of the cost and pull bigger audiences. Add to the fact that Colbert and Kimmel transformed their traditional late-night venues into partisan pep rallies wherein half the nation’s audience is demeaned and mocked, and the prospects of the ratings improving are low.

Trump’s Law & Order Win in D.C.

My latest in the New York Post:

National Democrats and media critics slammed President Donald Trump’s choice to deploy the National Guard to the crime-ridden streets of Washington, DC as ineffectual and unnecessary — or worse, a dangerous sign of creeping fascism.
As it turns out, one week after Trump’s emergency order commandeering local police quietly expired, his action was a lesson in how quickly empowered law-enforcement officers can clean up a city.
Thirty days after Trump’s August order, the crime statistics are undeniable: Both violent crime and property crime have dropped by roughly a fifth, and carjackings alone declined by 37%.
The dramatic change in DC’s public spaces is impossible to deny. The district’s many tent cities — havens for public drug abuse that stood undisturbed since the days Black Lives Matter riots raged — have been cleared out and their denizens sent packing, proving that it didn’t take a miracle, just a commitment to cleaning up the mess.
The before-and-after scenes in the halls of Union Station, a gorgeous monument to travel that welcomes thousands of tourists and commuters daily, are stunning. Where for years the bright marble was stained with food and smelled of urine, today a clean and vagrant-free station once again feels safe for all comers.
For Democrats willing to listen, the political lesson of DC is clear: No one who works with Trump in such an effort will be punished for it, if they deliver on the changes that citizens demand.

Read the rest here.

America’s Love Affair With Cocaine

The Wall Street Journal:

From a heavily guarded mountain hideout in the heart of the Sierra Madre, 59-year-old Nemesio “Mencho” Oseguera reigns as the new drug king of Mexico, aided in his ascendance by America’s resurging love of cocaine and the Trump administration’s escalating war on fentanyl.
Oseguera spent decades building his Jalisco New Generation Cartel into a transnational criminal organization fierce enough to forge a new underworld order in Mexico, displacing the Sinaloa cartel, torn by warring factions, as the world’s biggest drug pusher.
The Sinaloans, Mexico’s top fentanyl traffickers, got caught in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which promised to eradicate the synthetic opioid. The crackdown has left an open field for Jalisco and its lucrative cocaine trade, elevating Oseguera to No. 1.
“‘Mencho’ is the most powerful drug trafficker operating in the world,” said Derek Maltz, who served this year as interim chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “What is happening now is a pivot to much more cocaine distribution in America.”
Nemesio ‘Mencho’ Oseguera.
Nemesio ‘Mencho’ Oseguera. Photo: DEA
Cocaine sold in the U.S. is cheaper and as pure as ever for retail buyers. Consumption in the western U.S. has increased 154% since 2019 and is up 19% during the same period in the eastern part of the country, according to the drug-testing company Millennium Health. In contrast, fentanyl use in the U.S. began to drop in mid-2023 and has been declining since, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For new users, cocaine doesn’t carry the stigma of fentanyl addiction. Middle-class addicts and the tragic spectacle of homeless crack-cocaine users in the 1990s helped put a lid on America’s last cocaine epidemic.
Oseguera, who grew up poor selling avocados, is making a killing from cocaine buyers in the U.S. His cartel transports the addictive powder by the ton from Colombia to Ecuador and then north to Mexico’s Pacific coast via speedboats and so-called narco subs.
U.S. forces in the Caribbean recently blew up two speedboats, including one this week, that President Trump alleged were ferrying cocaine and fentanyl from Venezuela to the U.S. Fentanyl is largely produced in Mexico, and most cocaine ships through the Pacific. All those aboard the two vessels were killed.
The president also has threatened military action against Mexican drug cartels.
The U.S. has a $15 million bounty on Oseguera, but he rarely leaves his mountain compound, according to authorities. Few photos of him circulate. The cadre of men protecting Oseguera, known as the Special Force of the High Command, carry RPG 7 heat-seeking, shoulder-fired rocket launchers capable of piercing a tank, people familiar with cartel operations said.
Visitors to the drug lord’s stronghold are hooded before they embark on the six-hour car trip through terrain sown with land mines, those people said. Locations of the pressure-activated explosives are known only by members of Oseguera’s inner circle.
Oseguera’s fortunes rose after the U.S. pressured Mexico to crack down on the Sinaloa cartel, where Oseguera got his start in the trade. The Sinaloans pioneered the manufacturing and smuggling of fentanyl, an industry breakthrough that sent cartel revenue soaring and drove up the number of fatal overdoses in the U.S.
For the Sinaloans, landing in the administration’s spotlight couldn’t come at a worse time.

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