The Trump administration's pressure on Disney and ABC to suspend late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel over his comments about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk has caused a rift in the core constituencies that make up the president's voting base, former GOP speechwriter turned anti-Trump commentator Tim Miller told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Monday evening.
Disney made the initial decision as two of its major affiliate distributors — Sinclair Broadcast Group, known for its right-wing ownership, and Nexstar, currently seeking merger approval from Trump's Federal Communications Commission — announced they would be dropping his show. But amid a massive outpouring of fury from consumers and a long line of celebrities, Disney relented and announced he would be back on the air as of Tuesday.
"Tim, just take me inside what's happening on the MAGA right," said Wallace.
"Well, look, this is maybe a glimmer of hope," said Miller. "I love when I get to do a rare glimmer of hope on this show, Nicole. It's like, there are a bunch of issues in which the right is happy to be totally cynical and partisan about, like, nearly all of them, frankly. And we've seen that with Donald Trump, right? Or they've been willing to be lockstep with him and apologize for him no matter what his corruption is, no matter his cruelty, no matter how non-conservative he is. Tariffs, we can go down the whole list."
By contrast, he continued, "The free speech issue is just so fundamental. It's noteven just Republicans, but it'ssociety-wide. It's justsuch a part of the Americanfabric. Like anybody that's American is like, this is, it'sthe First Amendment, like, weare in America. We get to saywhat we want. Like, we don'thave kings. We don't havedictators telling us to shut usup. And it's it is instinctualfor a whole lot of people, notfor a whole lot of people, noteverybody, but a whole lot ofpeople, and that is includingsome people within the Trump, within the MAGA movement."
"It includes a lot of the peoplewho are in, like you played allthe actors. It's obvious why ... all ofthem care about this," said Miller. "But that's also true of thepodcasters, of comedians, of alot of the manosphere folks. Wetalk about this. This is justessential for a lot of folks inthis country, including a lotof people that supported Donald Trump. And so while they're willing to suffer a lot of other indignities andhumiliations on his behalf,there's at least some minority percentage of them that startto get their back up. And it'slike, hey, you're, I'm notallowed to say what I want. I'mnot allowed to criticize peoplein power. I'm not allowed tomake jokes about things."
That state of affairs, he added, "That feels very un-American.And I think it's a goodsign that we've seen some pushback from within hiscoalition on this, from a bunchof different vectors."