Late-Night Hosts Take Trump to First Amendment School
by EG
When Donald Trump threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of news organizations that reported negative stories about him, it was clear to most people that such an action would violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The president himself, however, seemed to be fuzzy on the concept, so The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and Jimmy Kimmel Live! set out to explain it to him.
During their Wednesday night shows, late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers challenged Donald Trump's recent tweets threatening to revoke NBC's broadcasting license.
On Wednesday (Oct. 11), Trump tweeted that with all the "fake news" coming out of "NBC and the networks," it begs the question, "at what point is it appropriate to challenge their license?"
Trump's tweet followed an NBC News report claiming he asked to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The report said Trump suggested a nearly "tenfold increase" during a meeting with high-ranking security leaders.
Kimmel responded to the president's question, saying, "Uh, never. I don't know, because that's what dictators do. Never is it appropriate to challenge their license."
"It's like the comic book of revelations," the late-night host added. "Everything Trump says is fake is true. Everything he says is honest is dishonest."
To mock Trump's tweets, Kimmel then showed a montage of his tweets to where his frequent word usage of "fake" and "dishonest" were replaced with "true" and "honest."
An example of the revamped tweet reads, "Just watched the totally biased and true news reports of the so-called Russia story on NBC and ABC. Such honesty!"
Also commenting on the president's controversial tweet, Colbert mocked the threat, affirming that media content is what "we the people" want.
After showing a clip of the president saying that people should "look into" published media content, Colbert fired back, saying that "we the people" looked into it and thought, "Yeah, they should write whatever they want."
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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