Longtime University of Virginia professor and increasingly far-left kook Larry Sabato surfaced on Thursday afternoon’s CNN News Central and compared this supposedly dark time in America given the timeout ABC placed Jimmy Kimmel in and President Trump’s ripping of the media alongside the Civil War, the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 and censorship during both world wars.
And that was on top of a show that started with co-host Boris Sanchez lying about Kimmel’s comments about the Charlie Kirk assassination that landed him in hot water to begin with and hours after The Situation Room co-host Wolf Blitzer also lied and tried to argue with former Fox News host Geraldo Rivera.
First, Sabato invoked these trying times at the end of his interview with Sanchez and co-host Brianna Keilar when he was asked to provide a historical parallel.
Sabato correctly said there are “never precise parallels” or at least “rarely” the case, but he didn did just that, starting with the Alien and Sedition Act:
But if you’re going to cite a few examples and this is of executives seizing power, trying to expand executive power because they don’t like criticism, you’d have to go back to the great and much admired and respected John Adams with the Alien and Sedition Act. That was certainly an example and people actually went to jail for criticizing the criticizing the President of the United States. One of the professors that Thomas Jefferson hired when he founded the University of Virginia, was let go, in part because he had served six months in jail for having the temerity to criticize John Adams. That’s incredible, isn’t it?
He then brought up the Civil War, both World Wars, and, of course, Watergate:
[D]uring wars, you can — World War I, Wilson enjoyed a lot of the censorship. He was able also to strike out at old foes. And you had some of that in the civil war. Like, a lot of it in the civil war. You had some of it in World War II. And then of course, Nixon and Watergate, when the press truly was the enemy, Nixon would have liked to have said many of the things that Trump has said and gotten away with. But Nixon knew it away with. But Nixon knew it would only make it tougher on him. But for Trump, no problem at all.
Working backwards, he dropped this cockamamie Resistance hot take about America being stuck on “the authoritarian highway”:
Sanchez and Sabato also engaged in some condescending nonsense mocking the right as hypocrites (click “expand”):
SANCHEZ: It wasn’t that long ago, Larry, that a lot of the folks now happy with this suspension of Kimmel were advocating for free speech and an absolute version of free speech, including posts on social media, including the misinformation that Kim was accused of propagating. Do you think Republicans have shifted?
SABATO: They haven’t shifted. They flip flopped. It’s a complete flip flop. Not even a half flip flop. Because what they’re really saying, and I’ve seen this before, and it truly has happened on the left as well as the right. The message is free speech for me and not for thee. You can have free speech as long as I agree with what you’re saying. Well, that defeats the whole purpose of free speech. The First Amendment is there to protect speech you hate, not the speech you love. Everyone knows this, at least in this, at least in theory. But in practice, they don’t want to hear things they hear things they disagree with.
Here was the pure partisan idiocy from Sanchez that was divorced from reality and especially given the fact that Kimmel’s comments are on-tape and not a he-said, she-said quandary:
Rewinding to Blitzer, he took issue with these emotional comments from Rivera about how those screaming about censorship — which he agrees with — are missing the point (click “expand”):
You know, by focusing on the censorship aspect and the First Amendment aspect, I think it’s losing sight of what should be the lead. And that’s that Jimmy Kimmel owes the family of Charlie Kirk and his wife, Erika, two small children, an apology. He — what’s he saying, that if you’re a member of MAGA and Charlie is a friend of MAGA, then he had it coming? It just — it’s — in some ways, it’s very, extremely, extremely insensitive. The country’s in a very tough spot right now. Everyone’s walking on egg shells. The First Amendment is not a license to incite hatred and I think that we can start the discussion. Once Jimmy Kimmel apologizes, then they can talk about the business aspects and whether or not he gets back on the schedule and so forth. But there’s got to be a recognition that a terrible thing has happened here and that millions of Americans are grievously hurt by what happened. There is a — Charlie Kirk was beloved by many. And to just trample over it, he’s not even buried yet, for goodness’ sakes. And to make fun of the flags and half-staff and so forth, I just think that we have got to look at it with a notion that the country has to be healed, that we have to work to bring people together, that we need to respect each other. We don’t have to agree, but we have to respect. And I think that the audience has deserted him for a good reason.
Blitzer then twice interjected to insist Rivera wasn’t given Kimmel the proper and “full context”:
To see the relevant CNN transcripts from September 18, click here (for The Situation Room) and here (for CNN News Central).
