Tim Dillon says Khalid got cut from Ed Sheeran's tour

Tim Dillon opened The Tim Dillon Show #513 with the Ed Sheeran tour. His telling goes like this. Opener Khalid said "free Palestine", billionaire Robert Kraft allegedly pressured Sheeran to drop him, and then Sheeran's entire band plus support acts including Finneas walked.

That is Dillon's account, delivered at Dillon speed, and the pressure part is described as alleged. What is not in dispute is where he took it next. With a tour suddenly short on acts, Dillon offered to open it himself.

The real story

Dillon keeps circling the same shape, a performer says something political and the money above them moves. He does not treat it as a tragedy. He treats it as an opening in the schedule, and the bit is that he is the obvious man to fill it. A stand-up comic opening for Ed Sheeran is the punchline, and he does not oversell it.

The rest of the episode is the usual buffet. Dillon spends time on Kash Patel, now FBI director, and Patel's removal of automatic disqualification for applicants with bestiality histories. Senator John Kennedy questioned it in testimony and Patel said the FBI will not "criminalize and prevent victims from serving". Dillon's read is that it is blackmail leverage, which is a joke about how Washington works rather than a report on how it works.

He also plays video of Mitch McConnell looking confused during a Senate vote, nearly voting no before staff corrected him, and calls him "medically deceased" and kept alive as a Weekend at Bernie's operation to limit midterm losses. Then Sydney Sweeney, whose nearly nude ad for betting site Novig drew criticism from female athletes including surfer Felicity Palter and sprinter Amy Hunt. Palter told CNN the campaign is "very damaging for female athletes and young girls". Sweeney answered on Instagram with photos of athletic women. Dillon's position is that the outrage is manufactured.

The closer is AI. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Anderson Cooper he is "scared" about his children's futures and wants restraint. Dillon reads that as PR, a coordinated move by AI leaders to ask for regulation while they keep accumulating wealth and power, like drug dealers trying to calm a neighborhood.