After Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Jimmy Kimmel made a blatantly false statement using his late-night show as a platform.
This was not part of a comedy routine, but rather an outright statement of purported fact.
Disney's ABC, the network responsible for the production Kimmel's program, has responded by pulling his show from the airwaves, and now the left is about to lose its collective mind.
Kimmel, like others on the left, was trying to portray Kirk's killer as a MAGA member, when that was the furthest thing from the truth.
During his show’s opening monologue, Kimmel stated, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
We know the shooter was not MAGA, with his parents offering insights about their son's lunge to the left in recent months. And I think the fact that at least one of the shooter's bullets had the word “fascist” engraved on it made it clear to most that he was not a conservative.
Again, this was not part of some tasteless joke; Kimmel was making a statement of fact, and he was just wrong, period. And ABC held him accountable. Kimmel had every right to say what he said, and the network had every right to take his show off the air after its own late-night star engaged in the spread of misinformation.
Nexstar Media Group, which owns dozens of ABC affiliate stations, announced that the show was being shelved, with reports later emerging that its leadership demanded that Kimmel issue an apology to Kirk’s family, something he refused to do.
Nexstar's broadcasting chief, Andrew Alford, stated, “Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views or values of the local communities in which we are located.”
The statement continued, "Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue."
Kimmel had used his show to make a political statement, and it stopped being entertainment quite some time ago. I am honestly surprised it took this long for the network to step in. But let’s be honest here, anyone who knows anything about how Kimmel made his bones in this business knows he has no leg to stand on when it comes to preaching to people.
The left is now outraged, blaming the cancellation of the show on Donald Trump because of his defamation lawsuit against ABC and his suit against Paramount.
Barack Obama weighed in, stating, “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.” What nobody seems to want to talk about is the fact that Kimmel was spreading blatant misinformation about the assassin, which is why he was fired.
This is not about cancel culture, but about simply holding people accountable when it comes to telling the American people the truth. Would we tolerate Kimmel starting a mass panic by claiming that an asteroid was about to crash into Earth? Would we allow him to say that the United States had been invaded by enemy forces? Yet, telling the American people the shooter was someone that he absolutely was not is apparently okay, but only because it might help deflect blame from the left.
Kimmel has told many tasteless jokes about Trump, and that is his right. The previous administration claimed that purposeful misinformation is not free speech, and people guilty of it must be held accountable and put in check. Well, Kimmel was just judged by his own set of rules, and he does not like it very much. I liken this to the situation that befell Alex Jones (whom I despise, for the record). Jones spread misinformation about the Sandy Hook school shooting, and he was held accountable. Kimmel just spread misinformation about the Kirk assassination, and he was held accountable. You cannot support one without supporting the other. On the same note, if you were outraged by the Jones situation, then this should outrage you as well. Simply put, there is no middle ground here.
