Jimmy Kimmel became the second late night host to feel the right’s wrath recently after “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was put on an indefinite suspension due to the host’s Monday comments about Charlie Kirk’s shooter.
While many of the comedian’s fellow celebrities and entertainment unions are worried about what ABC’s move could mean for free speech under the Trump administration, some pundits on the other side of the aisle aren’t convinced Kimmel is a victim here.
“Jimmy Kimmel lied about Charlie Kirk’s assassin being MAGA, this caused understandable outrage all over America, prompted TV station owners to say they wouldn’t air him, and he’s now been suspended by his employers,” Piers Morgan stated bluntly on X early Thursday morning. “Why is he being heralded as some kind of free speech martyr?”
Meanwhile, Megyn Kelly shared a much longer take on social media on Wednesday night (she had a replacement host fill in for her on her podcast’s AM Update on Thursday).
“I’m not sure who needs to hear this but Jimmy Kimmel got on the air and falsely stated as a fact that Charlie Kirk’s killer was MAGA, smearing an entire movement and Trump in particular with a vile disgusting lie — and at a time when the threat against those on the right is at an all-time high,” she wrote on X. “This was *after* we knew from the UT gov that the killer had been indoctrinated into LEFT-wing ideology, *after* we’d seen the shooter’s bullet casings reflecting furry/trans memes, calling Charlie a fascist and w/anti-fascist lyrics. It was *after* we had learned the shooter was living with his trans-furry boyfriend and believed Charlie Kirk was ‘full of hate.’ *After* we learned that the shooter was not registered GOP, but ‘unaffiliated.’ *After* we saw him pull the trigger just as Charlie discussed trans killers.”
“There was zero — ZERO — evidence the shooter was MAGA, had ever been MAGA, or was influenced by MAGA in any way. This was an intentional lie to GIN UP HATRED toward the very group of ppl most suffering in the wake of our devastating loss of Charlie and Kimmel did it willfully and even gleefully to a cheering complicit audience,” she continued. “ANY EMPLOYER IN MEDIA WOULD SEE HOW DEPRAVED AND SICK THIS WAS. (In 2021 ABC fired Chris Harrison for saying maybe we should judge a Bachelorette contestant’s attendance (years earlier) at an antebellum party by what was considered offensive at the time. FIRED! His career never recovered!)”
“The Left doesn’t believe ABC was genuinely horrified by Kimmel (& instead attributes this to the FCC threat). That’s bc even they know ABC has no moral core (we agree with you – it doesn’t). But what the Left doesn’t seem to understand and needs to hear is that MAGA has f–king HAD IT,” Kelly concluded her message. “We are ANGRY. We are INCENSED watching the L smear us, our ppl, literally getting some of our friends killed (not to mention our president shot and nearly assassinated again weeks later) and then LYING about it. (‘Trump faked his injury! He wasn’t actually shot!’ ‘We have no idea what the motives ever are … if they are bad for our side!’) I have zero doubt ABC was overwhelmed with absolutely furious calls/comments/emails from truly-FED UP viewers, and knew it had crossed a deadly serious line. In short, GOOD RIDDANCE.”
Nexstar, which owns dozens of ABC affiliates, and then ABC parent Disney pulled “JKL” off the air on Wednesday after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to investigate the network. He and President Donald Trump have since celebrated silencing Kimmel online after he went after the “MAGA gang.”
Elsewhere on X, Dave Portnoy entered the conversation, saying, “With Kimmel getting canned I’m seeing lots of people talking about the hypocrisy of cancel culture. To me Cancel culture is when people go out of their way to dig up old tweets, videos etc looking for dirt on somebody they don’t like in an effort to get them fired. Like if Kimmel got canceled for shit he did on ‘The Man Show’ that would be cancel culture. But when a person says something that a ton of people find offensive, rude, dumb in real time and then that person is punished for it that’s not cancel culture. That is consequences for your actions.”
