Jimmy Kimmel
I had started to write about free speech and hate speech in America when
this story broke last night.
Just like Stephen Colbert before him, Jimmy was fired for poking fun at
President Trump and the “Maga gang” for their reaction to the Charlie Kirk
killing. This is what he said (you can watch it
here) on his show Monday night:
“We hit some new lows over the
weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who
murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything
they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing,
there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff
which got some criticism but on a human level you can see how hard the
president is taking this.”
Kimmel called it murder and condemned the killing and all political
violence, so he was in no way condoning the killing of Charlie Kirk. What he
did do was to expose how the right was using the killing to score political
points. He also showed, using a video clip of a Trump interview, how little
grieving the President appeared to be experiencing, despite the lowering of the
flags to half-staff. When asked how he was holding up personally on the loss of
his good friend Charlie Kirk, Trump replied “I think very good,” and without taking a breath continued “and by the way right there you see all the
trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House…”
Kimmel observed “This is not how an adult
grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year old
mourns a goldfish”.
On Wednesday the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, went on the podcast of right-wing influencer
Benny Johnson and threatened to pull the broadcast license of stations that
continued to air Kimmel’s show.
Nextar, which owns 200 stations across America, was the first to cave,
quickly followed by ABC (which is owned by Disney). Nexstar has an important
reason to get on Trump’s good side – they are in negotiations to buy rival Tegna
for $6 billion, which would give them a near monopoly coverage of 80% of US
households. The current FCC cap is 39% so the FCC will not only have to approve
the deal but also lift the cap.
It was Kimmel’s phrase “one of
them” that appeared to particularly bother Carr. He said that Kimmel was "playing into that narrative that this was somehow a Maga or Republican-motivated person...that is really sick". But this show aired Monday
when all that we knew of Robinson was he was from a white, Mormon, gun-totin’,
MAGA-supporting, Utah family. The information about a possible trans girlfriend
hadn’t come out yet.
Keep in mind that immediately after the news broke of Kirk’s murder, when we knew nothing about the perpetrator, President Trump blamed “the radical left” and vowed to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity…” Trump’s definition of the “radical left”, by the way, is anyone who opposes his policies, which now includes the majority of the 340 million people who live in America.
Just a few months ago in June Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered by Vance Boelter, an evangelical Christian who also shot and injured two other Democratic politicians and had a hit list that included dozens of other Democratic targets. Donald Trump Jr. claimed the suspect was a "leftist" and "a Democrat". Elon Musk, referring to this shooting, said the Left was "murderously violent". Laura Loomer demanded that the FBI interrogate (Democratic Governor) Tim Walz. None later apologized. None lost their jobs.
Compare the reaction against Kimmel with that of Fox host Brian Kilmeade
who, on the air, suggested a solution for homeless people would be “involuntary lethal injections”. There
was no pushback from the cohosts of the show at the time. The next day Kilmeade
offered an apology; he still has his job.
I suspect thought that it was Kimmel's line about the four year old mourning his goldfish that got under Trump's thin skin and led to the order to get rid of him. The line about Robinson being "one of them" was used as an excuse to take advantage of sympathy for the murder victim. You have to admit, though, that the goldfish line was funny and Trump in that unedited video did not act very bereaved.
It was also very true to say that Trump supporters were working hard to distance Tyler from his gun-loving, MAGA supporting, family and pin the shooting on leftist radicalization. There is no evicende, however, that the shooting was connected to any organization. A DOJ official working on the Kirk case told NBC News "Thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups. There is every indication that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk's ideology personally offensive."
We know that this was just an excuse to get rid of Kimmel. When Stephen Colbert
Show was cancelled President Trump posted July 18: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than
his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next”.
When Trump learned of Kimmel’s firing he tweeted from his visit in
Britain his delight and shared the next two on his hit list:
“Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what needed to be done. ... That leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyer], ... Do it NBC!!! President DJT”
As Mechelangelo Signorile concluded in his September 18 post, the
problem with Kimmel’s firing is not that a privately owned company fired him
for saying something they didn’t like. The problem is that the FCC Chair
ordered it, doing the bidding of a president who is intent on silencing
his critics, and letting big business know that they won’t get what they
want—and will face retaliation—unless they follow his orders. That is the
epitome of authoritarianism, and this is yet another bright line crossed.
Trump, in ordering the firing of Kimmel (and no one seriously doubts that he did just that) violated his own Executive Order. On his first day in office, January 20, 2025, Trump issued an executive order titled "Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship":
"The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference." He adds that his administration will "ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen..."
I’ll give Carr himself the last word. Illinois Governor Pritzker wrote “This is an attack on free speech and cannot
be allowed to stand”. The Governor then quoted Brendan Carr who had posted in 2023:
Free speech is…the
check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s
dream”.
Sources
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-17-2025-wednesday
https://www.signorile.com/p/kimmels-suspension-is-another-red
https://hartmannreport.com/p/saturday-report-92025-the-nazis-famously
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