First people who said positive, celebratory things about Charlie Kirk’s death were targeted by the Right.
Then people who noted that Charlie Kirk shouldn’t have been killed, because killing is wrong, but that, besides that, he was an asshole who said terrible things, were targeted.
Now people who note that Charlie Kirk shouldn’t have been killed, but that the MAGA Right was exploiting his death to (without basis) villify the Left as being responsible for it, were targeted.
And, in all cases, it was just described as retaliation for “comments about the killing of Charlie Kirk.”
What sort of awful things did Kimmel say about Charlie Kirk, reprehensibly celebrating his killing as a good thing?
None. He didn’t do that. He didn’t say anything positive about the killing (he called it murder), and he didn’t even say anything negative about Kirk.
Here is (for the moment) the video of Kimmel’s monologue that landed him in hot water:
He critiqued the MAGA Right about how they were handling the killing (2:03):
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 put everything they can to score political points from it.
He critiqued Trump on making a bizarro pivot (on actual news video) from how he was holding up in his grief about Charlie Kirk’s death, to bragging about construction on his Big, Beautiful Ballroom (2:26):
I think very good, and by the way you can see over there all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House which is something they’ve been trying to get for 150 years and it’s gonna be a beauty.
Much of the rest of the monologue was poking fun at Trump about a number of other things, which is doubtless why Trump regularly insists on sharing with us his belief that Jimmy Kimmel is not at all funny, even though the ratings say, yeah, he’s pretty funny.
But none of it was celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death, suggesting he brought on his death, or even saying anything mean about Charlie Kirk.
But that halo effect keeps getting bigger, and Disney/ABC heard Trump’s head of the FCC, self-proclaimed “First Amendment warrior” Brendan Carr, suggest that ABC’s broadcast license might be yanked over this, or the licenses of ABC affiliates, unless they pulled Kimmel off the air …
I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.
and
There’s action we can take on licensed broadcasters. And, frankly, it’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast or Disney and say, listen, we are going to preempt, we’re not going to run Kimmel any more until you straighten this out because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.
… and so the biggest affiliates (Sinclair and Nexstar) leaned on Disney/ABC, and Disney/ABC pulled Kimmel off the air.
They didn’t pull him off the air for supporting political violence. They didn’t pull him off the air because he was saying things not supported by the First Amendment.
They pulled him off the air because the US Government threatened them with financial losses if they didn’t. And because, frankly, Nextstar and Sinclair are pretty conservative organizations (remember how Sinclair used to dictate “news” items to its affiliates to read on-air?) who have been eagerly sucking up to Trump, and so this gave them a semi-legit way to leverage Trump’s favor. Even if, based on SCOTUS rulings even within the last year, it’s clear that such an action by the FCC could not stand up, it was easier for Disney/ABC to bow down.
Which will make the next time that much easier, too.
You know, I’m old enough to remember how Americans — especially conservative, Republican Americans — used to deride the Soviet dictatorships for being so sensitive to comedians making fun of their government and leaders. “We have freedom!” they would say. “They have insecure tyranny!”
The derision is on the other foot now.
UPDATE: Carr now says that this was all so terrible of Kimmel because he “appeared to mislead the public” about the background of the Charlie Kirk murderer.
- That’s still protected speech.
- Kimmel’s comments were plausibly true.
- Even if they weren’t, Jimmy Kimmel is a comedian and commentator, not a news reporter.
- Charlie Kirk spewed falsehoods and misleading hate speech on a daily basis, and nobody on the Right ever suggested his speech should be suppressed.
- Threatening the power of the FCC to yoink broadcast licenses because someone being broadcast by them says something even “misleading” as a political comment — is regulation of political speech, censorship, and a crystal clear violation of the First Amendment.