Let’s get one thing straight: Jimmy Kimmel “canceled” Jimmy Kimmel.
The leftist late-night host who has Hillary Clintoned (“basket of deplorables“) more than half of his potential audience has no one to blame for his indefinite preemption but himself. And the leftist politicians springing to Kimmel’s defense, laughably labeling him as a victim of freedom of speech, have been actually silencing conservatives for years.
ABC didn’t take Jimmy Kimmel Live! off its airwaves because its corporate parent company, The Walt Disney Company, was offended by Kimmel’s hideous lie about conservative icon Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin and the late-night host’s vilification of the MAGA movement. ABC News has repeatedly and viciously lied to or misled the American people about all manner of stories — (*See George Stephanopoulos, Hunter Biden’s laptop and Joe Biden’s mental acuity for starters).
Yes, the smarmy host’s smug lies were atrocious, spoken into what’s left of his leftist echo chamber audience.
“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,” Kimmel said in his opening unfunny monologue.
What we know so far in the investigation, according to law enforcement officials, is that Kirk’s accused killer was an avid player of “Furry Shades of Gay,” porn video games, and was in a romantic relationship with a man who thinks he is a woman. That sounds more like a Disney tween sitcom than a right-wing character taking out his wrath on a leading conservative.
Kimmel’s ‘Narrow, Partisan Circus’
The left, of course, is blaming President Donald Trump and his Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, for “silencing” the late-night weasel. But Carr has, as he has consistently done over his tenure, reminded over-the-air broadcasters that they have a legal obligation under the law to abide by the rules of the public interest. An obligation the networks have failed to honor.
“The public interest means you can’t be running a narrow, partisan circus and still be meeting your public interest obligations,” Carr told The Benny Show podcast with Benny Johnson following Kimmel’s false comments. “It means you can’t be engaging in a pattern of news distortion.”
Carr said he could see the “comedian” being suspended, adding that the FCC has “remedies.”
Kimmel is now being painted by Democrats and the accomplice media as some kind of free speech martyr.
Let’s make something else perfectly clear: 31-year-old Charlie Kirk is the only one in this conversation who has truly been “silenced” — and martyred — for speaking out. Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from his high-paying job; his ability to express himself remains in tact. His ability to speak, like everyone else, however, does not come without consequences.
‘Bleeding Viewers’
Speaking of Kimmel’s job, he, like fellow late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon, have seen large swaths of their audience share go away over the last several years. Corporate media outlets like USA Today insist the late-night talkers are victims of a genre facing “competition from new media,” and that Kimmel’s show is “no worse off than his peers.”
That’s partially true, but such sweeping assertions neglect to note that a good percentage of viewers, particularly Kimmel’s and Colbert’s, have left after years of fatiguing, partisan political bashing. There’s nothing funny about alienating more than half of your audience. Ask networks and their sponsors.
As The New York Post reported, Kimmel’s late-night show was bleeding viewers long before ABC suspended him.
“Nielsen data showed sharp summer declines and a year-long slide that leaves him trailing late-night rivals such as Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld and CBS star Stephen Colbert,” the Post reported. CBS announced in July that it will end The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in May 2026. The writing has been on the wall for some time.
Nielsen ratings for Jimmy Kimmel Live! nosedived to a mere 1.1 million total viewers in August, down 43 percent from January’s 1.95 million the Post reported. The show averaged 129,000 viewers in the all-important 18-49 demographic, down from 212,000 in January. All three late-night shows have been in a death spiral for years.
Kimmel’s current contract with ABC, like Colbert’s, is up in May 2026. Kimmel’s latest despicable comments may have handed ABC and Disney an easier out, a pass to bail on a bitter late-night hack who is becoming a very unfunny liability.
Hypocrite Speech
What’s hilarious is leftists like California Gov. Gavin Newsom hypocritically blustering that “There is no such thing as free speech under Donald Trump’s reign.” Newsom, who signed a bill literally killing political speech, is dying on the hill of Jimmy Kimmel’s idiot speech.
“Buying and controlling media platforms. Firing commentators. Canceling shows. These aren’t coincidences,” the Democrat who has his eye on the 2028 presidential prize, wrote Wednesday in an X post. “It’s coordinated. And it’s dangerous. The @GOP does not believe in free speech. They are censoring you in real time.”
This from a governor who, not long before last year’s presidential election, urged passage of a bill that literally cancels parody. Newsom particularly didn’t care for a “deepfake” video that satirically played on the common conservative characterization of Kamala Harris as a “deep state puppet” and “the ultimate diversity hire.” A federal judge in August struck down the law, one of the most restrictive in the country.
But employees suspended or fired for saying stupid things should not expect job protections under the First Amendment, as we have seen time and time again. Kimmel or any of the growing number of leftists who have been disciplined for saying truly abhorrent things about the assassination of Charlie Kirk are free to say whatever they want. They are not free from the consequences of their speech.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
