“Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.” —Benjamin Franklin (1722)
After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, our nation’s leading champion of free speech on campus, my column “Responding to Charlie’s Murder” was centered on Romans 12:21: “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.”
As anticipated, three days ago, his widow Erika delivered a powerful message of faith and hope at his memorial service to an onsite audience of 110,000 and tens of millions more across the nation and around the world. She declared: “My husband, Charlie — he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life. … On the cross, our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ That man, that young man, I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and it’s what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know, from the Gospel, is love and always love. Love for our enemies, and love for those who persecute us.”
I closed my column with a fitting quote from civil rights leader Martin Luther King: “Hate is too great a burden to bear. … Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”
Remember when, after King’s assassination in 1968 by a racist sociopathic prison escapee from Illinois (a supporter of Democrat presidential candidate George Wallace), days later, the most popular late-night entertainer of that era, Johnny Carson, opened his monologue claiming that the assassin was a left-wing radical, despite unimpeachable evidence to the contrary.
OK, you don’t recall that because Carson did not make that claim. But can you imagine how swiftly he would have been booted off NBC if he had?
Here’s what Carson did say years later in a “60 Minutes” interview on late-night “comedians” using their platforms to push their political views: “That’s a danger. That’s a real danger. Once you start that, you start to get that self-important feeling that what you say has great import. And strangely enough, you could use that show as a forum; you could sway people. And I don’t think you should as an entertainer.”
To his point, that is precisely what late-night “comedian” and serial misogynist Jimmy Kimmel has been doing, and with such impunity that he opened his monologue four days after Charlie’s assassination with this bald-faced lie: “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.” He added after showing a video of President Donald Trump: “You can see how hard the president is taking this. … This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
As was abundantly clear to anyone with an IQ above their age, Kirk’s murderer is, in fact, an ideological leftist who manifests gender-confusion pathology, may have ties to a militant “LGBT” group in Salt Lake City, and was further radicalized by the ideology of the so-called “antifa movement” of self-styled “anti-fascist” fascists — now being declared a terrorist organization.
But apparently, Kimmel, in his narcissistic celebrity alternate reality bubble, missed the news.
He was not the only one. High-profile Harvard Law School professor emeritus Laurence Tribe insisted, “Kirk’s apparent assassin seems to have been ultra-MAGA, exploding the GOP/MAGA attempt to pin the blame for this tragedy on liberals.” And this week, the head of the American Association of University Professors, Rutgers media professor Todd Wolfson, wrote that Kirk’s assassin was “a disturbed right-wing kid” who believed Kirk “was not right wing enough.”
However, for Kimmel, the consequences were swift.
TV media holding company Nexstar, among the nation’s largest network broadcasting groups with more than 200 stations in 116 markets reaching 220 million people, pulled Kimmel’s show from its ABC affiliates.
Likewise, Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest of ABC’s affiliate broadcasters, announced it would be airing a tribute to Charlie Kirk in Kimmel’s former time slot last weekend — though that plan was scrapped just before air time — and also pulled Kimmel’s show from its ABC affiliates, saying it would not consider bringing the show back until Kimmel apologizes and makes a substantial donation to Turning Point USA.
Then, ABC obligatorily suspended Kimmel, but as I noted in my column, “Kimmel Gets Canned for the Moment,” it was just for a moment.
Predictably, Disney/ABC announced Monday that they were reinstating Kimmel: “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
(More on Kimmel’s returning monologue in a moment.)
But Disney didn’t have a “thoughtful conversation” with former employees Roseanne Barr or Gina Carano, nor were there leftist free speech protests after their firings. As commentator Clay Travis notes: “Roseanne had the highest rated show on television when she made a Twitter joke and was immediately fired by Disney. Gina Carano had the most popular show on streaming when she shared a social post and was immediately fired by Disney. Everyone on the left cheered.”
But Kimmel’s problems are not over. Neither Nexstar nor Sinclair restored Kimmel to their late-night lineups — for the moment. Nexstar said, “We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve.” Sinclair said, “Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return.”
Just to be clear, Kimmel had ample opportunity since his suspension to apologize on his own social media pages for his lie — but did not.
For the record, Kimmel’s ratings had dropped precipitously before his offending comment. According to monthly Nielsen figures, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” had only 1.1 million total viewers in August, down 43% from January, when he had 1.95 million. Moreover, his August household rating of 0.35 marked the weakest showing of the year. The New York Post noted, “The advertiser-coveted 18-49 demo also cratered. Kimmel averaged only 129,000 viewers in that bracket in August, off from 212,000 in January.”
His ratings could go either way next month, and that will be interesting to see. But the bottom line is, like other late-night leftists, his viewership is in decline.
Unfortunately, the Kimmel preemptions coincided with some “not ready for prime time” remarks from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who apparently felt he needed to pile on. Carr said: “In some quarters, there’s a very concerted effort to try to lie to the American people about the nature … of one of the most significant newsworthy public interest acts that we’ve seen in a long time in what appears to be an action by Jimmy Kimmel to play into that narrative that this was somehow a MAGA or a Republican-motivated person.” Carr added: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Carr’s comments were coincidental, not causal, but he opened the door for an explosion of leftist protests that he, as an agent of Donald Trump, was responsible for censoring Kimmel, and claims that this constituted speech suppression.
Of course, Kimmel’s suspension had nothing to do with suppression of speech and everything to do with private companies taking appropriate actions against an employee who sullied the reputation of those companies — in addition to the fact that employees’ advertising revenue return for ABC and its affiliates was already in a slide.
There are now numerous cases of leftist non-celebrities being fired for publicly posting hateful assertions about Kirk’s murder.
The difference is that Kimmel has a big platform to spew his leftist garbage and other haters did not.
Consequently, there has been a flood of leftist “speech suppression” claims, including incendiary charges by high-profile Democrats, using the same extremist language that radicalized Charlie Kirk’s assassin. Ironically, they are casting those claims in the same week that Trump’s second would-be assassin was convicted, and the scheduling of sentencing for the man (now claiming to be a woman) who planned the assassination of multiple Supreme Court justices.
In both those cases, as with others, the would-be assailants were radicalized by leftist hate rhetoric.
Typical of those spuriously claiming to be defenders of Kimmel’s freedom of speech are these assertions by the highest-profile Demos in the Senate.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also blew a gasket, protesting: “It is outrageous, it’s a page right out of Xi’s playbook. This is just despicable and disgusting, and against Democratic values. Trump and his allies [are doing what] autocracies do. I am just outraged by it — this is what dictators do. This is what Xi would do. This is what Putin would do.”
Unhinged leftist Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) proclaimed: “It’s happening. The takedown of Jimmy Kimmel is likely the start of a campaign to use the murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to use the power of the White House to wipe out Trump’s critics and his political opponents. But we aren’t powerless. We can mobilize and organize. Now. … There may be no democracy to save a year from now, this is a red alert moment.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD): “Trump’s administration [has] come out and announce to the world that they’re going to crack down on organizations and individuals they disagree with. That is what dictators do. You know, this is why we fought the American Revolution. Because we had a king in England who was locking people up … because they disagreed with them and voiced dissent.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said, “I think that the censorship is spreading like cancer in this country and we need to speak out now.”
To further the pretense, Senate and House Demos proposed new legislation, ostensibly to protect speech, called the “No Political Enemies Act.”
For his part, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) issued a statement condemning “Trump and the Republican Party’s war on the First Amendment.”
The rhetorical tone reflects the level of fear Demos have, not about infringement on the First Amendment but clearly because their Leftmedia propaganda platforms are being threatened.
And of course, the other late-night leftists parroted the Demo autocrat memo, as did hundreds of other leftist celebrities.
As intended, the Demo hate contagion is now boldly being projected by their constituent groups. Intercollegiate Studies Institute President Daniel McCarthy notes: “On Facebook pages for ‘Occupy Democrats’ (with 10 million followers) and ‘U.S. Democratic Socialists’ (1.6 million followers), the message gets clearer: ‘Dear America: Whatever you wish the Germans had done in the 1930s, it’s time to do that now.’”
Didn’t we just have a conversation about lowering the rhetorical temperature of leftist hate rhetoric comparing Trump and his supporters to “autocrats,” “dictators,” and tyrants like Xi and Putin who are “against Democratic values”?
After Charlie’s murder, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the titular head of the Trump/MAGA hatefest, attempted to deflect any responsibility, saying: “We just have to change the rhetorical nature of our debate. People don’t have any intention of saying something that leads to something dangerous. We cannot take responsibility for the minds that are out there.”
“Change the rhetorical nature of our debate”? “We cannot take responsibility”? Really? Pelosi’s rhetoric has been a significant causal factor in all the leftist violence over the last decade.
Now, hearing Democrats pretend to defend “free speech” is as amusing as hearing them on rare occasions espouse the principles enshrined in our Constitution, or their oaths “to support and defend” it.
This is the party that has perfected speech suppression and cancel culture over the last five years.
Demos and their leftist Big Tech oligarchs and surrogate cadres, in collusion with their Leftmedia and social media platforms, have used every means at their disposal to suppress First Amendment protections of those who don’t comport with their agenda. That would include The Patriot Post, which has been repeatedly subjected to such suppression.
This was particularly true in their demands that social media platforms, including the behemoth Facebook, comply with their political agendas.
The abject hypocrisy of Demo objections about ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel is unparalleled.
The outcome of their continued hate rhetoric has proven to have deadly consequences.
For his part, Kimmel predictably opened his ABC return monologue assailing Trump’s “un-American” attacks on free speech, insisting he (Kimmel) was a champion of free speech, and asserting, “It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man … nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual.”
Kimmel can’t stop lying.
In his offending monologue nine days ago, after asserting that conservatives were trying to “score political points” from Kirk’s death, Kimmel joked that Trump was mourning his death “like a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
It was obvious that his intent was to pin the assassination of Kirk on Trump and Republicans, and once caught in his lie, he claimed he was joking, which is not consistent with his assertion that he was not “making light of the murder.”
He concluded his comments last night by tearfully saying: “Erika Kirk forgave the man who shot her husband. … She forgave him. That is an example we should follow. If you believe in the teachings of Jesus, as I do, there it was. That’s it, a selfless act of grace, forgiveness from a grieving widow. It touched me deeply.”
Suggesting, after decades of his leftist late-night hate rhetoric, that he “believes in the teachings of Jesus” in the same breath he is referencing Erika Kirk’s forgiveness betrays the depth of his depraved disingenuousness.
But through his crocodile tears, there was no apology.
Since Trump’s second election, leading Democrats have accelerated their “threat to democracy” and other hate rhetoric claims, despite the fact that Trump actually channels the spirit of American Liberty embraced by his grassroots supporters.
Charlie Kirk’s blood is on the hate rhetoric hands of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, et al.
This is the terminus of years of leftist hate rhetoric, and Charlie’s murder is their new cancel culture. As Charlie would say, “PROVE ME WRONG!”
They are, likewise, guilty of inciting two attempts on Trump’s life, and on other high-profile conservatives.
There will be more bloodshed.
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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