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Not long ago, the following “journalists” had prominent positions in legacy media: Don Lemon, John Harwood, Jim Acosta, Chris Cillizza, Chuck Todd, Joy Reid, Tiffany Cross, Terry Moran, Jen Rubin, Glenn Kessler, and Taylor Lorenz.
Thankfully, the list has expanded to late-night “comedy” as well. Over at CBS, Stephen Colbert was informed his show will mercifully end next year. And at ABC on Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel was abruptly pulled from its lineup in favor of Celebrity Family Feud, hosted by the actually funny Steve Harvey.
You’re going to see lots of analysis on Friday and over the weekend from the usual left-wing pundits insisting that Colbert and Kimmel are gone because of an attack on free speech from an authoritarian Trump administration. What is purposely omitted seemingly every time is the cold, hard fact that both hosts were losing tens of millions of dollars per year for their respective networks.
The late-night business model is simply and hopelessly broken. In Colbert’s case, his program costs $140 million per year to produce, which makes zero sense considering 90% of the show involves two people talking to each other across a desk. Kimmel’s situation is similar, not to mention the fact that both men were getting paid more than $15 million per year.
The final straw moment for Kimmel came earlier this week when he told a despicable lie about the man accused of fatally shooting Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10 at Utah Valley University.
“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.
Later in the monologue, Kimmel once again showed his severe case of Trump derangement syndrome by mocking President Donald Trump over the loss of his friend Kirk.
“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
How utterly vile.
So let’s unpack the first statement: Kimmel is saying without ambiguity that Tyler Robinson, the man charged with murdering Kirk, was actually a member of the MAGA movement. He accused the “MAGA gang” of exploiting Kirk’s death “to score political points.”
Make no mistake: This was a blatant lie and totally intentional. He didn’t misspeak or even make an attempt at humor. The only person here attempting to score political points was Kimmel in a pathetic attempt to, again, attack anyone who voted for Trump by painting them as violent extremists.
People with basic decency are shocked and devastated by what happened to Kirk. For those not around during the ’60s, as with the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, it was, for many, their moment of knowing exactly where they were when learning about, or unfortunately seeing, that Kirk was shot in the neck or when his death was announced not long after. It is a dark time in America, especially for conservatives, when considering who has been targeted in recent years and by whom.
Whether it was Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) on a baseball field in Virginia getting shot and nearly losing his life; Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) beaten nearly to death on his own front lawn; Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanugh almost assassinated in his own home after Democratic lawmakers implored protesters to descend on his private residence; Trump being a centimeter away from having his head blown off in Butler, Pennsylvania; Trump again nearly assassinated playing golf in West Palm Beach, Florida; Elon Musk’s Tesla dealerships being firebombed and shot at; or the Kirk assassination being carried out for the crime of debating those he disagreed with, it’s hard not to be disturbed, angry, and fearful for the direction of the country right now.
Yet there’s Kimmel accusing Trump supporters of exploiting the death of a 31-year-old father of two young children for political gain. If you want to defend that, knock yourself out.
As for ridiculing Trump for mourning the loss of his friend and supporter, that line proves that rock bottom truly has a basement. One has to be in a patently hateful and/or unhinged place to utter a joke like that, given the circumstances.
But what about free speech, you ask? Well, no one is saying Kimmel should be silenced forever, of course. He can join his liberal friends over on Substack and write and say whatever he likes. But if you’re a shareholder over at Disney, ask yourself the following questions: Was Kimmel losing millions for Disney? Yes. Was Kimmel a PR nightmare? Yes. Were affiliates, including Sinclair and Nexstar, finally fed up after Kimmel blatantly lied about Kirk’s shooter? Yep.
From a business decision, this was a no-brainer.
And let’s not pretend Kimmel was fired over one monologue. This is the same guy who joked about Luigi Mangione, the alleged murderer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024.
“So many women and so many men are going nuts over how good-looking this killer is,” Kimmel said on ABC. “There’s a huge wave of horny washing over us right now.”
“It’s bananas,” he later exclaimed. “But I have to say it does feel kind of good — we’re moving away from nonstop election coverage, and back to drooling over a cold-blooded murderer’s eyebrows and abs.”
Thompson, like Kirk, was the father of two children. His wife is now a widow. His sons don’t have a father. And Kimmel is going on about Mangione’s looks for cheap laughs.
Again, if you’re ABC, and you’re losing hand over fist supporting this person and this third-place show in late-night TV, far behind Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld, why would you continue to air such a dreadful program? Where’s the upside?
But no matter: Here’s one telling exchange Wednesday night on CNN after the news of Kimmel’s ouster broke.
Van Jones: “This is a red line that has been crossed for our industry. For the First Amendment, for the right of people to speak. There was nothing hateful about what was said.”
Erin Burnett: “The job should be to speak truth to power, even when there are people who don‘t like the word truth anymore.”
Nothing hateful? Kimmel literally attempted to portray Robinson as a card-carrying MAGA member, which is an insult to half the country or anyone with a modicum of intelligence. As for Burnett’s claim about speaking truth to power, what truth existed in what Kimmel said to a national audience?
Here are more of Kimmel’s most disgusting comments:
In September 2021, on unvaccinated people coming to the intensive care unit, with the host saying they deserved to die: “Vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right on in. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, wheezy.”
On then-Vice President Mike Pence getting a COVID-19 shot, also wishing death upon him: “So maybe save that dose for someone else. The only cure Mike Pence should get right now is a bottle of Clorox and a heat lamp.”
Kimmel also mocked first lady Melania Trump, who speaks five languages and is a legal immigrant to this country. “Dees and dat!” Kimmel said while imitating her saying “This and that” while reading a book to children at the White House before turning to his Latino sidekick on the show.
“Guillermo, you know what this means? You could be the first lady of the United States!”
Classy.
Kimmel would have been wise to take the advice of Johnny Carson, who had 10 times the audience he did in late-night TV. “Why do they think that just because you have a Tonight Show that you must deal in serious issues? It’s a danger. It’s a real danger. Once you start that, you start to get that self-important feeling that what you say has great import. And you know? Strangely enough, you could use that show as a forum. You could sway people. And I don’t think you should as an entertainer.”
Amen.
From Acosta to Reid to Todd to Moran to Colbert and now Kimmel, the chickens have finally come home to roost.
This isn’t about free speech. It’s about the free market. Supply and demand.
The supply in Kimmel’s case was toxic. The demand was almost nonexistent.
KIMMEL CANCELLATION ISN’T ‘CANCEL CULTURE.’ IT’S CONSEQUENCE CULTURE
That’s how you become an ex-late-night host.
Good riddance.
