Reports broke yesterday that there were multiple reasons why Jimmy Kimmel was pulled off the air at ABC. Not only was he not planning on apologizing on the Wednesday edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live, but he was planning on attacking MAGA for twisting his words, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
As a reminder, here’s what Kimmel said 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.”
Every word there was untrue. Every word he said was false and an intentional smear. The shooter had nothing whatsoever to do with MAGA, which he knew. And I’ll tell you how I know he knew that.
What Happened Monday
Jimmy Kimmel has made it perfectly clear in the past that he is super factual. Back in January 2024, he got into a dispute with Aaron Rodgers after the NFL quarterback suggested he might be on the Epstein list. Jimmy Kimmel was very upset about that allegation and went out on his show and said the following:
“He decided to insinuate that I am a pedophile. This is how these nuts do it now. You don’t like Trump? You’re a pedophile. It’s their go-to move, and it shows you how much they actually care about pedophilia… And as far as the ‘Well, you say things about people all the time’ argument goes. Yes, I do. It’s not the same. It’s not even close to the same. We say a lot of things on this show. We don’t make up lies. In fact, we have a team of people who work very hard to sift through facts and reputable sources before I make a joke. And that’s an important distinction… Because the truth still matters. And when I do get something wrong, which happens on rare occasions, you know what I do? I apologize for, which is what Aaron Rodgers should do, which is what a decent person would do.”
He is, what we would call in the law, a f-cking liar. He says he has a team of fact checkers that don’t allow him to say lies and that, if he errs, he will go out there and apologize and clear it up. But he was entirely wrong in trying to blame this shooting on MAGA and say this shooter was affiliated with MAGA – and he knew it.
And the reason I know he knew it is because he says he has a team of researchers that research every fact before he says it on his show. And what we knew as of Monday night was that this shooter – while, yes, he had Republican parents – was an unaffiliated voter. We knew that his own mother said he had gone leftward. We didn’t yet have the mother saying he had latched on to pro-gay and pro-trans ideology (that came a day later), but we knew that he was living with somebody who is transitioning from male to female and was into “furry culture.”
We know that the Utah governor had said he was driven by leftist ideology. We know that the bullet casings had leftist messages on them. And by the way, we didn’t even have to go that far. All you needed to know was that Charlie Kirk got shot at one of his events. You knew it was someone who hated Charlie Kirk because of his politics. That was obvious. Only leftists trying to deny any connection to the shooter, or his ideology, or what infected his mind would deny that.
So, Jimmy Kimmel knew because he had his team of fact checkers who knew all the things I just said. I learned them from the same news sources his team had access to, which is how I know it was an intentional lie that he told on the air on Monday night.
What Happened Tuesday
And the other reason I know it was an intentional lie was, by the time we got into Tuesday, we did hear from the mother. We saw the indictment. We saw all of the things that were alleged by prosecutors at that press conference about the leftist ideology, the gay thing, the trans thing. We already knew those things, but it was more evidence.
Yet what did Kimmel do on Tuesday night? The controversy had already blown up, so did he apologize and say, ‘I got it wrong. Let me correct it’? Not quite:
“Many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk… The president is better doing their best to fan the flames so they can, I guess, attack people on the dangerous left with. Which is it? Are the dangerous are they a bunch of sissy pickleball players because they’re too scared to get hit by tennis balls, or a well organized, deadly team of commandos? Because they can’t be both of those things.”
Unfortunately, it can and it is. You have a super big tent for wackos over there on the left, Jimmy. You do have weak-kneed, soy boy, skater/scooter types. And then you do have the Antifa types and the radical types who absolutely would take a gun, lie down on a rooftop, and try to kill the next president of the United States. (And by the way, that description applies both to Trump and to Charlie. Everyone knows Charlie was going to be president one day. You could see it just upon shaking the man’s hand.)
Even so, Kimmel was still attacking MAGA as “working very hard to capitalize on the murder.” We are not capitalizing on the death of Charlie. We are in mourning. You leftist losers are out there trying to blame us for his death and trying to disparage his legacy. We are trying to correct the record and for once are fighting back. You crossed a line that we are not willing to let you cross without a fight. We usually blow you lunatics off as a fringe who we can’t respond to rationally, but it is beyond that now.
What Happened Wednesday
By the time we got to Wednesday, Disney and ABC were in meltdown mode because, according to The Hollywood Reporter, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN, the phone lines were ringing off the hook at corporate and also at the local affiliates.
And then you also had Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr go on Benny Johnson’s podcast and say enough is enough; these affiliates actually do need to take seriously their obligation of protecting the public interest when they decide what goes on their airwaves.
Yes, Carr did say, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” which sounds like, ‘I will get involved if I have to.’ But he hadn’t yet. He had used words saying, “hard way, easy way, we’ll see,” and then the affiliates started calling ABC to say, ‘We’re not airing him tonight.’
There was the one group, Nexstar Media Group, which does have a merger that it needs FCC approval on. But then came Sinclair Broadcast Group. They don’t have a merger, and they felt exactly as Nexstar did.
Now we find out, Kimmel was planning to not only triple down on his message about the suspect but turn it into yet another attack on MAGA. He was going to go out there and say his words were being purposefully twisted by MAGA.
CNN correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister reported the comedian wanted to address the backlash with a monologue that “was very hot” and “very much took aim at MAGA.” And that is apparently when executives said, “We can’t have him go on the air tonight.”
Disney pulled the plug. They had been asking him for hours to tone it down, he wouldn’t, and so they suspended him indefinitely. He is not fired. We actually don’t know how this is going to end.
But that is the series of events that has led to the leftist meltdown now and, literally, t-shirts that read “I am Jimmy Kimmel” as though they have lost a Charlie. They are actually equating their loss of Jimmy Kimmel and his loser show, which no one watched, to our loss of Charlie Kirk because people are sick.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,153 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.