Kimmel's statement, as you quoted above, does not assert that Robinson is MAGA, although you can read that implication into it if you want. It truthfully points out that MAGA immediately and forcefully asserted that the assassin's ideology was antifa/trans/insert-leftist-bogeyman before there was substantial evidence either way.
It doesn't assert, but it certainly implies. If Kimmel wanted to say that "MAGA jumped to the conclusion they wanted before the body was cold", he could've said that and his meaning would've been clear. Maybe that was what he was going for and he and his writers just failed to craft a good sentence; it didn't even seem like a laugh line or a set up for one. IMO it's a good examples of the burgeoning echo chamber Nate is talking about.
(That aside, in the context of the FCC's actions, scrutinizing this wording is a pointless side-show.)
FWIW, I don’t think Kimmel’s comment implies any such thing. This is the first time I have seen the comment. I had to re-read Nate’s subsequent characterization of it (and re-read the comment) to understand why he characterized it as he did. I still don’t see it.
Same here, pal. Admittedly, I’m German, so I might not be the average American benchmark. Still, when our media reported about this and printed his words in the original and in German, I did not understand what was so controversial about it.
While I agree, Kimmel's remark was a terribly worded sentence which left it open to that interpretation.
There a # of ways to say what you pointed out more clearly, but, what was said was sloppy enough to allow the statement to heard as"Robinson is MAGA". Heck, I had to read it 2-3x to figure out what Kimmel actually meant..& the MAGA folks looking for red-meat aren't going to even go that far.
& yes, the fact they didn't think of the above is a sign of an "echo chamber".
Kimmel's comments were not about MAGAs immediate reactions, but rather MAGA comments that reached "new lows over the weekend." Such comments that the shooter was not MAGA were not baseless speculation about some unknown assassin but rather based on early data about the shooters beliefs, which as noted by Nate point towards someone who didn't like MAGA elements of Kirk's.
By calling out MAGAs who assert that the shooter was not a MAGA as engaging in a "new low" Kimmel is functionally saying that the reporting is misinformation.
I really doubt that Jimmy Kimmel is doing any outright attempts at misinformation. He (or his writers) probably kind of believed the guy was actually a right-winger and that affected how the statement was phrased . . . but I suspect they were also trying to be careful to not actually say anything definite either way. Of course people took it that way anyway.
> really doubt that Jimmy Kimmel is doing any outright attempts at misinformation.
Bahahahahahaha these people are WAY more partisan than that. Why on earth would you think that? Do you think Trump isn't trying to like too when he lies 85 times a day?
I don't know it certainly can be read the way you are suggesting but that seems to be the most charitable interpretation. It's hard to think that would be the reasonable inference to the average person especially with the claims that Robinson was a groyper that are also prevalent out there.
Correct, Kimmel never actually said Robinson was a MAGA guy. I can see why MAGA people would interpret it that way, and you can reasonably argue that it was implied, but we should be accurate that he never actually said it. He is making a comment about the right-wing political reaction, not the shooter himself.
Exactly. We didn't know the political leanings at the time. He could have been a groyper, he could have been a leftist. You may argue one was more likely, but we simply didn't know. But we did know that he was a gun loving, white guy raised in a Republican Christian home.
My read was that Kimmel's "one of them" comment simply described this background. Not his politics since they were unknown.
Afterall the Utah Governor also described him as one of us, and nobody is claiming that the Utah Governor was spreading misinformation about MAGA leanings. Quite the opposite. Kimmel was saying the same thing.
We hit some new lows recently with the progressive gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.
With a slight modification to Kimmel's statement you know exactly what I mean.
Long and short, you better watch what you say or you will be silenced by the powers that be. Parsing what Kimmel said or what he meant is a distraction. Goodbye, free speech. Goodbye, debate. Goodbye, the American experiment.
So one can hardly complain when Trump despite not having any information about the assassin’s identity at the time is trying to tie him to the left. And like many others here: I did not for one second read the comment from Kimmel like you did (I’m German though, so I’m not you average ABC audience).
I wholeheartedly agree with Nate’s assessment of the left excess CC. I was kinda cancelled myself by some lefty women from a politics class where I taught law. My point is: Trump and lots of other MAGA folks tie the killer untruthfully to the left. Kimmel’s remark is by the most ill meaning standard a “thrust”, as you said (I really don’t read it that way but for the sake of the argument let’s do it). So even if Kimmel does the same thing, how would that be cancel worthy?
David Frum was on CNN the other day arguing that this isn't cancel culture because it isn't culture, it's state repression. When the government orders someone be fired for making jokes at the president's expense, that's very different from the company firing someone because of angry viewers or advertiser pressure.
It almost doesn't matter what the content of the jokes are. Sure Kimmel got some facts wrong. Even so, the chair of the FCC can't threaten to revoke a broadcast license over jokes about the president. Doing that is simply incompatible with a free society.
But certainly you agree that the pressure from the Biden administration upon the media during the period of Covid in particular was much more aggressive thian this attempt.
No instead of silencing rich comedians out in the open it was silencing millions of normal Americans in secret while lying to tech companies about them being Russian trolls.
Well while I found those people silly at the time, some of them absolutely were right about overreactions and overreach on school closing, masking, child masking, child vaccines, and lab leak. In fact I don't think it is clear at all whether the countries COVID response would have done better with no misinformation police out there. I kind of think it would of, especially given what we saw in Europe and here in terms of areas with less serve mandates doing just as well or better.
And yes millions of people did have their speech throttled by big tech and social media a the direct threat of the government and MSM now whining about free speech.
Professors in good standing from respected institutions would having their accounts squelched if they weren't with the orthodox view.
And people like yourself still cheer and minimize it to this day.
It is perfect example of why people on the right don't take your whining about free speech seriously. I agree Trump is awful on this and a wide variety of issues. But there was big scandal under the previous admin on more or less this exact topic and the non-stop position of the left was "nothing to see here, lies and threats form the intelligence community or Whitehouse staff aren't actual breaks with free speech, no one was forced to do anything".
This type of hypocrisy matters because it makes your enemies not care or listen to you. And you might say "they weren't going to listen anyway fuck em", except there are enough moderates and disaffected people who are paying attention, and the elections are close enough, that this is a very ill advised attitude.
Or to put it more simply, Democrats could have gone through this period having 99% of the cake, while staying on the right side of all these norms, and they would be a wildly better position now. But they have been unafraid to jump into the mud with the Republicans because they want 100% of the cake.
And for that little bit of extra oophm they threw away their claim to the moral high ground and are now stuck with the "yeah we are awful but this other guy is 10X worse" defense.
Which even if true simply isn't as compelling. The juice simply wasn't worth the squeeze.
The president is publicly ordering the AG to go after his political enemies and you’re still on the shtick of “this all just happened because of leftists overreach.” That’s gonna get real old over the next four years.
This all started under trump. Closing the borders. Closing businesses. Schools. Simply an overreaction. I said at the time to not follow authoritarian regimes like china. Not the role model we needed. The Biden admin followed and kept it going for too long.
The lesson being that admins usually continue policies like this. Expect court cases. Mass trials. Squashing free speech. And so on and so on.
Whatever side you're on, what matters now is who stops it because it's stupid as hell.
No, we didn’t see media personalities losing their job en masse from the government directly pressuring their employers. Maybe due to a Twitter storm, but that was from influencers online and not directly from the government of the United States.
I don't recall any senior officials of the Biden administration making direct threats to any media outlet during covid in the same format as this one, which was, explicitly, "Remove this person or we will use the power of the state to crush your business"
Certainly many businesses were crushed due to lockdowns, is that what you're referring to? However no business was singled out, and it had nothing to do with the speech of the owners/employees.
"Every business meeting criteria X must close for period Y because of the risk of spreading disease" is not remotely equivalent to "That one specific person mocked the president, so you must remove him or we'll shut down your one specific business"
Nope. Firstly, Trump was the president during most of the period of COVID, and Biden was only a candidate. So it was the Biden campaign, not the administration, that contacted social media companies. And conservatives were very upset about this, even though all they were doing was pointing out violations of company policies and asking them enforce their own rules. This did not change after Biden was elected. They continued to reach out to companies to get them to enforce their own rules.
Wake up everyone. The misnamed and dangerous vaccine was introduced just before Biden took office. They were ruthless in contacting the media ( particularly social media) and “asking’ them to remove anything which they views ad misinformation or disinformation. Zuckerberg’s mea culpa for giving in to this pressure and the Twitter files make it abundantly clear. And practically everyone in the armed services who objected was forced to resign. Of course, probably most of the commentators n=below who have disputed my comment are firm believers in the all is goid and there were no excess deaths tooth fairy integiretatiin of the vaccine. I hope neither you or your family or friends will be among the many people who have been injured, often severely by the fact that the spike protein. From the shots has remained in your body and particularly your lungs and DNA.
As a fairly liberal guy, I have been put off by how a lot of the people I follow jumped on the narrative that the shooter was a far right person. I kept reading the information that was public, and couldn't find my way to that conclusion. Just like you said, it seems like his motivation was somewhat muddled. I think that even highly respected people like Richardson can make mistakes, she human like the rest of us, but I would hope that she comes clean about possibly getting a little caught up in the frenzy of activity following the assassination.
Unfortunately she is too totally partisan to admit that her biases were in play.
The incredible success of her Substack seems to have increased her willingness to be openly partisan without regard to the lack of facts supporting her assertions, it was one of the first,Substacks that I encountered and subscribed to when I became an active participant here. Now a great deal of the time I now often. find it to be charitable what I would discrihe as a partisan screed rather than the insights and perspective of an historian.
I genuinely think that deep partisanship clouds judgement. No matter what the topic, it seems that people deeply steeped in partisan rhetoric end up regurgitating whatever spin "their side" has managed to put on stuff, no matter how absurd it may seem, and no matter whether it aligns with reality or not.
I haven't been able to figure out if they actually believe that stuff, or merely repeat it in discussions just to "win" an argument.
I also thought he was going to turn out to be a Groyper guy for a couple of days. But I dropped that idea pretty quickly when more info came out. All I would ask of someone like Richardson is to do the same.
Unless he talks well never know what his beliefs are. The government is always covering up and lying. Well be shown the evidence that they want us to see. Just like every other president in history.
I dunno. I dislike the cancel culture excesses of 2020 as much as you, but given the Trump admin’s whole-hearted attack on the institutions of liberal democracy from the fed to the department of health to the electoral system and on and on, I don’t think we needed 2020 to happen for him to step on major networks. I just think he’s an instinctual autocrat and he would have leaned on the networks anyway. In times like this, the only consolation I can give is that at least we aren’t starting a war based on bullshit and murdering hundreds of thousands.
During his first term, he wanted to change libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations. So you are right, this is a long standing goal of Trump.
After 9/11 the country was legitimately afraid of the outside threat from Islamic Fundamentalists. Three thousand people died. And it was not the last action.
But Bush did not engage in collective blame as MAGA is doing now. Bush made sure to differentiate the terrorists from Islam in general and was especially vocal about protecting Americans who practiced islam.
The situation then and the situation now feel very differently to me. I was 39, married with three children when 9/11 happened. I think to compare the two atmospheres––now and then––it helps to have been a full fledged adult during both.
That was definitely not my experience following 9/11. Society broadly rushed right on past "not all muslims are terrorists" to "anyone of middle east heritage is a terrorist".
I suppose, but it definitely didn't work. Also, given the actions of the Bush administration during that time (making up WMDs so they could go and "retaliate"), they definitely didn't show it though their actions.
This explains a lot of the Maga situation to me and actually changes my mind a bit to see the parallels between now and then. The war was so obviously bullshit in the same way that Trump is obviously bullshit.
My key concern with Trump from the beginning is bad behavior begets more bad behavior. He broke the seal on respect and decorum and you had to expect the left to have an equal and opposite reaction. It took a while but we are seeing it now.
My wish is reasonable people of all political leanings would call out bad behavior regardless of who is doing it. Appreciate Nate for having this approach from the beginning.
It has been truly disheartening as a liberal to see responses indifferent to political violence under the guise of “he wouldn’t want our empathy” or “they started it”. We should be better. I didn’t pick this ideology like a sports team, I chose it because it was the party of empathy, and if that is no longer the case I shall move on.
Kimmel clearly misinformed his audience and/or made a stupid joke. He should at least apologize for that.... He didn't deserve to be fired or censored. Carr deserves to be impeached or fired. The station affiliate owners are the real enemy here.... but they own the stations and have the upper hand.
If I scrapped somebody’s car with my cars door and they responded by taking a baseball bat to my side mirror, I would also be disinclined to apologize for the initial wrong.
I have plenty of issues with the knee-jerk and pirhana-like swarm quality of some instances of left-motivated cancellations, and I'm not going to try to defend Kimmel's remark on the merits, but let's be clear: There's no equivalence between a call for advertisers to boycott something and the FCC employing mob intimidation tactics and the carrot-and-stick of merger approval leverage to coerce content decisions by Nexstar/Sinclair. If the right had called on ABC to fire Kimmel using "voting-with-their-views" tactics or even suggesting advertiser boycotts, we could maybe call that an instance of what goes around comes around, but there's never to my knowledge been a parallel of a Democratic administration threatening a broadcaster with license revocation on the grounds of political content, nor am I the least bit worried that that would happen in a future AOC (or whoever) administration. That is really scary on a societal level in a way that no left-wing "cancel culture" instance has been.
So please, let's by all means point out illiberal tendencies on parts of the left, but let's not for a moment pretend that this is something they brought upon themselves in any way.
I appreciate the calls back to the Bush era, Nate. I lived through it and honestly I'd sort of forgotten how careful you had to be in the early 2000s to even hint at critisism of US foreign policy lest you commit the carnal sin of not "supporting the troops." Political discourse these days seems to not be capable of remembering much of anything before the 2016 election and everything that happens is the first time its ever happened in American history.
That's not to excuse what is happening here - a lot of what this admin is doing is fucked. But someone who lived through the America of the 60s, or the 40s, or the 1910s, lived through worse examples of political violence and/or government censorship of the press.
I am 38, I remember Bush being elected in 8th grade, 9/11 first weeks of school in 9th grade, the Iraq invasion, and him being reelected in 2004. I joined the Marines after HS and went to Afg. I am a politically tuned-in person, I watched the news after school and love current affairs/events.
In hindsight, it's so insane that we went to Iraq. An entire country (not to mention our allies), knee jerked into an unnecessary war because of 9/11. I have more thoughts on it in defense of us as a society, but would make my comment too long.
The Bush era is crazy to look back on. And it seems that no one is really fond of it, like at all. You don't see anyone romanticizing the Bush era like you do Raegan or Obama. And all his lackeys are liberals now like Kristol and Dowd.
How could they be? 9/11, followed by a going after, but, not getting Bin-Laden, then lying to start a war with Iraq..then Katrina & the housing bubble popping leading to an economic collapse that almost bankrupted the USA.
Actually, betraying my age, it feels much more like the Nixon Watergate era where the White House -- Nixon and uber paranoid crew -- used Hoover and many even more dubious bedfellows to as he put "fuck the blacks and hippies." Kent State the shooting of 6 students by the FBI should certainly ring a bell now. The gloves were far further off then than now. So was the resistance. In those days folks didn't fart around with internet protests and late night comedy. They took to the streets. I am in no way condoning their behaviors -- or many of them, but they were were far more serious about a far more serious threat. We could be headed back there, and maybe we should be at least from a dialectic point of view. History tells us these things always start with the Camel or in this case Kimmel's nose under the tent.
Nate, you misconstrue the nature of the conflict. This is not about liberal v. conservative, or Republican v. Democrat. The struggle is between liberal democracy and totalitarianism. Republicans can be liberal democrats who believe in elections, freedom of expression, tolerance, creative competition, due process, all liberal democratic values, and Democrats can embrace election cynicism, suppression of diversity, revenge politics, and violence as a means of eliminating opposition. Trumpism is totalitarianism and the actions of Kirk's assassin are that of a totalitarianism mindset. I think Kimmel was insightful in that he recognized that liberal democrats do not favor assassination, but that trumpism foments violence regardless of political belief. You make the connection with MAGA.
I am a free-speech hardliner--if you don't like speech, refute it or ignore it, don't suppress it or punish the speaker. But I wish people could see that political speech is the least important speech, not the most important.
Yes, Brendan Carr abused his discretion, but the problem is that he has that discretion in the first place. And suspending Jimmy Kimmel does not suppress his speech, it's has amplified it. And Kimmel is hardly the unpopular, helpless victim for whom we should be most diligent in protecting rights.
The FCC and other government censors have much more malign influence on non-political speech--the Motion Picture Production Code that ruled movies for half a century under similar threats of government pressure, the actions directed against comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, FCC regulation of television content. These things shape cultural attitudes and encourage racism, sexism, anti-homosexuality, authoritarianism and other ills.
I would hope the outcome of this is pushback against all government censorship, and a reduction of discretion of unelected officials to the minimum necessary.
Is there a public policy reason for requiring FCC licenses for broadcasters (while not requiring for cable or streaming)? Why do we still have this administrative regime?
The theory is that they are using a limited public resource (the RF spectrum).
To avoid anyone with a soldering iron from creating a RF cesspool, access to frequencies are managed and licensed, and the licenses come with restrictions.
Cable companies argued that they were using wires they deployed and managed, so it made no sense to have a regulation system.
Of course they also received local monopolies to telephone poles and connection rights, so some oversight mechanism would be perfectly reasonable legally, but it is amazing what political donations can do. This is especially true because the monopolies were granted by local governments, and it is pretty easy to have a few donations dramatically impact city council and mayor elections.
(Edit : cleaned up a mess I made rewording a sentence)
You'll find a similar story with all regulatory agencies. They are created for a narrow purpose, which they expand over time both because agency heads want more money and power, and private entities figure out how to use them for crony profit. Eventually Congress regularizes the assumed powers.
The FCC inherited its powers from the Interstate Commerce Commission--created to set railroad rates, which it expanded to setting telegraph and telephone rates--and the Federal Radio Commission--established to allocate frequencies among competing users.
Over the years, the FCC took on all kinds of new goals and powers--protecting public morality, ensuring political fairness, picking and choosing broadcasters, deciding who paid what price for what services, regulating advertising, etc.
Rational public policy would implement some kind of system for allocating frequency use--one without arbitrary discretion--and let people choose what they wanted to view, and companies choose what they wanted to offer. There are other narrow objectives, such as ensuring adequate infrastructure for essential purposes, but no need for a vast staff with broad discretionary powers.
Tipper Gore's "Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)" took advantage of political connections and arranged a congressional hearing on explicit content in rock music and a proposed labeling system. The "Filthy Fifteen" included Prince- Darling Nikki; Sheena Easton-Sugar Walls; and Judas Priest-Eat Me Alive.
Agreed, although this particular censorship attempt failed, and amplified the target content.
A college friend of mine remembered the local sheriff in West Virginia in the 1960s going door-to-door to collect rock records by Black musicians (she lost her beloved Louie Louie--although she had the famous version by the all-White Kingsmen from Portland, Oregon, not the (Black) Richard Berry original). I asked if the forbidden list included Black jazz, ragtime or classical musicians, and she said no. Hard to understand the logic of government censors.
I read Kimmel’s comment differently. To me he wasn’t saying Robinson is MAGA, he was pointing out that MAGA figures are eager to attack anything that isn’t them. The point is they don’t care about defining Robinson’s politics accurately, only that he’s ‘not one of us,’ which is enough for a scattershot attack. They are attacking anything and everything “other than one of them”.
Right, but by specifically criticizing MAGA for the action of trying to say the shooter was not one of them, it heavily implies that the shooter *is* one of them, or at the very least the result of their actions. It's much more obvious when you see the recording of him saying it that that is what is implied than just reading it in text form. I saw it the night it was released and that was my takaway (Indeed, I remember audibly groaning because it was a stupid and unproductive take) but then thought nothing more of it.
The real issue though is people fixating on what he said and not on the fact that he had the first amendment right to say it, and the government pressuring his network to drop him is a clear violation of his first amendment rights.
Would you please define what you mean by "old as hell?" It may surprise you, but even people "old as hell" often read and consume media from diverse outlets.
Network primetime viewer's average age is 64.6, compared to the average american's age is around 38 (there are different numbers for both of these flying around, but these seem to be in range). Maybe it's not a nice way to phrase it by Nate but he's not wrong in saying these networks are reaching a MUCH older demographic
The oldest demo that advertisers like is 25-54. After that age, advertisers aren't interested. They figure your brand habits are cast in stone and your mad money is locked down or kind of slim.
Silver sort-of disproves his accusation of hypocrisy towards conservative cancellers by this statement:
"The charge that the other side are self-serving hypocrites is usually easy to prove through both valid and exaggerated examples. Without a guilty conscience, you might as well do whatever you can to consolidate power when you have it."
If all is fair in love and war, punching back is hardly hypocritical. One cannot call "punch-no punchbacks".
I said this a while back, over and over: the endgame of cancel culture is not cowering conservatives. The endgame is Mutually Assured Destruction.
It's not a game either team should be playing. I knew that this would bite the Left in the butt.
But perhaps one point to be emphasized - the like of Kimmel , Colbert, Stewart etal are not entitled to the platform they have held and abused for so long, and not believe there are consequences.
Yesterday, Letterman overtly admitted that he was never inclined to "satircally" assault Obama - he "liked him".
Pity the likes of all these cretins is that cannot profess some intellectual honesty.
We exist to validate the left and all of its excesses.
And now they reap the whirlwind.
Of course, Kimmel was incapable of conceding that he was lying in his set up that Robinsion was MAGA. His commmitment to the higher calling of American socialism and destruction of Chiristian values absolved him of any accountability.
Until of course, even Disney could not rationalize allowing him to carry on.
This has nothing to do with entitlement. The federal government pressured his employers to fire him because of what he said, which is a clear violation of first amendment protections.
It's perfectly fine for his employers to fire him for pretty much any reason. It's incredibly illegal for a state or local government to pressure a company to fire someone for protected speech.
It has to do with economics. Two significant affiliate carriers were about to pull Kimmel anyway and the show was hemorrhaging cash and ratings. Administration comments are regrettable, but he was on his way out.
As I wrote, Kimmel has been losing both revenue and ratings. Try an Open AI search: "The overall pool of ad spending for network late-night TV has shrunk, from something like $439 million in 2018 to about $220 million by 2024.
Kimmel’s own numbers reportedly dropped significantly in 2025 vs earlier in the year. For instance, one report said in early 2025 he was averaging about 1.946 million viewers and 212,000 in the 18-49 demo; by August 2025 that had dropped to ~1.104 million total viewers and ~129,000 in the demo"
Declining revenue and ratings = expendable. Hence, the decision to can him was a financial one.
So you're actually asserting that late-night networks shows are not declining in ad revenue and ratings? You're getting silly now, Ryan. The decline of these shows has been widely documented and discussed ad nauseum for awhile now. Ok, here's one source and you'll note ratings have declined substantially since the beginning of the year: https://ustvdb.com/networks/abc/shows/jimmy-kimmel-live/
Because Kimmel is 3rd among late-nighters (your source) is not evidence that ad revenue and ratings overall for all of them are not declining. It doesn't matter that he is in 3rd place - they're all doing worse. Your denial is prima facie evidence of the bubble you're living in. The administration's meddling in these affairs is of course lamentable, but if you think this wasn't about dollars and cents, I'm afraid I can't help you. Anyway, I think this is just about a wrap as we're getting far afield from the initial focus but thanks for the churn - always fun.
Kimmel's statement, as you quoted above, does not assert that Robinson is MAGA, although you can read that implication into it if you want. It truthfully points out that MAGA immediately and forcefully asserted that the assassin's ideology was antifa/trans/insert-leftist-bogeyman before there was substantial evidence either way.
It doesn't assert, but it certainly implies. If Kimmel wanted to say that "MAGA jumped to the conclusion they wanted before the body was cold", he could've said that and his meaning would've been clear. Maybe that was what he was going for and he and his writers just failed to craft a good sentence; it didn't even seem like a laugh line or a set up for one. IMO it's a good examples of the burgeoning echo chamber Nate is talking about.
(That aside, in the context of the FCC's actions, scrutinizing this wording is a pointless side-show.)
FWIW, I don’t think Kimmel’s comment implies any such thing. This is the first time I have seen the comment. I had to re-read Nate’s subsequent characterization of it (and re-read the comment) to understand why he characterized it as he did. I still don’t see it.
Same here, pal. Admittedly, I’m German, so I might not be the average American benchmark. Still, when our media reported about this and printed his words in the original and in German, I did not understand what was so controversial about it.
Ok, but everyone has said stupid things. Saying a single stupid thing should never end a show. Repeatedly saying boring things should
Obviously. Did you think anything I said implied different?
no
It would have been better to say that he was raised by a maga family, trained on how to use guns and then allowed online.
Honestly it's not funny but does need to be said.
Thank you. I've been frustrated by everyone repeatedly misinterpreting Kimmel. I was pretty surprised to see Nate perpetuating that take.
While I agree, Kimmel's remark was a terribly worded sentence which left it open to that interpretation.
There a # of ways to say what you pointed out more clearly, but, what was said was sloppy enough to allow the statement to heard as"Robinson is MAGA". Heck, I had to read it 2-3x to figure out what Kimmel actually meant..& the MAGA folks looking for red-meat aren't going to even go that far.
& yes, the fact they didn't think of the above is a sign of an "echo chamber".
Kimmel's comments were not about MAGAs immediate reactions, but rather MAGA comments that reached "new lows over the weekend." Such comments that the shooter was not MAGA were not baseless speculation about some unknown assassin but rather based on early data about the shooters beliefs, which as noted by Nate point towards someone who didn't like MAGA elements of Kirk's.
By calling out MAGAs who assert that the shooter was not a MAGA as engaging in a "new low" Kimmel is functionally saying that the reporting is misinformation.
Well and ignores that him and his side were at even lower epistemic lows.
It is a lie of omission at the very least. And frankly is just an outright attempt at misinformation.
I really doubt that Jimmy Kimmel is doing any outright attempts at misinformation. He (or his writers) probably kind of believed the guy was actually a right-winger and that affected how the statement was phrased . . . but I suspect they were also trying to be careful to not actually say anything definite either way. Of course people took it that way anyway.
> really doubt that Jimmy Kimmel is doing any outright attempts at misinformation.
Bahahahahahaha these people are WAY more partisan than that. Why on earth would you think that? Do you think Trump isn't trying to like too when he lies 85 times a day?
Honestly I’m not sure how much thought Trump puts into any specific remark.
This.
I don't know it certainly can be read the way you are suggesting but that seems to be the most charitable interpretation. It's hard to think that would be the reasonable inference to the average person especially with the claims that Robinson was a groyper that are also prevalent out there.
Correct, Kimmel never actually said Robinson was a MAGA guy. I can see why MAGA people would interpret it that way, and you can reasonably argue that it was implied, but we should be accurate that he never actually said it. He is making a comment about the right-wing political reaction, not the shooter himself.
“[...] the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”
So you genuinely think Kimmel agreed with "the MAGA gang" that Robinson was not MAGA?
Exactly. We didn't know the political leanings at the time. He could have been a groyper, he could have been a leftist. You may argue one was more likely, but we simply didn't know. But we did know that he was a gun loving, white guy raised in a Republican Christian home.
My read was that Kimmel's "one of them" comment simply described this background. Not his politics since they were unknown.
Afterall the Utah Governor also described him as one of us, and nobody is claiming that the Utah Governor was spreading misinformation about MAGA leanings. Quite the opposite. Kimmel was saying the same thing.
As soon as Trump said he was a leftist, he was going to be a leftist.
We hit some new lows recently with the progressive gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.
With a slight modification to Kimmel's statement you know exactly what I mean.
Then what did the Utah Governor mean when he said "one of us". Same phrase but nobody thinks that he meant MAGA
Someone from Utah?
Long and short, you better watch what you say or you will be silenced by the powers that be. Parsing what Kimmel said or what he meant is a distraction. Goodbye, free speech. Goodbye, debate. Goodbye, the American experiment.
The level of existential angst and frankly the sense of dread enveloping America right now is palpable.
Given that the left is often furious at Newsom and ready to cancel him, I don’t see him being an enthusiast for repressing speech.
The mthrfckn President himself did not hesitate one nano second to blame it on the left.
Starting to think ol Donnie may not be who I should model my behavior off of
So one can hardly complain when Trump despite not having any information about the assassin’s identity at the time is trying to tie him to the left. And like many others here: I did not for one second read the comment from Kimmel like you did (I’m German though, so I’m not you average ABC audience).
I wholeheartedly agree with Nate’s assessment of the left excess CC. I was kinda cancelled myself by some lefty women from a politics class where I taught law. My point is: Trump and lots of other MAGA folks tie the killer untruthfully to the left. Kimmel’s remark is by the most ill meaning standard a “thrust”, as you said (I really don’t read it that way but for the sake of the argument let’s do it). So even if Kimmel does the same thing, how would that be cancel worthy?
David Frum was on CNN the other day arguing that this isn't cancel culture because it isn't culture, it's state repression. When the government orders someone be fired for making jokes at the president's expense, that's very different from the company firing someone because of angry viewers or advertiser pressure.
It almost doesn't matter what the content of the jokes are. Sure Kimmel got some facts wrong. Even so, the chair of the FCC can't threaten to revoke a broadcast license over jokes about the president. Doing that is simply incompatible with a free society.
But certainly you agree that the pressure from the Biden administration upon the media during the period of Covid in particular was much more aggressive thian this attempt.
That is not remotely true. When was the Biden administration threatening to take away operating licenses?
No instead of silencing rich comedians out in the open it was silencing millions of normal Americans in secret while lying to tech companies about them being Russian trolls.
Ah yes the silenced millions of anti-vaxers and lab leakers who I definitely don’t hear from all the time in mainstream media and social media
Well while I found those people silly at the time, some of them absolutely were right about overreactions and overreach on school closing, masking, child masking, child vaccines, and lab leak. In fact I don't think it is clear at all whether the countries COVID response would have done better with no misinformation police out there. I kind of think it would of, especially given what we saw in Europe and here in terms of areas with less serve mandates doing just as well or better.
And yes millions of people did have their speech throttled by big tech and social media a the direct threat of the government and MSM now whining about free speech.
Professors in good standing from respected institutions would having their accounts squelched if they weren't with the orthodox view.
And people like yourself still cheer and minimize it to this day.
It is perfect example of why people on the right don't take your whining about free speech seriously. I agree Trump is awful on this and a wide variety of issues. But there was big scandal under the previous admin on more or less this exact topic and the non-stop position of the left was "nothing to see here, lies and threats form the intelligence community or Whitehouse staff aren't actual breaks with free speech, no one was forced to do anything".
This type of hypocrisy matters because it makes your enemies not care or listen to you. And you might say "they weren't going to listen anyway fuck em", except there are enough moderates and disaffected people who are paying attention, and the elections are close enough, that this is a very ill advised attitude.
Or to put it more simply, Democrats could have gone through this period having 99% of the cake, while staying on the right side of all these norms, and they would be a wildly better position now. But they have been unafraid to jump into the mud with the Republicans because they want 100% of the cake.
And for that little bit of extra oophm they threw away their claim to the moral high ground and are now stuck with the "yeah we are awful but this other guy is 10X worse" defense.
Which even if true simply isn't as compelling. The juice simply wasn't worth the squeeze.
The president is publicly ordering the AG to go after his political enemies and you’re still on the shtick of “this all just happened because of leftists overreach.” That’s gonna get real old over the next four years.
This all started under trump. Closing the borders. Closing businesses. Schools. Simply an overreaction. I said at the time to not follow authoritarian regimes like china. Not the role model we needed. The Biden admin followed and kept it going for too long.
The lesson being that admins usually continue policies like this. Expect court cases. Mass trials. Squashing free speech. And so on and so on.
Whatever side you're on, what matters now is who stops it because it's stupid as hell.
No, we didn’t see media personalities losing their job en masse from the government directly pressuring their employers. Maybe due to a Twitter storm, but that was from influencers online and not directly from the government of the United States.
I don't recall any senior officials of the Biden administration making direct threats to any media outlet during covid in the same format as this one, which was, explicitly, "Remove this person or we will use the power of the state to crush your business"
Certainly many businesses were crushed due to lockdowns, is that what you're referring to? However no business was singled out, and it had nothing to do with the speech of the owners/employees.
"Every business meeting criteria X must close for period Y because of the risk of spreading disease" is not remotely equivalent to "That one specific person mocked the president, so you must remove him or we'll shut down your one specific business"
Not to mention the majority of lockdowns happened in 2020, when Trump was still president lol
Facts have a liberal bias.
Nope. Firstly, Trump was the president during most of the period of COVID, and Biden was only a candidate. So it was the Biden campaign, not the administration, that contacted social media companies. And conservatives were very upset about this, even though all they were doing was pointing out violations of company policies and asking them enforce their own rules. This did not change after Biden was elected. They continued to reach out to companies to get them to enforce their own rules.
Wake up everyone. The misnamed and dangerous vaccine was introduced just before Biden took office. They were ruthless in contacting the media ( particularly social media) and “asking’ them to remove anything which they views ad misinformation or disinformation. Zuckerberg’s mea culpa for giving in to this pressure and the Twitter files make it abundantly clear. And practically everyone in the armed services who objected was forced to resign. Of course, probably most of the commentators n=below who have disputed my comment are firm believers in the all is goid and there were no excess deaths tooth fairy integiretatiin of the vaccine. I hope neither you or your family or friends will be among the many people who have been injured, often severely by the fact that the spike protein. From the shots has remained in your body and particularly your lungs and DNA.
We're also full of plastic particles...
As a fairly liberal guy, I have been put off by how a lot of the people I follow jumped on the narrative that the shooter was a far right person. I kept reading the information that was public, and couldn't find my way to that conclusion. Just like you said, it seems like his motivation was somewhat muddled. I think that even highly respected people like Richardson can make mistakes, she human like the rest of us, but I would hope that she comes clean about possibly getting a little caught up in the frenzy of activity following the assassination.
Unfortunately she is too totally partisan to admit that her biases were in play.
The incredible success of her Substack seems to have increased her willingness to be openly partisan without regard to the lack of facts supporting her assertions, it was one of the first,Substacks that I encountered and subscribed to when I became an active participant here. Now a great deal of the time I now often. find it to be charitable what I would discrihe as a partisan screed rather than the insights and perspective of an historian.
I genuinely think that deep partisanship clouds judgement. No matter what the topic, it seems that people deeply steeped in partisan rhetoric end up regurgitating whatever spin "their side" has managed to put on stuff, no matter how absurd it may seem, and no matter whether it aligns with reality or not.
I haven't been able to figure out if they actually believe that stuff, or merely repeat it in discussions just to "win" an argument.
I also thought he was going to turn out to be a Groyper guy for a couple of days. But I dropped that idea pretty quickly when more info came out. All I would ask of someone like Richardson is to do the same.
If you thought that you have a very lefty info bubble.
Kind of yes, but not so thick a bubble that I couldn't see outside of it when the evidence was clear.
That is admirable good job.
Unless he talks well never know what his beliefs are. The government is always covering up and lying. Well be shown the evidence that they want us to see. Just like every other president in history.
> think that even highly respected people like Richardson
Bahahahahahahahaha she is a partisan idiot. Obviously not as bad as those on the right, but hahahahahahaha
I dunno. I dislike the cancel culture excesses of 2020 as much as you, but given the Trump admin’s whole-hearted attack on the institutions of liberal democracy from the fed to the department of health to the electoral system and on and on, I don’t think we needed 2020 to happen for him to step on major networks. I just think he’s an instinctual autocrat and he would have leaned on the networks anyway. In times like this, the only consolation I can give is that at least we aren’t starting a war based on bullshit and murdering hundreds of thousands.
During his first term, he wanted to change libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations. So you are right, this is a long standing goal of Trump.
He still has time!
(Though honestly I don't think Trump is the war-starting type. He might allow other foreign wars to get worse through inaction, though.)
Right, he would have just claimed we need more “balanced” media or some BS like that
After 9/11 the country was legitimately afraid of the outside threat from Islamic Fundamentalists. Three thousand people died. And it was not the last action.
But Bush did not engage in collective blame as MAGA is doing now. Bush made sure to differentiate the terrorists from Islam in general and was especially vocal about protecting Americans who practiced islam.
The situation then and the situation now feel very differently to me. I was 39, married with three children when 9/11 happened. I think to compare the two atmospheres––now and then––it helps to have been a full fledged adult during both.
My post tomorrow will address collective blame.
Was hoping someone would say this. Nate is a bit crazy to think the Bush Jr years and the current moment feel similar.
That was definitely not my experience following 9/11. Society broadly rushed right on past "not all muslims are terrorists" to "anyone of middle east heritage is a terrorist".
Bush’s comments were meant to counteract that. Trump’s comments are meant to exacerbate. .
I suppose, but it definitely didn't work. Also, given the actions of the Bush administration during that time (making up WMDs so they could go and "retaliate"), they definitely didn't show it though their actions.
The war was a disaster. At the time, like most Americans, I was all for it. We were misled and we were wrong.
"Like most Americans, I was all for it."
This explains a lot of the Maga situation to me and actually changes my mind a bit to see the parallels between now and then. The war was so obviously bullshit in the same way that Trump is obviously bullshit.
I don't remember that at all. Maybe in NYC or something? But people talk about this and I just wonder if we were living in the same country.
My key concern with Trump from the beginning is bad behavior begets more bad behavior. He broke the seal on respect and decorum and you had to expect the left to have an equal and opposite reaction. It took a while but we are seeing it now.
My wish is reasonable people of all political leanings would call out bad behavior regardless of who is doing it. Appreciate Nate for having this approach from the beginning.
It has been truly disheartening as a liberal to see responses indifferent to political violence under the guise of “he wouldn’t want our empathy” or “they started it”. We should be better. I didn’t pick this ideology like a sports team, I chose it because it was the party of empathy, and if that is no longer the case I shall move on.
Kimmel clearly misinformed his audience and/or made a stupid joke. He should at least apologize for that.... He didn't deserve to be fired or censored. Carr deserves to be impeached or fired. The station affiliate owners are the real enemy here.... but they own the stations and have the upper hand.
If I scrapped somebody’s car with my cars door and they responded by taking a baseball bat to my side mirror, I would also be disinclined to apologize for the initial wrong.
I have plenty of issues with the knee-jerk and pirhana-like swarm quality of some instances of left-motivated cancellations, and I'm not going to try to defend Kimmel's remark on the merits, but let's be clear: There's no equivalence between a call for advertisers to boycott something and the FCC employing mob intimidation tactics and the carrot-and-stick of merger approval leverage to coerce content decisions by Nexstar/Sinclair. If the right had called on ABC to fire Kimmel using "voting-with-their-views" tactics or even suggesting advertiser boycotts, we could maybe call that an instance of what goes around comes around, but there's never to my knowledge been a parallel of a Democratic administration threatening a broadcaster with license revocation on the grounds of political content, nor am I the least bit worried that that would happen in a future AOC (or whoever) administration. That is really scary on a societal level in a way that no left-wing "cancel culture" instance has been.
So please, let's by all means point out illiberal tendencies on parts of the left, but let's not for a moment pretend that this is something they brought upon themselves in any way.
I appreciate the calls back to the Bush era, Nate. I lived through it and honestly I'd sort of forgotten how careful you had to be in the early 2000s to even hint at critisism of US foreign policy lest you commit the carnal sin of not "supporting the troops." Political discourse these days seems to not be capable of remembering much of anything before the 2016 election and everything that happens is the first time its ever happened in American history.
That's not to excuse what is happening here - a lot of what this admin is doing is fucked. But someone who lived through the America of the 60s, or the 40s, or the 1910s, lived through worse examples of political violence and/or government censorship of the press.
I am 38, I remember Bush being elected in 8th grade, 9/11 first weeks of school in 9th grade, the Iraq invasion, and him being reelected in 2004. I joined the Marines after HS and went to Afg. I am a politically tuned-in person, I watched the news after school and love current affairs/events.
In hindsight, it's so insane that we went to Iraq. An entire country (not to mention our allies), knee jerked into an unnecessary war because of 9/11. I have more thoughts on it in defense of us as a society, but would make my comment too long.
The Bush era is crazy to look back on. And it seems that no one is really fond of it, like at all. You don't see anyone romanticizing the Bush era like you do Raegan or Obama. And all his lackeys are liberals now like Kristol and Dowd.
How could they be? 9/11, followed by a going after, but, not getting Bin-Laden, then lying to start a war with Iraq..then Katrina & the housing bubble popping leading to an economic collapse that almost bankrupted the USA.
Other than that, good times all around!!
Hi Nate:
Actually, betraying my age, it feels much more like the Nixon Watergate era where the White House -- Nixon and uber paranoid crew -- used Hoover and many even more dubious bedfellows to as he put "fuck the blacks and hippies." Kent State the shooting of 6 students by the FBI should certainly ring a bell now. The gloves were far further off then than now. So was the resistance. In those days folks didn't fart around with internet protests and late night comedy. They took to the streets. I am in no way condoning their behaviors -- or many of them, but they were were far more serious about a far more serious threat. We could be headed back there, and maybe we should be at least from a dialectic point of view. History tells us these things always start with the Camel or in this case Kimmel's nose under the tent.
Nate, you misconstrue the nature of the conflict. This is not about liberal v. conservative, or Republican v. Democrat. The struggle is between liberal democracy and totalitarianism. Republicans can be liberal democrats who believe in elections, freedom of expression, tolerance, creative competition, due process, all liberal democratic values, and Democrats can embrace election cynicism, suppression of diversity, revenge politics, and violence as a means of eliminating opposition. Trumpism is totalitarianism and the actions of Kirk's assassin are that of a totalitarianism mindset. I think Kimmel was insightful in that he recognized that liberal democrats do not favor assassination, but that trumpism foments violence regardless of political belief. You make the connection with MAGA.
I am a free-speech hardliner--if you don't like speech, refute it or ignore it, don't suppress it or punish the speaker. But I wish people could see that political speech is the least important speech, not the most important.
Yes, Brendan Carr abused his discretion, but the problem is that he has that discretion in the first place. And suspending Jimmy Kimmel does not suppress his speech, it's has amplified it. And Kimmel is hardly the unpopular, helpless victim for whom we should be most diligent in protecting rights.
The FCC and other government censors have much more malign influence on non-political speech--the Motion Picture Production Code that ruled movies for half a century under similar threats of government pressure, the actions directed against comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, FCC regulation of television content. These things shape cultural attitudes and encourage racism, sexism, anti-homosexuality, authoritarianism and other ills.
I would hope the outcome of this is pushback against all government censorship, and a reduction of discretion of unelected officials to the minimum necessary.
Is there a public policy reason for requiring FCC licenses for broadcasters (while not requiring for cable or streaming)? Why do we still have this administrative regime?
The theory is that they are using a limited public resource (the RF spectrum).
To avoid anyone with a soldering iron from creating a RF cesspool, access to frequencies are managed and licensed, and the licenses come with restrictions.
Cable companies argued that they were using wires they deployed and managed, so it made no sense to have a regulation system.
Of course they also received local monopolies to telephone poles and connection rights, so some oversight mechanism would be perfectly reasonable legally, but it is amazing what political donations can do. This is especially true because the monopolies were granted by local governments, and it is pretty easy to have a few donations dramatically impact city council and mayor elections.
(Edit : cleaned up a mess I made rewording a sentence)
You'll find a similar story with all regulatory agencies. They are created for a narrow purpose, which they expand over time both because agency heads want more money and power, and private entities figure out how to use them for crony profit. Eventually Congress regularizes the assumed powers.
The FCC inherited its powers from the Interstate Commerce Commission--created to set railroad rates, which it expanded to setting telegraph and telephone rates--and the Federal Radio Commission--established to allocate frequencies among competing users.
Over the years, the FCC took on all kinds of new goals and powers--protecting public morality, ensuring political fairness, picking and choosing broadcasters, deciding who paid what price for what services, regulating advertising, etc.
Rational public policy would implement some kind of system for allocating frequency use--one without arbitrary discretion--and let people choose what they wanted to view, and companies choose what they wanted to offer. There are other narrow objectives, such as ensuring adequate infrastructure for essential purposes, but no need for a vast staff with broad discretionary powers.
Tipper Gore's "Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)" took advantage of political connections and arranged a congressional hearing on explicit content in rock music and a proposed labeling system. The "Filthy Fifteen" included Prince- Darling Nikki; Sheena Easton-Sugar Walls; and Judas Priest-Eat Me Alive.
Agreed, although this particular censorship attempt failed, and amplified the target content.
A college friend of mine remembered the local sheriff in West Virginia in the 1960s going door-to-door to collect rock records by Black musicians (she lost her beloved Louie Louie--although she had the famous version by the all-White Kingsmen from Portland, Oregon, not the (Black) Richard Berry original). I asked if the forbidden list included Black jazz, ragtime or classical musicians, and she said no. Hard to understand the logic of government censors.
I read Kimmel’s comment differently. To me he wasn’t saying Robinson is MAGA, he was pointing out that MAGA figures are eager to attack anything that isn’t them. The point is they don’t care about defining Robinson’s politics accurately, only that he’s ‘not one of us,’ which is enough for a scattershot attack. They are attacking anything and everything “other than one of them”.
Right, but by specifically criticizing MAGA for the action of trying to say the shooter was not one of them, it heavily implies that the shooter *is* one of them, or at the very least the result of their actions. It's much more obvious when you see the recording of him saying it that that is what is implied than just reading it in text form. I saw it the night it was released and that was my takaway (Indeed, I remember audibly groaning because it was a stupid and unproductive take) but then thought nothing more of it.
The real issue though is people fixating on what he said and not on the fact that he had the first amendment right to say it, and the government pressuring his network to drop him is a clear violation of his first amendment rights.
Would you please define what you mean by "old as hell?" It may surprise you, but even people "old as hell" often read and consume media from diverse outlets.
Network primetime viewer's average age is 64.6, compared to the average american's age is around 38 (there are different numbers for both of these flying around, but these seem to be in range). Maybe it's not a nice way to phrase it by Nate but he's not wrong in saying these networks are reaching a MUCH older demographic
The underlying point is that network TV is dying. Nate is using short hand for a long term business trend, not making an insult.
The network TV audience is shrinking and aging. Older person are less influenced by advertising, so the revenue stream is shrinking.
It isn't about reading and consuming media, it is about paying the $xx million salaries of the execs, and old people are practically useless for that.
Once sports finishes the move to 100% streaming availability, network TV will become a corpse.
Eventually the broadcast spectrum will be turned over to 7th generation WiFi, and nothing of value will be lost.
I understand what he meant, but was remarking on how it was phrased.
But for us all who get a license there is still CW.
The oldest demo that advertisers like is 25-54. After that age, advertisers aren't interested. They figure your brand habits are cast in stone and your mad money is locked down or kind of slim.
Silver sort-of disproves his accusation of hypocrisy towards conservative cancellers by this statement:
"The charge that the other side are self-serving hypocrites is usually easy to prove through both valid and exaggerated examples. Without a guilty conscience, you might as well do whatever you can to consolidate power when you have it."
If all is fair in love and war, punching back is hardly hypocritical. One cannot call "punch-no punchbacks".
I said this a while back, over and over: the endgame of cancel culture is not cowering conservatives. The endgame is Mutually Assured Destruction.
It's not a game either team should be playing. I knew that this would bite the Left in the butt.
Kudos for an even-handed analysis.
But perhaps one point to be emphasized - the like of Kimmel , Colbert, Stewart etal are not entitled to the platform they have held and abused for so long, and not believe there are consequences.
Yesterday, Letterman overtly admitted that he was never inclined to "satircally" assault Obama - he "liked him".
Pity the likes of all these cretins is that cannot profess some intellectual honesty.
We exist to validate the left and all of its excesses.
And now they reap the whirlwind.
Of course, Kimmel was incapable of conceding that he was lying in his set up that Robinsion was MAGA. His commmitment to the higher calling of American socialism and destruction of Chiristian values absolved him of any accountability.
Until of course, even Disney could not rationalize allowing him to carry on.
This has nothing to do with entitlement. The federal government pressured his employers to fire him because of what he said, which is a clear violation of first amendment protections.
It's perfectly fine for his employers to fire him for pretty much any reason. It's incredibly illegal for a state or local government to pressure a company to fire someone for protected speech.
It has to do with economics. Two significant affiliate carriers were about to pull Kimmel anyway and the show was hemorrhaging cash and ratings. Administration comments are regrettable, but he was on his way out.
That is not true. Both Colbert and Kimmel are two of the late night shows pulling in the most viewers. And those are the ones getting cancelled. Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/35165/us-late-night-show-ratings/
As I wrote, Kimmel has been losing both revenue and ratings. Try an Open AI search: "The overall pool of ad spending for network late-night TV has shrunk, from something like $439 million in 2018 to about $220 million by 2024.
Kimmel’s own numbers reportedly dropped significantly in 2025 vs earlier in the year. For instance, one report said in early 2025 he was averaging about 1.946 million viewers and 212,000 in the 18-49 demo; by August 2025 that had dropped to ~1.104 million total viewers and ~129,000 in the demo"
Declining revenue and ratings = expendable. Hence, the decision to can him was a financial one.
I gave you an actual source that shows his numbers are higher than most other late night shows but no one’s talking about cancelling Jimmy Fallon.
In return you don’t even give me a source, or give me a search link, you give me an AI search prompt….
So you're actually asserting that late-night networks shows are not declining in ad revenue and ratings? You're getting silly now, Ryan. The decline of these shows has been widely documented and discussed ad nauseum for awhile now. Ok, here's one source and you'll note ratings have declined substantially since the beginning of the year: https://ustvdb.com/networks/abc/shows/jimmy-kimmel-live/
Because Kimmel is 3rd among late-nighters (your source) is not evidence that ad revenue and ratings overall for all of them are not declining. It doesn't matter that he is in 3rd place - they're all doing worse. Your denial is prima facie evidence of the bubble you're living in. The administration's meddling in these affairs is of course lamentable, but if you think this wasn't about dollars and cents, I'm afraid I can't help you. Anyway, I think this is just about a wrap as we're getting far afield from the initial focus but thanks for the churn - always fun.
“the like of Kimmel, Colbert, Stewart et al are not enabled to the platform they have held and abused for so long”
What a wild take-away from an article that emphasizes the active government censorship taking place and the threat it poses to free speech.