Jimmy Kimmel Suspended!!
- Bob O'Brien
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
As almost everybody knows, Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was assassinated on September 10, 2025, while he was speaking to students at the Utah Valley University campus. So, what exactly did Jimmy Kimmel say about the murder of Charlie Kirk that earned him a suspension from ABC?
In his show's opening monologue on Sept. 15, Kimmel said “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.” Hogwash!
At best Kimmel’s comment, coming just five days later, was extremely insensitive. Kirk was just 31 years old, married and the father of two young children. He was engaged in peaceful dialogue with students with opposing viewpoints when his life was brutally cut short. It was Kimmel who hit a new low, by taking a sad and tragic event and trying to make a political point about MAGA. In addition, his comment, charitably speaking, was “misinformation,” in that there was absolutely no evidence that the alleged murderer was anywhere close to being “one of them.”
In any event, the immediate reaction to the suspension from liberal celebrities and leading Democrats was nothing short of apoplectic. Former President Obama piled on, calling the suspension “an alarming escalation of government interference in the media.” He criticized what he described as the Trump administration’s
"dangerous use of regulatory threats to silence dissenting voices.”
Just one month later, Time Magazine put it this way in its article, Silencing the Critics. “After Charlie Kirk’s death, President Trump looks for ways to clamp down on dissent… What is clear is that Trump is showing an increasing willingness to use the power of the federal government to police speech and silence detractors.”
What a joke! This sudden embrace of free speech principals coming from Trump’s critics would have some credibility if they had previously criticized the egregious free speech violations that occurred under the Biden Administration. We note that barely one week after Kimmel was suspended, Google admitted to censoring political speech under pressure from the Biden administration, and it pledged to reinstate thousands of banned YouTube accounts. Notably, Google confessed they censored political speech even though the censored content did not violate YouTube’s policies. “This was unacceptable and wrong,” the company stated.
In a letter to the Judiciary committee of the House of Representatives, Google stated “it will allow creators banned for political speech on COVID-19, elections, and related issues an opportunity to return to the platform. The company emphasized that “public debate should never come at the expense of relying on authorities.”
Google is not the only one. Earlier this year, Meta restored free speech protections after the company admitted to censoring users on platforms like Facebook. The company also revealed that it was pressured by the Biden Administration to conduct such censorship.
We note that Trump’s alleged attempt to “silence” Kimmel did not work very well, for Kimmel was back on the air one week later. In contrast, it took four to five years for the accounts Biden wanted suspended to be reinstated on both Google and Meta platforms.
Our conclusion is that the Democrats, in this case, are not very serious in their concern about “free speech.” If the former President was really concerned about the power of the federal government to “police speech and silence detractors,” he should have publicly called his own vice-President, Joseph Biden, about Biden's Presidential efforts to silence dissent. Instead, all we heard from Obama, Schumer and other leading Democrats was silence.
Let’s be clear. The Kimmel controversy was not about free speech; instead, it is just plain old political posturing. However, at its core, it is about the power to control the media, and the ability to win future elections. Google, although belatedly, is absolutely right. Whether it is the Democrats or Republicans, political censorship is “unacceptable and wrong.” It is also an assault on our constitutional freedoms, and an underlying threat to our democratic republic.
Check out the links below!
Comments