Fox's Brian Kilmeade had the audacity to lecture Jimmy Kimmel about "accountability" while shilling for Trump and his Gestapo FCC Chair Brendan Carr over Kimmel's suspension.
Here's Kilmeade's lie-filled screed while filling in for Laura Ingraham this Thursday evening, where he conveniently omitted the fact that Carr threatened take away ABC’s broadcasting license over the incident, and pretended Trump had nothing to do with them giving Kimmel the boot.
KILMEADE: They're blaming Trump, screaming free speech is under attack, and even wearing Kimmel hats and support.
SWALWELL: I was a guest on the Jimmy Kimmel show. He... every night has a right to come into any house that wants to watch and entertain Americans. [...]
It should shake every American that the President of the United States is out there firing comedians who make fun of him. That is not who we are, and every American should care and stand up to this.
KILMEADE: And the biggest news, Eric Swalwell got booked on a late night show. That is breaking news. And meanwhile, some Democrats are so worked up they're cooking up symbolic legislation in support.
MURPHY: Trump is making it 100% clear that he is going to ramp up his efforts to use the power of the federal government to harass and punish his critics. [...]
This is a standard format for every budding despot. [...]
The No political enemies Act creates a specific defense for those that are being targeted. It gives an ability to recover attorneys' fees when someone is the subject of government harassment.
KILMEADE: Yes, let's help a man who makes $17 million a year pay his legal fees. Please, everyone, if you even have a dollar, he needs your help.
What these Democrats should be doing is looking at how Kimmel's own actions got him into, I guess, the problems he's having right now.
KIMMEL: We had 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.
KILMEADE: So Kimmel later went on to say that Trump was grieving over Kirk's death like a four year old mourns over a goldfish. More on that later.
The point is that Kimmel's comments went way too far for some television executives. Not for me, not for you, but for them, and they turned up the heat on Kimmel, the host, to calm down the rhetoric.
FCC chair Brendan Carr explained it well this afternoon when he was on with Will Cain.
CARR: These were local TV stations licensed by the FCC that have a public interest obligation to serve their local community.
They pushed back on Disney and said, We don't think that this type of programming is responsive to the needs of our viewers in Utah, in Pennsylvania, and that's exactly the way the system is supposed to work from the get-go.
KILMEADE: Nextstar, which owns over 200 stations including 32 ABC affiliates, called Jimmy Kimmel's comments offensive and insensitive.
That wasn't Donald Trump. It was them.
Sinclair Broadcast Group is also fuming at Jimmy Kimmel. They want him to apologize to Kirk's family and said this. "Make a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk family and to Turning Point USA."
Perhaps Kimmel should take his own advice.
KIMMEL: 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, a joke about someone, even when that someone is Donald Trump. [...]
He deserves that consideration, and we give it to them because the truth still matters. And when I do get something wrong, which happens on rare occasions, you know what I do? I apologize.
KILMEADE: Well, we hope he follows through on that because obviously the premise of the joke was wrong.
Instead, there are reports from the Daily Mail that Jimmy Kimmel is absolutely effing livid, and is considering going on lame duck Late Night Show, Stephen Colbert's show for a guest slot so they can collectively perhaps whine about the situations they find themselves in.
Now Bloomberg is just reporting now that Disney executives are discussing the future of the show with Kimmel himself. So all this might even work out.
The president, by the way, was asked overseas... he had nothing to do with this, but he was asked about it, and he thought... he had a thing or two to say about Kimmel and his future.
TRUMP: Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk, and Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person.
He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago, so you know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent.
KILMEADE: He's a talented guy, even if that was not a good joke and maybe he's very anti-Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump is probably on to something. Since 2015 when it comes to ratings, which is the year that Donald Trump stepped into the political arena, Jimmy Kimmel has just cut his audience in half, and it's far worse. He lost 70% of the coveted key demo, young people, 25 to 54.
So when you're on thin ice with your boss and not performing well, it's probably not a good idea to tick them off and spout garbage about a political assassination.
It's not fascism. It's not the Gestapo taking out a late night host for what he said. It's old fashioned accountability.
If there was any actual "accountability" for what you say on the air, Fox would have been shut down ages ago. But they're still here spewing right wing propaganda and lying to the public day after day.
