This past Tuesday night, as many Jimmy Kimmel supporters and detractors watched his return to the helm of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live!, they saw his monologue, and if they hung around past the first break, they saw the first skit.
That skit featured actor Robert De Niro, who was playing the role of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. Carr has been accused of threatening ABC/Disney to dump Kimmel's show, or face consequences. Kimmel ripped Carr in the first segment, quoting Texas Republican Ted Cruz who accused Carr of acting like a mob boss. So who better to play the role of a mob boss than De Niro, who has appeared in numerous mob-type movies. But there is something that I bet almost all of those watching Tuesday night's show didn't know.
Back in October of 2016, De Niro made a video to get out the vote, which included him calling then candidate Donald Trump, stupid, a dog, a pig, a bull-sh&t artist, you get the picture. But it didn't stop there, De Niro added that he'd "like to punch Trump in the face."
It's sad that this is just another example of violent rhetoric from the left that never gets talked about. I truly wonder if Kimmel even knows about it, although I don't believe it would make one bit of difference if he does. There are many examples of violent rhetoric from the left that have just completely gone away, never get mentioned.
As I pointed out last Sunday, Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) was on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2019, when he proudly announced that his testosterone sometimes makes him want to punch Donald Trump, who was of course President at the time. And late night TV talk shows have a history of such dangerous garbage.
On August 4, 2000, right after the Republican national convention wrapped up, CBS's The Late Late show -- hosted by Craig Kilborn -- showed Bush at the podium during his convention acceptance speech, and a graphic underneath it read "Snipers Wanted." Kilborn was doing a fake newscast and said nothing about the graphic, which said it all. CBS and the show's production company, David Letterman's Worldwide Pants later apologized, calling it "inappropriate and regrettable."
But maybe THE most memorable thing I've ever seen on late night TV was in December 1998. Alec Baldwin was a guest on NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and he was defending Bill Clinton from impeachment in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. As pointed out by Scott Whitlock back in 2022, Baldwin went on a wild rant:
I am thinking to myself in other countries they are laughing at us 24 hours a day and I’m thinking to myself if we were in other countries, we would all right now, all of us together, [starts to shout] all of us together would go down to Washington and we would stone [House Republican] Henry Hyde to death! We would stone him to death! [crowd cheers]
Wait! Shut up! Shut up! No shut up! I’m not finished. We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families! [stands up screaming] What is happening in this country? What is happening? UGHHH UGHHH!!!!
Baldwin would later claim that he was joking. Since then, Baldwin has actually killed someone. If you are on the left, no one ever takes the violent rhetoric seriously.