Kimmel’s return suggests that he has learned nothing and will do it again.

J immy Kimmel was back on ABC last night, if not on many of its affiliates. Judging from his opening monologue, he has learned nothing about his own behavior, he’s not sorry, and if anything, he’s now emboldened to do it again.

The Big Lie

Recall that this whole brouhaha started with Kimmel’s monologue on Tuesday, September 16, in which he asserted: “Many in MAGA-land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk. . . . 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.”

Now, two things here. First, this is a demonstrable lie, and part of a pattern from the left of falsely claiming that Kirk’s killer had to be a right-winger and couldn’t possibly be motivated by ideas and impulses of the left side. And yet, the statements of Utah Governor Spencer Cox and, in particular, the press conference on that very day by Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray made quite explicit that the evidence (especially in the assassin’s own words) pointed to his being politically on the left and targeting Kirk for Kirk’s “hate” (the killer’s word) — likely derived from the killer’s romantic relationship with a transgender roommate — which happens to be not only how Kirk’s left-leaning critics described Kirk when he was alive, but how they are still attacking him now.

There was no basis in fact, when Kimmel tried to persuade his audience that the killer was MAGA, that the killer was anything but anti-MAGA. It was a lie, made with deliberate or at least reckless disregard for the truth. He had to know or not care that it was a lie. Kimmel’s troubles started not from being insensitive or tasteless, but from lying to his audience.

The desperate effort to distance the killer from the left is still ongoing, with media organizations arguing that the assassin was not tied to left-wing groups, that his family was conservative (as if alienated progressive children of conservative families aren’t one of the most recognizable archetypes in American politics), or that it must be “a complicated picture” because “there is no evidence of his positions on other issues of importance to the left, such as immigration or labor.”

Really? Did we ask Timothy McVeigh to tell us his views on the capital gains tax before classifying him? Did we care what Osama bin Laden’s opinions were on unions before figuring out his motive?

Kimmel’s lie is best understood as a part of that collective resistance from a lot of progressives to admitting what happened to Kirk. As Graeme Wood observed in The Atlantic:

The evidence that Robinson was a “Groyper” — a member of an online further-right-than-thou movement that had harassed Kirk and President Donald Trump — was paltry. Why did anyone believe that idea to begin with? Already it bore the marks of an incipient conspiracy theory, a soothing nugget of esoteric knowledge, suppressed for political purposes. Many of those suckered in were victims of their own motivated reasoning. It hurts to admit that a movement you like has produced a bad person, and it hurts even more to admit that bitter truth to a gloating member of a movement you hate.

It’s also been very hard for them to admit they were wrong. At last check, historian Heather Cox Richardson still hasn’t corrected her own misinformation for her 2.7 million subscribers after writing on September 14 that the killer was “not someone on the left,” that he had “embraced the far right,” and that “the radical right” was “working to distort the country’s understanding of what happened” by claiming otherwise.

Second, Kimmel’s defenders staged a lengthy effort to claim, preposterously, that Kimmel was not actually asserting this as fact. Again, who are we kidding here? If, say, Tucker Carlson said in December 2020, in the same sneering tone, “the Democrats are desperately trying to characterize this as anything but a rigged election,” would anybody deny that he was conveying to his audience that it was a rigged election? Like Carlson, Kimmel may use sarcasm to straddle the line between entertainment and advocacy, but his meaning is intended and understood by his audience, and the rest of us aren’t such fools that we should pretend otherwise. As Jeff Blehar explained, the full context of that monologue is only more damning in that regard:

I have seen a number of people currently rushing to the defense of Kimmel call this a “joke,” or some sort of light-hearted jape. But I can read. No, it was a blunt statement of a lie, and done in the typical style Kimmel (or his writers) typically employs to get enormous lies across in his monologues — as indirection, something mentioned in passing to set up a nominal joke — the fact-based premise you’re supposed to take seriously, not the punchline. The inference he wants you to draw from his phrasing is clear: “Obviously the killer was a MAGA freak, and now these liars are trying to pretend it was anyone but them.”

This is obvious from context, too. Have you seen the entire monologue, as opposed to the brief one-minute clip circulating on social media? (Given Kimmel’s current ratings, my firm bet is “no.”) Click and watch, and then you will understand that what immediately preceded it was Kimmel ranting about JD Vance’s assertion — made while guest-hosting Charlie Kirk’s show — that statistically speaking a disproportionate amount of “spectacular public violence” (mass shootings, assassinations, etc.) comes from killers either inspired or deranged by left-coded causes.

You and I both know that Vance was on to something with this, and that’s why Kimmel (or his staffers) really spit the bit: It is the left’s fear of seeing their ideological chickens finally coming home to roost that has quietly motivated this entire (only semi-organic) campaign to cast Charlie Kirk’s killer as a Groyper rather than the trans-addled, online radicalized, vacant-eyed killer that he is. With his carefully bland untruth, Kimmel — long after many of his internet-savvy peers had given up the ghost — was attempting to subtly inject the idea that Kirk was killed by his “his own team” into the minds of an audience that is notably less up-to-speed on current events, because they are older and disengaged.

Having been caught out in this lie, Kimmel should have been called on the carpet by his bosses. Had the government not gotten involved, it would be a very easy conclusion that Kimmel was very rightly suspended for telling a flagrant lie to his audience, and deserved to be fired unless he was willing to recant and apologize. Even by the minimal accuracy standards of comics, that’s a legal and reputational problem for a TV network, and his show was not exactly a money tree before this. And when Disney pulled him off the air, it was reportedly because he was planning to dig in his heels and make it worse.

Enter the FCC

What happened instead, of course, was that the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, went on Benny Johnson’s podcast to publicly pressure ABC/Disney to sack Kimmel, and when Kimmel was pulled off the air, Donald Trump himself celebrated it, sought to claim credit for it happening, and argued to boot that more of his critics should be taken off the air.

This is thuggish, completely inappropriate, and — as the Supreme Court held unanimously in NRA v. Vullo (2024) when Andrew Cuomo tried to debank the NRA — a violation of the First Amendment. It is worse rather than less bad for the fact that it was also thuggish when the Biden administration conducted extensive campaigns of regulatory power to suppress speech. Lots of people on the right, including Carr and Trump, criticized that at the time; they were right then, and they’re wrong now.

In the long run, the proper response is to take away the government’s power to do this, because the other side will always abuse it, and now our side is abusing it, too, in retribution. I won’t rehash here our excellent editorial on why the Kimmel controversy should persuade us to abolish the FCC, or the rest of our coverage of why even bald-faced lies on the airwaves shouldn’t be policed by the feds, just as they don’t have the power to police the same conduct on cable networks. Conservatives should be trying to do that now, while Republicans still have power in D.C., because the left will happily use the same powers for bad ends again. Prominent California State Senator Scott Wiener was on X on Monday vowing to do just that: “Can’t wait to break Sinclair up. Corporate media consolidation doesn’t jibe with democracy.”

In the meantime, Carr deserves to be sacked, and the Trump administration deserved to get a big black eye by having Kimmel triumphantly restored to the airwaves. While ABC could legally have defended firing Kimmel, it was in a bind with the public so long as doing so appeared to let Trump decide who takes the air.

But that also means that Kimmel got away with it. And judging from last night’s monologue, he has learned nothing and will do it again.

Not Really Sorry

In his return last night, Kimmel hit a few good notes. He choked up praising Erika Kirk for forgiving her husband’s murderer. He also showed some grace in thanking by name the people on the right who criticized the Trump FCC:

Maybe most of all, I want to thank the people who don’t support my show and what I believe, but support my right to share those beliefs anyway, who I never would have imagined, like Ben Shapiro, Clay Travis, Candace Owens, Mitch McConnell, Ran Paul, even my old pal Ted Cruz, who believe it or not said something very beautiful on my behalf. . . .

I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but Ted Cruz is right. He’s absolutely right. This affects all of us, including him. I mean, think about it. If Ted Cruz can’t speak freely, then he can’t cast spells on the Smurfs.

Even though I don’t agree with many of those people on most subjects, some of the things they say even make me want to throw up. It takes courage for them to speak out against this administration, and they did, and they deserve credit for it. And thank for telling your followers that our government cannot be allowed to control what we do and do not say on television and that we have to stand up to it.

And for a moment, at least, Kimmel seemed to grasp why it was that the campaigns of censorship and cancellation that dominated the past decade were so wrong: “Should the government be allowed to regulate which podcasts the cell phone companies and Wi-Fi providers are allowed to let you download to make sure they serve the public interest? You think that sounds crazy? Ten years ago, this sounded crazy.”

Of course, making common cause with political foes when they are sticking up for you is one thing. When it came to taking responsibility for his own egregious lie, Kimmel fell into the sort of weaselly misdirection that comedians are supposed to mock when it’s done by politicians.

First, Kimmel addressed the charge that he had been tasteless in using a comedy monologue to come out swinging in full political combat over Kirk’s death:

I’ve been hearing a lot about what I need to say and do tonight. And the truth is, I don’t think what I have to say is going to make much of a difference. If you like me, you like me. If you don’t, you don’t. I have no illusions about changing anyone’s mind. But I do want to make something clear because it’s important to me as a human and that is you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man. I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.

Well, it’s a bit late to decide that it’s an inappropriate subject for a wisecracking monologue, but lest you think Kimmel has learned anything, he immediately pivoted to this mealy mouthed stew of excuses:

Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual. That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make. But I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way.

I have many friends and family members on the other side who I love and remain close to even though we don’t agree on politics at all. I don’t think the murderer who shot Charlie Kirk represents anyone. This was a sick person who believed violence was a solution and it isn’t it ever. [Emphasis added.]

Now, I do not argue that the shooter represents the left, because unless you’re in an explicitly violent movement, the perpetrators of political violence are a tiny and unrepresentative minority. But note that nowhere does Kimmel acknowledge that the shooter was not a MAGA right-winger. Nowhere does he say the least bit to correct the lie he told his audience previously. Instead, having been caught in the lie and having played the “I’m sorry if you misunderstood or were offended” card, he pivots to the it-doesn’t-matter theme — a theme we know he doesn’t believe, given what he was doing a week ago — and to painting the killer as “deeply disturbed” and “a sick person” even though this was not (unlike many other such atrocities) the act of a delusional individual suffering a mental breakdown. This was evil, and while evil is always in some sense a break with rationality, it is simply not the case that this assassin was incapable of forming political opinions and acting on them.

But sincerely recanting and apologizing for what he actually said was beyond Kimmel. And now, he knows that he got away with it. Which makes it that much likelier that he’ll do it again.