Just a few days after being unceremoniously suspended by ABC, supposed comedian Jimmy Kimmel returned as host of his late-night show on Tuesday evening. He recounted his experience of victimization as akin to that suffered by the thought criminals of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Kimmel then offered one of his not-so-spontaneous tearful monologues, claiming “it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.”

While his oh-so-rehearsed voice-crack may have sparked applause among his adoring live audience of family members and otherwise bored Hollywood tourists, and while his statement completely ignored why he was suspended in the first place (it was not for making light of murder, but for claiming that Charlie Kirk’s murderer was a member of Make America Great Again and that the entirety of MAGA was covering this up), Kimmel’s return represents a victory for a man who deserved to be fired forever. Not for how undeniably objectionable his original statements were, but for the same reason that Stephen Colbert was recently fired: because he sucks.

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Kimmel is among the dwindling crowd of late-night hosts who have somehow raked in tens of millions of dollars while being talentless, unamusing hacks who use their platform to do nothing but sneer at half of the country. They do so all while their industry declines in reach and relevance. When their audience pales compared to online stars and podcast hosts, the writing is on the wall: late-night comedy TV, at least in the style of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and other Democratic Party propaganda mouthpieces, is on its way out.

Colbert was fired because he’s awful, but the Trump administration was a mere bystander to his firing. Kimmel, on the other hand, was temporarily suspended following the infamous threat of Federal Communications Commission head Brendan Carr, who, on Benny Johnson’s podcast, warned ABC that “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Suddenly, Kimmel became more than an unfunny late-night host. Thanks to Carr and the Trump administration, it no longer mattered that Kimmel was bad at his job. He could be a bag of potatoes, still, the left and even some centrists will now defend him until the end of time because Trump has made him an enemy.

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The Trump administration may have enjoyed using its political leverage to pressure ABC into canning Kimmel, but it gave up a longer-term victory in return. The administration needs to stop inserting itself into every cultural battle when all it needs to do is wait.

Next time, instead of handing Kimmel and co. a lifeline, just sit back and wait for them to say something overtly offensive. Or until the network realizes, as with Colbert, that blowing tens of millions of dollars a year to satiate the ego of one host isn’t a good business model.

Ian Haworth is a syndicated columnist. Follow him on X (@ighaworth) or Substack.