Washington Examiner Senior Writer Joe Concha called out late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel for exhibiting a double standard on free speech.

Concha appeared on Fox News’s Hannity on Wednesday to bring to remembrance the firing of comedian Roseanne Barr. In 2018, Kimmel’s same employer, ABC, fired Barr and continued her sitcom without her in the starring role. Even though Kimmel appeared friendly with Barr while hosting her on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote the sitcom before her firing, Kimmel stood by his network’s decision.

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“I’m not a fan of censorship, but this wasn’t about free speech — it was about consequences for saying something vile. You can say what you want, but networks don’t have to pay you to say it,” Kimmel said at the time. 

“Actions have consequences, and ABC made the right call,” Kimmel said. Concha paraphrased Kimmel’s comments before calling out Kimmel’s hypocrisy.

“So that is an absolute hypocrite you were seeing on your screen,” Concha said. “I could give you dozens of examples from [former President Joe Biden] to [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] to [former Vice President Kamala Harris], saying the same thing and embracing censorship by weaponizing it when it’s against their opponents.”

“But now that one of theirs is now suddenly the victim — more of a victim, I guess, than Charlie Kirk, who was executed — then suddenly do a 180 when it comes to now suddenly embracing free speech,” Concha said. “It’s an absolute joke.”

When Jimmy Kimmel Live! returned to the airwaves Tuesday night, over 6 million viewers tuned in, a decade-high record for the late-night show.

The program was suspended for roughly a week after Kimmel said during an episode last week, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the [Make America Great Again] gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” Kimmel also joked that President Donald Trump was grieving Kirk by constructing the new White House ballroom.

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Meanwhile, Barr’s sitcom Roseanne would go on to be spun off by ABC as The Conners, with the same cast minus Barr. It ran for seven seasons, starting in 2018, and concluded this past April.

Barr’s last televised comedy special came in 2023 and aired on FOX Nation.