The leaders of the Democratic Party want you to believe that ABC’s decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel off the air is an egregious violation of the First Amendment. “The takedown of Jimmy Kimmel is likely the start of a campaign to use the murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to use the power of the White House to wipe out Trump’s critics and his political opponents,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) whined on social media. 

But the reality is that ratings for Kimmel’s show have been falling for years, as have revenues, and even Kimmel himself thought his show would soon end.

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Why would broadcasters such as Nexstar and Sinclair want to keep promoting a liar like Kimmel, who constantly insults their viewers?

DEMOCRATS STILL CLUELESS ON BORDER SECURITY

On Monday night’s show, Kimmel said during his monologue, “We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything but one of them.”

Many conservatives, including podcaster Benny Johnson, took offense at this lie. On his show Tuesday, Johnson had Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr on, and asked him if there was anything he could do to get Kimmel to stop lying about conservatives on his show.

Carr responded, “As you’ve indicated, there are avenues here for the FCC, so there are some ways in which I need to be a little bit careful because we could be called ultimately to be a judge on some of these claims that come up, but I don’t think this is an isolated incident. I mean, you go back to Rep. Swalwell, and he had a tweet out last week where he was saying that, you know, emphasizing that Charlie Kirk’s killer was a straight white male from a Republican family that voted for Donald Trump. In some quarters, there is a very concerted effort to try to lie to the American people about the nature, as you indicated, of one of the most significant newsworthy public interest acts that we’ve seen in a long time.”

“These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action frankly on Kimmel,” Carr continued, “or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Johnson then followed up, “What kind of action would you see? I, at the very least, would like to have an on-air apology from Jimmy Kimmel to the Kirk family, to all of those he slandered, because he did say effectively that our movement did this. That our movement killed Charlie, that Charlie was deserving of this … What would you like to see done at ABC?”

Carr then responded. “Well, I think what you said there strikes me as a very reasonable minimal step that can be taken. I mean, obviously, look, there’s calls for Kimmel to be fired, um, I think you know you could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this, and again you know the FCC is going to have remedies that we could look at, and again you know we may ultimately be called to be a judge on that.”

Neither Carr nor the FCC ever asked ABC or any of the broadcast stations to do anything specifically. There was no formal complaint or a specific action requested. This makes this situation completely different from Murthy v. Missouri, where several Republican states sued social media platforms for censoring conservative views about the origin of COVID-19 and the COVID-19 lockdowns. In that case, there were dozens of very specific requests from the Biden White House that specific content be censored.

Here, while Carr does identify one false statement, there is no request for it to be censored, nor is there a demand that Kimmel be fired. Instead, it is suggested that a simple apology from Kimmel may suffice.

Hours after Carr’s remarks, Nexstar Media Group, a broadcaster that owns stations in two dozen mostly conservative markets, said it would stop airing Kimmel’s show. Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns 28 ABC-affiliated stations, followed suit. It was only after this revolt by conservative media companies that have every right not to air programming that insults their viewers that ABC announced Kimmel’s show would be pulled.

DISNEY AND OUR LOST SENSE OF COMMUNITY

Again, Kimmel himself knew his show was dying before the events of this week. He might have wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, as a free-speech martyr to the Democratic Party. 

He got his wish.