A FATHER of two toddlers was shot dead, a free speech champion silenced by an assassin’s bullet.
But the American mainstream media want you to remember who the real victim in all this was: Left-wing multi-millionaire TV host Jimmy Kimmel.
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The late night ABC star was pulled off the air after his reaction to the murder of Charlie Kirk bombed with half the country, advertisers and bosses.
His hordes of defenders will say he was making too many jokes about Donald Trump but that wilfully ignores what the hero of the liberal elite actually said.
Despite the shooter being confirmed — by friends, family and law enforcement — as a radicalised leftist who was living with his transgender boyfriend, Kimmel told his dwindling audience the suspect was a Trump supporter.
“The MAGA gang is desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them”, he smirked.
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This was not an accident, as Kimmel said in January 2024: “We don’t make up lies. We have a team of people who work very hard to sift through facts before I make a joke.”
Within a day he was off the air, amid hundreds of sacking of teachers, doctors, pilots and students who have all been caught celebrating Charlie’s death.
But was Jimmy gagged or was he the latest late-night host to fall foul of plummeting ratings hitting their multimillion dollar operations?
As with so many issues in America, how you answer that question seems to fall down hyper-partisan lines.
But here’s the truth: Liberal TV networks have seen viewing figures in the toilet since the re-election of President Trump, with fellow luvvie Stephen Colbert also recently given the heave-ho from CBS amid financial pressures.
Last year saw a political earthquake that returned Trump to the White House, and culture is playing catch-up for its reckoning.
Audiences seemingly don’t want sneery libs, hectoring, lecturing and mocking Trump, and by default half the country who voted for him.
Yet from former President Obama down, the howls of outrage about “Cancel Culture” — the pernicious movement celebrated by Kimmel himself when it was happening to involve right-wingers — have been deafening.
And in far too many cases far louder and passionate than anything they said in the wake of Charlie’s brutal murder.
But given that thousands of twisted brainwashed liberals have been cheering the death of Kirk, I suppose the reaction from the Left has been entirely predictable.
Yet it makes you more than a little sick that the response to a celebrity comedian getting canned has been littered with the very word that Kirk’s assassin engraved into the shell casing of his bullet: Fascist!
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The hypocrisy has been off the charts too. “One of the hallmarks of authoritarianism is to terrify people into self-censorship — ABC ending Kimmel’s show is a perfect example of this, huffed David Pakman.
But here is what the leading progressive commentator said in 2018 when ABC axed Trump supporting host Roseanne Barr: “Big win in the battle of ideas and free speech.
Roseanne said what she wanted to say, ABC made the business decisions that were right for them.”
Consequences culture, not cancel culture.
Babyfaced Democrat influencer Harry Sissons hyperventilated: “We are witnessing the most brazen attack on free speech in modern American history.”
Surely the most brazen attack on free speech in modern American history was the bullet that cancelled Charlie Kirk permanently?
And before that surely it was the two assassination attempts on Trump himself, one in which came an inch from plunging America into utter darkness.
And before that, what about the sustained lawfare to try to knock Trump out of the Presidential race by locking him in a cell?
And before gagging him from social media platforms in 2020 in the vain hope the then-defeated president might just disappear into insecurity.
CNN’s Jake Tapper lamented: “If we do not have the ability to criticise, mock and investigate our leaders, then we are no longer the United States of America.”
Except we do. No one is stopping Kimmel going on YouTube, or X or whatever platform he thinks people will listen to him saying exactly what he wants.
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A late-night talk show is not some God-given right for lefty bigmouths, and if ABC don’t want to pay for it, I suggest Jimmy buys a webcam.
Which is why it is so frustrating to see some politicians on the American right leap head-first down a slippery slope as the nation grapples with Kirk’s death.
First Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested implementing British-style hate speech laws to counter those who revelled in Charlie’s murder.
The wider American right were swift in their brutal condemnation of Trump’s top lawyer.
Many are clued-up on how that has worked out in the UK, with comics detained at airports, Facebook mums harassed by cops and regulators threatening to jail tech bosses.
Meanwhile, Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis admitted: “In normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right . . . I don’t feel that way any more.”
As the giants of the right head to Arizona tomorrow to honour Charlie at his funeral, I could not put it better than him: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America.
“There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”
WITH Peter Mandelson sacked after my bombshell Epstein interview, the race to be the next UK Ambassador to the US is very much on.
Fighting out front is ex-Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, despite his new megabucks job at Rothschild & Co.
He’s battling ex-MI6 boss Sir Richard Moore, although some worry the pronoun-loving spy may be too woke for Donald Trump.
Also in the mix is diplomatic rising star and former Deputy National Security Adviser Christian Turner.
But former Ambassador to China, Barbara Woodward, is talked down amid fears “Beijing Barbs” was a little too friendly with the locals.
But one name has pricked my ears . . . sidelined Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
He was furious to be demoted to Justice even with the meaningless title of Deputy PM.
Lammy is pals with Vice President JD Vance, but has long been tipped to run for Mayor of London. Will he choose Washington DC instead?
