FCC pressure gets Jimmy Kimmel suspended for a joke? What a bunch of snowflakes. [View all]

Rex Huppke

Free speech has gotten really confusing in Trump America.

If I’m following things correctly, Republicans and President Donald Trump are celebrating the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show because he said something they didn’t like.

These are the same folks who, for I don’t know how long, have been hollering that free speech is a God-given American right, even if that speech offends sensitive snowflake liberals like myself.

In the wake of the horrific fatal shooting of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who preached the importance of free speech, Kimmel said this about the suspect during his Sept. 15 monologue: “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, and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

OK. That doesn’t sound all that offensive to me. Given what little we’ve learned about the suspect, it sure doesn’t seem like he’s a MAGA type. But he also doesn’t sound like a radical leftist, which is the way everyone on the right has gleefully, and without consequence, painted him. If anything, the suspect’s ideology seems muddled, and his specific motivation to commit such a horrible act is unclear.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/09/18/jimmy-kimmel-charlie-kirk-fcc-trump/86212544007/?tbref=hp

Innocuous much? Rex gets right to the heart of it.