Jimmy Kimmel probably didn’t affirmatively lie about the politics of Charlie Kirk’s killer — he just didn’t know what he didn’t know.
In the monologue that got him suspended by ABC, the late-night show host averred, “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.”
This was so flagrantly wrong and so woefully misinformed that it would have been a firing offense if Kimmel were a journalist.
We can assume Kimmel’s defense would be that he’s trying to be Johnny Carson and not Edward R. Murrow, yet he long ago made himself into a quasi-political commentator.
The deeper question is: Why did Kimmel have no idea what he was talking about, as someone who makes a very good living following the news and trying to make jokes — or at least pointed comments — about it?
Kimmel was presumably misled by the legacy media’s unwillingness to be forthright about Tyler Robinson’s motive, and by the obfuscations of Democratic officeholders and progressive commentators.
If he thought he was trusting the trusted sources, he made a grievous error.
Because the Kirk assassination doesn’t fit the preferred narrative of a hateful right-winger committing an act of violence — rather, the complete opposite — there hasn’t been a national crisis-level wave of concern about the motive of the suspect and its potential sources.
Instead, much of the press acts as if it is grappling with an epistemological problem of the depth and subtlety that led to the German physicist Werner Heisenberg arriving at his uncertainty principle in the 1920s (that is, it’s impossible to determine both the exact position and velocity of a particle at the same time).
Reporting on the Kimmel imbroglio, The New York Times wrote: “Prosecutors said Mr. Robinson had written in private messages about Mr. Kirk’s ‘hatred,’ but the authorities have not identified which of Mr. Kirk’s views the suspect found hateful.”
Yes, which views could they have been?
Kirk’s hateful opinions on how to streamline the licensing for Liquified Natural Gas terminals?
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(The Times did note that Robinson’s mother told prosecutors he’d moved left over the last year and had become more “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.”)
On CNN the other night, Kaitlan Collins had a testy exchange with Sen. Ted Cruz during which she insisted, “We don’t have a motive yet. We don’t know yet, we’re waiting.”
This after the charging document was released detailing how Robinson told both his parents and his gender-transitioning boyfriend that he killed Kirk because of the influential activist’s “hate.”
“I’m saying,” Collins explained, when pressed by Cruz, “that law enforcement has not put a specific motive.”
This is true — depending on how you define “specific” — but law enforcement has made it obvious that Robinson killed Kirk for ideological reasons, and everything points to Kirk’s opposition to the trans agenda being a prime motivator.
There is no need to be pettifogging about this.
It’s a little like, in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, leaving open the possibility that James Earl Ray might have killed the civil-rights leader for his views on the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.
But it’s nearly impossible for the media to process the concept of “pro-trans militancy,” let alone violent pro-trans militancy, so reporters and hosts prefer to mumble and look at their shoes.
An ABC reporter even characterized Robinson’s text messages to his boyfriend after the assassination as “very touching” (before apologizing).
It’s doubtful if in 1963 journalists had found a loving note from Lee Harvey Oswald to his wife Marina that they would have been similarly moved.
“What, when, who, where and why” are supposed to be foundational questions in journalism.
In this case, though, that last question is too awkward.
So the coverage has lacked frankness — and Jimmy Kimmel apparently made the mistake of thinking it was authoritative and complete.
X: @RichLowry