U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds says it’s the free market, not a government free speech crackdown, that led to late night host Jimmy Kimmel being suspended.
The Republican gubernatorial candidate in an interview[1] with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson said Kimmel crossed a line with political rhetoric on his show, and was already doing poorly in the ratings. Kimmel was suspended[2] by Disney after commenting on the reaction to the murder[3] of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“With respect to Jimmy, look, here’s the deal. His ratings are down. The show was not good,” Donalds said. “And then he obviously defamed MAGA and defamed more than half the country at this point, trying to blame us and trying to blame Charlie for his assassination.”
Kimmel, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, in his monologue this week said “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.”
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, shortly before the suspension was announced, also appeared on Johnson’s podcast and said the comments by Kimmel represented a “very serious issue” for Disney. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said.
Johnson in his interview with Donalds suggested the Kimmel suspension was something Kirk would have applauded.
“This is something that Charlie is smiling down from heaven at because we are enforcing a cultural moral standard that you are not allowed to lie about somebody and you are not allowed to victim blame and continue this poison,” he said.
Johnson also suggested that critics of the suspension had no problem with censorship by the right under Democratic President Joe Biden. Donalds concurred, and alleged that Biden had wrongly tried to get Johnson, Kirk and others on social media. “They’re all frauds,” Donalds said of Democrats.
“Not only did they (not) try to stop the Biden administration from censoring not just you or Charlie or President Trump or anybody else. They were fully in support of censoring all of America when it came to COVID-19, getting real information out there to people — the negative impacts of lockdowns, the negative impacts of lockdowns on schools, the negative impacts of forcing vaccine mandates on our soldiers, trying to force them on employers. These are the same Democrats that wanted to spy on the bank accounts of every American citizen.”
Early in the interview, Donalds discussed his personal relationship with Kirk, saying the Turning Point USA founder welcomed him at events in Arizona when he was still a freshman and relatively unknown Congressman.
“I think the thing that’s most frustrating with how the radical Left tries to look at Charlie is they look at his arguments, but they try to ignore the humanity,” Donalds said. “That’s the biggest issue we’re having right now in politics, in my view, is that people ignore the humanity of people.”
He credited Kirk and Turning Point USA with helping deliver the White House back to Trump in November.
“I remember during the inauguration I said to him (Kirk) we would not have won without him. I firmly believe that. What he’s meant not just to the conservative movement but really to the fabric of American politics, reinvigorating debate and speech, engaging young people, it’s going to require so many people to take seriously their politics in order to truly acknowledge the legacy of Charlie Kirk.”
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