Kimmel Needs to Go

At a time when there is an obvious need to tone down the rhetoric, late night so-called comedian Jimmy Kimmel is doubling down on his strident and partisan brand of monologue. While politics is natural grist for humor, what Kimmel offers is reckless mean-spirited partisan attacks. He engages in the kind of divisive commentary that incites hatred and promotes violence.

One might expect that after the recent shooting incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner by a deranged left-winger, the self-appointed court jester of late night would exercise a modicum of restraint. Not Jimmy Kimmel.

It is important to bear in mind that this fellow is no comedian. He is a partisan political combatant in clown shoes, gleefully trading punchlines as political warfare. His monologues are not designed to unite audiences in laughter. They are crafted to divide the nation in fury — and he delivers them with the smug certainty of a man who believes his dwindling fans represent the entirety of America.

Consider his latest outrage. Just days before that chaotic night at the Correspondents’ Dinner, Kimmel aired a parody skit in which he imagined himself roasting the President and First Lady. He gazed at a video Melania Trump and declared with mock admiration, “Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

The implication dripped with cruelty– the first lady, radiant as ever — somehow anticipating widowhood because her husband – looking rather fit for a man his age — holds one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. A would-be assassin turned the joke into a horrifying near-reality within days of Kimmel’s performance.

First Lady Melania Trump responded with rare public fire, labeling Kimmel’s rhetoric “hateful and violent” and urging ABC to “take a stand.” President Trump joined the chorus, demanding Kimmel’s immediate firing. Kimmel, naturally, defended his bit as harmless roasting. Because nothing says “lighthearted fun” quite like anticipating an assassination of a sitting president.

The hits keep coming. Legendary singer Sir Tom Jones, a man whose career spans decades of genuine talent and class, recently called for Kimmel’s head as well (figuratively, of course). In an earlier monologue, Kimmel targeted Jones’s son, Mark Woodward, using fabricated and edited images to insert him into the studio as the butt of a string of disrespectful jabs. Jones condemned the segment as fake, insensitive, and beneath the dignity of public discourse. Here is a man who has entertained millions with warmth and voice now forced to defend his family from a late-night hack armed with cheap edits and cheaper insults.

These are not isolated slips. They form a pattern. Kimmel has built an entire brand on vicious anti-Trump, anti-Republican tirades. He mocks the president’s hands as “disgusting,” labels him a “delicate snowflake” with the thinnest skin imaginable, and stages entire segments aimed at humiliating conservatives.

Kimmel once delivered a special monologue aimed at Republicans, as if they were a curious zoo exhibit rather than fellow Americans. This is the same network host who previously made light of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, an episode so tasteless it briefly took him off the air. Humor? Hardly. It is ideological combat dressed in a suit and tie, delivered with the sneering superiority that only the most unhinged partisan could mistake for wit.

Make no mistake. Kimmel has a First Amendment right to say whatever he likes – vulgar and obnoxious as it may be. But that does not mean that ABC/Disney has to provide him with the platform. It is time for the network bosses to face reality. Jimmy Kimmel is not performing comedy. He is waging partisan political war from behind a desk, and the body count of decency rises with every monologue. It is time to cancel the combatant. Kimmel needs to go – before the next “joke” crosses the red line of decency into divisive provocation. The nation deserves better than a late-night bully who confuses venom with humor.

The same could be said of the entire late-night lineup, of course. They march in lockstep, from Fallon’s feeble attempts at balance to the others who long ago traded laughs for lectures. But Kimmel stands out as the worst of the lot – especially now that Stephen Colbert is going, going, gone, his own show canceled and headed for the television graveyard in May 2026. With Colbert’s exit, the field belongs to Kimmel as the undisputed king of mean-spirited hackery. It is time to show him the door.

So, there ‘tis.