Disney says 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' will return to ABC on Tuesday

[thesquanderer]

109. Yes, he said what he said... but those words don't say what many people seem to think they do.

Here again are the words:

Kimmel said during his monologue last Monday that the “MAGA gang” was “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.”

What Kimmel is saying there... looking at his actual words:

He said the MAGA gang was trying to characterize the killer as ANYTHING other than one of them. What does this refer to? It means that MAGA folk were saying things like "the killer was a leftist!" or "the killer was conservative, but not MAGA, but rather from an anti-MAGA right-wing group!" or "the killer was a gay activist," whatever -- All kinds of stuff was being thrown around, MAGA people just wanted to be able to pin it on ANYTHING that would not be MAGA. As I see it, this is the entirety of what the first part of the quoted statement ( “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them" ) says. Agreed?

Specifically, NOWHERE there did Kimmel suggest the killer was MAGA, nor did he suggest that the killer was not MAGA. He said nothing at all about whether or not the killer was MAGA. Rather, he was saying that, even though NOBODY KNEW whether the killer was MAGA or not, the MAGA people were putting out any theory they could come up with that would point the finger away from the killer being one of them. I would say that this is a reasonable perspective, and indeed a true statement, and most importantly here, takes no position whatsoever on whether the killer actually was or was not MAGA.

Let's go on to the rest of the quote... the MAGA gang was "doing everything they can to score political points from it." Again, a reasonable perspective, and I'd say a true statement, and again, makes no assertion whatsoever about whether the killer was or was not MAGA.

So from start to finish, in that quote, he's talking about what MAGA people were saying about the killer and the killing, what MAGA people were trying to get people to believe (ahead of any known facts), and how they were trying to reap political benefit from it. All true. And all without EVER asserting that the killer was MAGA. The whole point is that nobody knew. Even today we don't know.

It's not great that he was suspended for what might be seen by some as a "politically incorrect" statement, but it's worse that he was suspended for saying something he did not say; and even worse that the media reporting on it rarely made clear that he never actually said what people were accusing him of saying. All these days later, after endless discussion on the topic, a mainstream outlet like CNBC still gets the basic facts wrong, and misses one of the most important elements of the story.

So specifically getting back to the CNBC story, again, nothing in that Kimmel quote linked the alleged killer to the MAGA movement. as CNBC claimed. The Kimmel quote did refer to MAGA folks trying to distance themselves from there being any linkage, but Kimmel did not make any such linkage, he only talked about MAGA folk trying to prevent people from thinking there could possibly be one, when, again, no one knew, either way. And how they were trying to make political hay out of it. And again, all true.