Here's the real lesson of the Jimmy Kimmel saga — and it's not good for Trump's lackeys

Jimmy Kimmel was back on Tuesday night and he did not apologize. He said he wasn't trying to make a joke at the expense of a dead demagogue (not his words) but that he understood if his monologue last week about the killing of Charlie Kirk was taken by some to be "ill-timed or unclear or maybe both." Otherwise, however, he had strong words for the companies that continue to black-out his show, Nexstar and Sinclair.

"That's not American," he said. "That's un-American."

What lessons can we draw from his remarks and this entire episode?

First, that the president may seem strong, perhaps invincible, but isn’t. Like all tyrants, Donald Trump needs collaborators and opportunists who are driven by greed and ambition more than belief in the one true (maga) faith. While Trump is doing what he can to shield himself from democratic accountability (gerrymandering, for instance, and attempting to prosecute enemies), many of those collaborators and opportunists can’t. They are exposed to the heat of public opinion.

Trump used the Federal Communications Commission under Chairman Brendan Carr to bully Disney, which owns ABC — cancel the funny guy or lose your broadcast license. ABC obeyed, sparking public outrage leading to Disney losing about $6.4 billion in market value by Monday morning. By Monday afternoon, it said Kimmel was back.

Trump intimidates anyone who allows himself to be intimidated. Disney didn’t have to suspend Kimmel. It could have fought back in court, and almost certainly succeeded, against attempts by the FCC to revoke its license. It didn’t stand firm on First Amendment grounds, because it didn’t have the incentive to (though it could expect to be bullied again.) But the boycott, which triggered its losses, was all the reason it needed to restore its love of free speech.

We are seeing a similar dynamic happening throughout the regime, in which greedy, ambitious collaborators who believed Trump’s power would shield them now seem to be reassessing their position. With an eye on polls showing an increasingly unpopular president, which fuels the potential for a Democratic takeover of the House this time next year, US Attorney General Pam Bondi appears to be rethinking how far she is willing to go to break the law in Trump’s name. Thanks to the Supreme Court, he’s immune to prosecution. She, however, is not.

I think the second lesson we can draw from Jimmy Kimmel’s return is that his suspension had nothing to do with Kirk or remarks made by Kimmel about him. The demagogue’s murder was exploited cynically — by the regime and by collaborators — in order to achieve a desired outcome. None actually cared about the truth of their words, only whether those words accomplished their goals.

The regime wanted to punish dissent, so it accused Kimmel of “the sickest conduct possible” to create conditions for doing so. Brendan Carr said Kimmel “appeared to be making an intentional effort to mislead the public that Kirk’s assassin was a right-wing Trump supporter,” the AP said. Kimmel didn’t say suspect Tyler Robinson was MAGA. He said MAGA was doing everything it could to prove he wasn’t MAGA.

ABC wanted to get the regime off its back, so it caved, pointing to the grumbling of affiliate owners as reason (see below). Now that it has rediscovered its spine, however, the regime must decide whether to back off, exposing its weakness, or move forward with more threats, thus forcing ABC executives to defend their original position, perhaps this time in court, which was that nothing Kimmel said was over the line, and anyway, have you heard about this thing called free speech?

Nexstar and Sinclair, owners of a quarter of the country’s ABC stations, want something too — and are exploiting a dead demagogue to get it.

Sinclair, which is owned by an obscenely rich family, wants uniform rightwing propaganda. (It has aired programming that claims that Kirk was a prophet.) Nexstar wants Carr to sign off on a merger with another TV company, Tegna. Both Nexstar and Sinclair have said they still won’t broadcast Kimmel because of the terrible things he said about Kirk, which were not terrible things, and they know it. They are only saying they were, because they are collaborators who believe they can please Trump by strawbossing a comedian who makes fun of him.

And Kirk is just one example of exploitation. The regime, and anyone who thinks they can benefit from it, do not believe anything they say. They say they are fighting misinformation while spewing vast amounts of misinformation. They say they are combatting political violence while inspiring political violence. They say they are defending free speech and liberty while policing speech and punishing dissent.

Last week, the president suggested that unfavorable news coverage about him is “really illegal.” He told the White House press corps that “they’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad. See, I think that’s really illegal.” He added: “Personally, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.”

But on Jan. 20, 2025, Inauguration Day, Trump said: “After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America”

He didn’t mean a word, but his collaborators work very hard to hide that fact, and as long as they do, Trump lies keep their hold on us.

Make them feel the heat of public anger, however — make collaborators understand that their benefactor can protect them for only so long — then their behavior changes, and with that, Trump’s power wanes.

Perhaps that’s the most important takeaway from Kimmel’s comeback: that the people still have power, that the enemies of democracy aim to convince the people otherwise, and that tinfoil dictators like Trump are only as strong as the greed and ambition of those around them.