Before ABC announced it was lifting Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension on Monday, HBO’s John Oliver used Sunday’s Last Week Tonight to express not only his confusion about why people got so mad at Kimmel in the first place but also to claim Kimmel’s point about MAGA being “desperate to weaponize Kirk’s death” has “aged pretty well” given the suspension.
Unlike some people on the left, Oliver actually got the root cause for Kimmel’s suspension correct, “But the pretext that’s been used to indefinitely suspend Kimmel’s show is just laughably weak. Because while you may have seen headlines saying he got in trouble for remarks about Charlie Kirk himself, or even remarks about his death, that's not strictly accurate. The comments that got him in trouble weren't about Kirk. In fact, Kimmel's first comments after his murder were a post reading, ‘Can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents, and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.’”
Oliver then teed up a clip of Kimmel’s remarks by adding, “What got Kimmel in trouble was a passing reference on Monday night. Now, at the time, there were still rumors flying around regarding the killer's motivations, including that he was on the far-right, something Kimmel alluded to like this.”
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