Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

September 20, 2025

JONATHAN TURLEY: The funniest joke Jimmy Kimmel never told.

This week, Schiff is outraged by a company’s decision to suspend a host who refused to correct a false story he had spread.

For years, I appeared before these same leaders in Congress as they defended corporate censorship and dismissed allegations of collaboration with the government. I would not cancel Kimmel so long as his show was profitable. But I have long maintained that companies can limit the free speech of employees at work. I do not believe Kimmel should be censored on social media for spreading false information. At the same time, ABC does not have to lose money or viewers because an employee attacks others with vile, false claims.

Now Disney is accused of killing democracy itself, in league with Trump. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) attacked Trump for “trying to destroy our democracy” and acting like “many would-be despots.” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) used Kimmel’s suspension as evidence that “fascism is not on the way, it is here.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) insisted that suspending a host for spreading false information about a murder was “North Korea-style stuff” while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) insisted that it is “what Putin would do.” It is a curious spin, since Putin and Kim Jong Un value media figures who spread false information — particularly about murders.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) went so far as to compare Kimmel to Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense and “Penman of the revolution.”

So Kimmel is now a hero of democracy — all he had to do was spread disinformation. That makes this the funniest joke that Kimmel never told.

I’m so old, I can remember when spreading “disinformation” was grounds for universal deplatforming. Apparently, that’s bad now, in the left’s eyes:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 20th, 2025

KAMALA HARRIS SAYS BIDEN RATTLED HER BEFORE TRUMP DEBATE IN NEW BOOK:

Biden reportedly called Harris as she sat in a hotel room preparing for the only debate of her abbreviated campaign. He apparently wanted to wish her luck — and to scold her.

The then-president said, “My brother called. He’s been talking to a group of real power brokers in Philly,” according to an excerpt of the book in The Guardian. He then allegedly asked if Harris was familiar with several people related to the matter, which she was not.

“His brother had told him that those guys were not going to support me because I’d been saying bad things about him. He wasn’t inclined to believe it, he claimed, but he thought I should know in case my team had been encouraging me to put daylight between the two of us,” Harris wrote in the book, according to an excerpt of the book in The Guardian.

Biden then went on to talk about his past debate performances, leaving Harris confused, “angry and disappointed,” according to The Guardian. She was upset that her boss had called before a critical moment in her political career and made “it all about himself.” Harris added that Biden was “distracting me with worry about hostile power-brokers in the biggest city of the most important state.”

Then-second gentleman Doug Emhoff apparently noticed his wife was in distress and advised her to “let it go” before facing off against Trump.

You’re auditioning for a job with a million potential distractions, where you’ll be surrounded by a staff and cabinet that each have their own personal agendas and will be prepared to use you to advance their own power fiefdoms and petty desires. If a phone call from the (p)resident could distract Harris before a debate, it’s reminder number 1,237,622 that she had no qualifications to sit behind the Resolute Desk.

Fortunately though, there is an escape hatch for her ambitions: Kamala Harris Starts a Substack: It’s As Bad As You’d Think, and Her Coping With Losing Is Hilarious.

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 20th, 2025

WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE VAGINA MUSEUM?! Britain’s Vagina Museum hit by Trump’s trade war.

In January of 2020, Clarice Feldman explored, “The Trump Grabbed Schrodinger’s Pussy Theory:”

As you may recall Schrodinger’s cat is a quantum physics paradox in which hypothetically a cat may be both alive and dead at the same time. My online friend “The Infamous Ignatz” offers up, quite rightly in my opinion, there is “The Universal Quantum Trump-Grabbed Schrodinger’s Pussy Theory. He is not only the cause of all known phenomena in the universe but the cause of all potential phenomena as well.”

The London Telegraph may be taking that theory a bit too literally.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 20th, 2025

NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT: Where Did Jimmy Kimmel Get the Idea that Charlie Kirk’s Assassin was Right Wing?

Perhaps strangest of all was her claim that Robinson disliked Kirk for being insufficiently radical. As Fleisher points out, that was pure fantasy.

Richardson goes on to support her statement by saying that he is a “young white man” (which, of course, does not tell us his politics) “from a Republican, gun enthusiast family” (it’s true that his parents were Republicans and had photographed him with guns, but this also tells us nothing about the son’s politics) “who appears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical” (a statement for which there is zero evidence).

I pointed out some of the people who were spreading this particular fantasy on Bluesky and X here. Keith Olbermann, David Shuster, Jemele Hill and many others were pushing this hard all weekend (I also mentioned Heather Cox Richardson.)

As Nate Silver says, this was exactly the sort of online nonsense that the left routinely labels misinformation, but only when it comes from the right. In this case, Jemele Hill deleted her tweet on Bluesky but Olbermann and Shuster have not and, so far as I know, Heather Cox Richardson also hasn’t issued a correction.

There was never any proof any of this was true but I guess enough people on Bluesky were all agreeing with the same false claims that Jimmy Kimmel thought he was safe repeating it in his monologue.

Earlier: Kimmel Was About to Make Things Even Worse Before Suspension.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 20th, 2025

VDH: The Murder of Charlie Kirk Was Not a George Floyd Moment.

Just days after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the left is working overtime to hide the truth and create fantasies about his death.

Specifically, leftists alleged that conservatives were going to “pounce” on the death to wage protests and boost radical agendas in the manner of what followed George Floyd’s death.

Here are some of the lies that such a ridiculous narrative entails.

One, Charlie Kirk is not conservatives’ George Floyd. There were no mass riots after his death of the sort that followed Floyd’s demise.

Floyd’s death was used by the left to justify five months of rioting, arson, murder, looting, and attacking police officers.

The postmortem respect for Kirk’s singular life was not characterized by $2 billion in property damage, the torching of a police precinct, a federal courthouse, and an iconic church, 35 deaths, and 1,500 injured law-enforcement officers.

Instead, thousands of people peacefully joined his Turning Point USA organization and promised to redirect their lives toward peaceful political engagement.

Two, after Kirk’s death, no prominent Republican or conservative is encouraging ongoing mass (and often violent) protests in the manner of high-profile leftists like Kamala Harris.

She blurted out on national television in June 2020, “But they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop, and this is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop, and everyone beware, because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not gonna stop after Election Day. Everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they’re not going to let up—and they should not. And we should not.”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 20th, 2025

WEIMAR? BECAUSE WE REICH YOU!

As Glenn has written, “you don’t get Hitler because of Hitler — there are always potential Hitlers hanging around. You get Hitler because of Weimar, and you get Weimar because the people in charge of maintaining liberal democracy are too weak and corrupt to do the job.”

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Sep 20th, 2025

September 19, 2025

NEW REPORT: Kimmel Was About to Make Things Even Worse Before Suspension.

Before Jimmy Kimmel got “indefinitely preempted,” there was a report that he wasn’t going to apologize, and that he didn’t think he had done anything to apologize for when he implied that the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk was MAGA and mocked MAGA grief over Kirk’s death.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

That’s what he said on Monday.

On Tuesday, he said, “Many in MAGA-land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.” He then accused Vice President JD Vance of blaming the left without evidence, despite what the authorities had previously said about the alleged killer being on the left, including earlier on Tuesday. Then he claimed the right had more extremist violence and brought up Jan. 6.

So by Wednesday, Disney wanted to know how he would address the controversy he had created. According to the Wall Street Journal, Kimmel was about to make it worse. He planned to address it by blaming MAGA, saying that his words were being “purposely twisted” by them.

And as a result: Jimmy Kimmel Live! Replaced by Celebrity Family Feud After Being Pulled by ABC amid Host’s Comments About Charlie Kirk.

The old line about Colin Kaepernick was that if you’re going to do Muhammad Ali-style political stunts, you better have Ali-level talent as an athlete to get get away with them. The current crop of late night hosts think they’re successors to Johnny Carson, while getting a much smaller audience to turn on the TV at 11:30 pm: Jimmy Kimmel’s ratings were plummeting before ABC suspended him for Charlie Kirk comments.

Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was bleeding viewers before Disney-owned ABC pulled the plug and suspended him for his comments on Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

Nielsen data showed sharp summer declines and a year-long slide that leaves him trailing late-night rivals such as Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld and CBS star Stephen Colbert.

According to monthly Nielsen figures, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” dropped to just 1.1 million total viewers in August 2025, down 43% from January’s 1.95 million. His August household rating of 0.35 marked the weakest showing of the year.

In sharp contrast, as the New Yorker noted last year, “At its peak, [the Johnny Carson-era Tonight Show] was regularly watched by seventeen million people.” Keep the disparity between Carson’s numbers and those of Kimmel and Colbert in mind when assessing the meltdowns of their defenders.

UPDATE: Scott Jennings Schools Abby Phillip and Other Clueless Dems on How the Television Broadcasting Biz Works.

Posted at 6:48 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 19th, 2025

JOHN NOLTE: Unity Achieved: MAGA Supports Democrat Boycott of Disney/ABC over Jimmy Kimmel Cancellation.

Democrats want unity, and I think a work stoppage at Disney/ABC is something that can finally bring us together.

“Every major talent that works for ABC and Disney should refuse to show up for work until Jimmy Kimmel is reinstated,” Marvel director Wajahat Ali wrote on X. “Marvel movies need to shutdown. Ditto the sitcoms. Collective boycott.”

He added: “Corporations love money more than anything, & this will really harm them and force them to do the right thing.”

Jimmy Kimmel — a uniter, not a divider! “Every major talent that works for ABC and Disney should refuse to show up for work until Jimmy Kimmel is reinstated. Marvel movies need to shutdown. Ditto the sitcoms.”

No, really, take as much time as you need. Make the Hollywood strike of 2023 seem like an extended holiday weekend, and get the viewers and the moviegoers involved, too:

Exit quote from Nolte: “Kimmel committed an ethical breach of conduct and a blood libel. So, now the left-wing blacklisters are cornered. The reaping phase has begun. And all they can do — tee hee — is target one of their own (Disney/ABC) for annihilation as they move over to our side of the aisle raging against cancel culture. This is glorious.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 19th, 2025

NEWS YOU CAN USE:

 

Posted at 5:58 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 19th, 2025

AND THE DNC-MSM IS DOING ITS ABSOLUTE BEST TO BURY BOTH STORIES:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 19th, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 19th, 2025

GREAT MOMENTS IN INSTITUTIONAL AMNESIA:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 19th, 2025

September 18, 2025

ABC QUICKLY ANNOUNCES REPLACEMENT FOR JIMMY KIMMEL:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I heard a different rumor:

Either would be an improvement, but both have better things to do.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

FIRE UP THE FERRARI: Joseph Kosinski’s Miami Vice Movie Lands August 2027 Release Date, Casting Underway.

Director Joseph Kosinski‘s Miami Vice movie is a go.

The Universal Pictures event pic will hit theaters on Aug. 6, 2027, the studio announced Wednesday. Casting is currently underway, with shooting set to begin next year.

Kosinski, who is coming off directing back-to back blockbusters — F1: The Movie and Top Gun: Maverick — will explore the glamour and corruption of mid-’80s Miami in a new version of Miami Vice, inspired by the pilot episode and first season of the landmark television series that influenced culture and set the style of everything from fashion to filmmaking.

Kosinski will film the movie for Imax, much as he did with F1 and Top Gun, in order to enhance the sights and sounds of the iconic series.

Miami Vice began life as the Anthony Yerkovich-created TV series starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as two undercover Miami police officers known for their love of pastel suits. (“The ambition of the show was to break the form of everything that had come before,” series executive producer Michael Mann told The Hollywood Reporter last year of the series, which ran from 1984-90 on NBC.) Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell starred in a 2006 feature of the same name that Mann directed, which earned $163.7 million globally.

The film is produced by Dylan Clark (The Batman) and Kosinski and written by Dan Gilroy and Eric Singer, based on characters created by Yerkovich. Kosinski has been kicking the tires on the project since last year, working with longtime collaborator Singer to develop the project.

Related: Miami Vice at 40: An Oral History.

Yes, it’s yet another example that Hollywood is completely devoid of new ideas, but I’ll be curious to read the reviews for the next big screen reincarnation of Vice. However, we must also accept that there is absolutely no way it will measure to this upcoming ’80s-era reboot, which was announced last month: Netflix Collars William Shatner Cop Series T.J. Hooker For Action Comedy Movie.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

LATE-NIGHT TV IS TRULY DEAD — and you can only blame egotistical, politically obsessed Kimmel and Colbert themselves.

On Wednesday night, Kimmel was put on ice by ABC. Local affiliates had said they wouldn’t air “Jimmy Kimmel! Live” because of his vile monologue suggesting Charlie Kirk’s killer was a MAGA true believer.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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,” Kimmel had said on-air Monday.

But it was his grotesque commentary that was hitting a new low.

His pronouncement was well out of step with what we already knew to be true about the shooter’s affiliation. Yet Kimmel chose to dive into a conspiracy theory to exploit a horrific political assassination.

If the ideologies were reversed, virtuous lefties would have been red in the face, screaming: “That’s disinformation!”

The reality is, this moment of reckoning was self-inflicted — and inevitable. For the last decade, Kimmel and Colbert have decided that viewers don’t need chuckles and interviews with the celeb du jour.

We don’t even need jokes.

Nope, we need to be lectured on politics and told that one side of the country, those who voted Republican, is inherently evil and destructive.

To be fair, that model may have bought their shows an extra decade of life, but in an era of streaming and YouTube, late night chat shows are being retired one by one by the legacy television networks, and will likely be replaced by a product far cheaper and easier to produce, such as this stopgap(?) replacement: ABC Airs Celebrity Family Feud After Pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! Amid Charlie Kirk Backlash.

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

ROGER SIMON: Soul Corruption: Tucker, Candace and Steve.

I didn’t want to write about this. Oh, how I didn’t want to write about this. I was hoping it would just go away, like the worst of bad dreams.

But it kept recurring. And growing worse, almost to the point of metastasizing into an incurable tumor, a pancreatic cancer of the soul.

Would they soon be accusing us of murdering gentile children to obtain blood for our matzoh as they did in Norwich, England, 1144? Or would they burn the Talmud as was done in Paris when all books were hand written by scribes, 1242?

After all, we were now being accused of being behind the murder of Charlie Kirk with no more evidence than that deranged blood libel from the Middle Ages.

And, yes, I know the Democrats are a hundred times worse. The execrable Jimmy Kimmel was just pulled off the air by ABC for telling the most obvious lie about the Charlie Kirk assassination and he’s far from the worst of them, not even close to the Mamdani “globalize the intifada” crew.

Even so I didn’t want to write about it. I had promised myself, following the advice of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and others, that the best, most effective road forward was always to stay positive.

Speaking of which, it was that half-Jewish, half-gentile songwriting team of Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer who wrote “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,” based on a sermon by a black man, Charles Manuel “Sweet Daddy” Grace , that became a big hit for Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters in the middle of World War II (1944).

So positivity can come from all quarters in the worst of times. You just have to pay attention to life and the right path.

Nevertheless—and sorry it took so long to get here—sometimes you’ve just gotta say ya basta, enough already.

So roll back with me roughly three years ago this coming winter. My wife and I were sitting in a small bistro on a posh island on the Gulf side of Florida with Tucker Carlson. I had texted Tucker, who spent the cold months on the island, that we were going to be there and hoped to have lunch.

We had a nearly three-hour meal together, gabbing and having a fine time, in agreement about everything under the sun. Tucker was great fun and I thought we were becoming better friends. In fact, we texted every week or so thereafter and he quite graciously gave me a stellar blurb for my then new book, American Refugees, that became the name of this Substack. Because of his fame, the publisher put that blurb on the front cover of the book, rather than the back where they usually appear. It remains there to this day, faute de mieux.

And then the roof fell in.

Read the whole thing.

 

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

LIFE AFTER TELEVISION: TV expert reveals the next late-night host to get the boot after Kimmel suspension and who will be the last man standing.

Seth Meyers is the next late-night talk host to face the axe after Jimmy Kimmel‘s suspension, a TV expert has predicted.

Professor Robert Thompson, who founded the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, shared his gloomy forecast with the Daily Mail a day after Kimmel’s show was pulled over comments he made about Charlie Kirk.

‘There is a theme going on here,’ Thompson said, discussing Kimmel’s ‘indefinite’ suspension and the looming cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

He pointed to the clear shift away from the politically charged jokes of late-night hosts like Colbert, Kimmel and Meyers.

‘It could very well be that [Jimmy] Fallon is the last guy standing,’ Thompson said.

‘Meyers is the one guy doing this type of comedy who hasn’t been fired yet. These last stories indicate that era is over.

‘I can see a period in the very near future where Fallon is the last franchise left – the oldest franchise, at that.’

Thompson went on to compare Fallon’s ‘apolitical’ approach to that of late-night legends Johnny Carson and Jay Leno.

* * * * * * * * *

If Kimmel doesn’t return to ABC, ‘NBC will be the only broadcast network with comedy people doing this type of format’ after Colbert departs CBS next year., Thompson said.

He added that linear television had already been deteriorating before the pandemic, and that for ‘all of the next generation who grew up watching Colbert and Kimmel, broadcast television isn’t the place for them.’

‘Substack and YouTube is where the action is and where the audiences are. Every decision made by legacy companies is indicating that.

Iowahawk issues a timely note as to what viewers are still using television to consume:

As always, be careful if you run into anyone who actually still gets their news from TV:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

GREAT MOMENTS IN ANALOGIES:

So Charlie Kirk is Hitler, Trump is Hitler, and every Republican president since Calvin Coolidge is Hitler. And concurrently, exercise, low crime, secure borders, and Sydney Sweeney’s ta-tas are all fascism. In February, when CBS’s Margaret Brennan absurdly claimed to Marco Rubio that JD Vance “was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide,” Mark Steyn responded, “I did not think it was possible to despise the ‘mainstream’ media more than I already did. In a society thoroughly moronized by Brain-Dead Brennan and her ilk, Hitler is the sole remaining historical figure anybody’s heard of. And they can’t even get that right.”

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

HOW IT STARTED: CNN Clown to Obama: ‘Go Gangsta Against Your Foes.’

—JammieWearingFool, February 11th, 2010.

How it’s going: CNN: ‘Wannabe Mob Boss’ Trump Brings Us ‘Dangerously Close to State-Run Media.’

In the context of a discussion of the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show and related matters, today’s CNN This Morning aired a clip of Rep. Daniel Goldman [D-ActBlue Jeans] calling President Trump a “wannabe mob boss.”

Meghan Hays, a former Biden aide and a CNN analyst, agreed with Goldman, then proceeded to claim:

“We are running dangerously close to state-run media . . . We are losing our democracy. They’re dismantling democracy by doing this.”

I need more context here. In CNN-land, where the network made their bones fluffing Castro, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong Il, is this suddenly a bad thing now? The Mote in CNN’s Mini-Cam.

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

SASHA STONE: Robert Redford Takes the Best of Hollywood With Him.

The ending of Quiz Show is memorable too, but not in the same way as Ordinary People or A River Runs Through It. It is not cathartic but ominous. It marked the era where everything began to change, where the Left planted the seeds that would ultimately lead to the Obama presidency and the utopia we built in his image.

The conclusion here about quiz shows is applied to politics, too. That was all of us waking up in the 1990s amid the therapy era, which Ordinary People helped launch. This depicts the cynicism of this age, or what they call in the Fourth Turning, the “unraveling.” It is cynical and hopeless, which helps explain why the Obama era became almost a religion, or at the very least, took the place of religion.

What I always loved about these three movies was how Redford worked out his own duality of being two people. He was the movie star, the golden boy, but he was also someone who saw himself fading into the background, the watcher, the introvert.

Read the whole thing. Exit quote: “Hollywood no longer makes movies like these. The best of what they ever did will die with Robert Redford. What they make now are endless apologies and virtue signals at best, and agonizing lectures at worst.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025

TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE:

QED:

Frum isn’t the only center-left person with a serious case of amnesia:

Meanwhile, as with Colbert jawboning against Trump, having the FCC to blame allows ABC/Disney to simultaneously terminate a financial sinkhole and play the martyr while they clean house: Jimmy Kimmel’s ratings were plummeting before ABC suspended him for Charlie Kirk comments.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 18th, 2025
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