Newsmax’s James Hirsen rants against Jimmy Kimmel in his Sept. 25 column:
Kimmel’s son had already had to battle congenital heart disease in his infant life. The Democrats apparently saw the opportunity to exploit Kimmel’s family difficulties, using the hardship as a means to attack the Republican proposed legislation by feeding lies to the late-night host. Particularly underhanded was the reframing of the efforts by the GOP to repeal and replace Obamacare as a plan that would fail to protect people with pre-existing conditions such as the one Kimmel’s son experienced.
[…]Lost in the media coverage has been the truth that people with pre-existing conditions would not be denied coverage under the GOP’s proposed legislation. However, it appears as though Kimmel was fed purposely misleading information from Schumer and dutifully repeated the lines for his audience.
Kimmel was not lying. In fact, the proposed Graham-Cassidy bill would permit states to not cover pre-existing conditions, making coverage prohibitively expensive or even nonexistent.
Hirsen also complains that “the co-writer of Kimmel’s healthcare remarks was none other than U.S. Senate Minority Leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.,” and that the two had been “coordinating behind the scenes to put a wrench in the Republican undertaking of repealing the failing healthcare system known as Obamacare.”
We remember when Hirsen vociferously defended Mel Gibson after his anti-Semitic rantings came to light and enthusiastically promoted his film “The Passion of the Christ” at Newsmax without disclosing his personal and business connections to Gibson — including that he ran a foundation on behalf of Gibson’s father — so any complaints about Kimmel’s fact-finding arrangement ring hollow.