Media Research Center comedy cop Alex Christy tried to throw shade at Jimmy KImmel for pointing out the former occupation of the new homeland security secretary in a March 25 post:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel has a Hollywood elitist problem. In his Tuesday monologue, Kimmel discussed the news that Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin has become the new Secretary of Homeland Security, but according to Kimmel, Mullin is not qualified for the job because in his pre-congressional life, he was a plumber.
Kimmel began with what has become common for the late night comedians: a jab at Mullin’s name, “Trump’s got a whole new generation of thinkers lined up, including his newly confirmed secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne ‘Chuck Mike Bruce Dave’ Melon—Mullin. Maybe melon’s better. He’s the now former senator of Oklahoma. Before he was elected to the Senate, Markwayne Mullin was a low-level MMA fighter and a plumber.”
[…]Of course, Trump didn’t just pick a random plumber off the street and put him in charge of a large governmental department. Before getting elected to Congress, Mullin also ran the family plumbing business and turned it into the largest in Oklahoma. And as Kimmel was forced to acknowledge, Mullin was a senator, and that means he has been forced to familiarize himself with DHS-related issues.
Christy continued his tirade in a March 27 post:
On Thursday, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel tried and largely failed to clean up his Tuesday remarks, where he declared Markwayne Mullin is not qualified to be secretary of Homeland Security because he used to be a plumber. Kimmel’s damage control effort would fail because he tried to have it both ways as he tried to double down on the original comments while also implying his criticism of Mullin is just about ideas.
Kimmel began by observing how “the president and his pals in the MAGA media are not happy with me right now. Trump even called in to Fox to complain about me tonight. His apple polishers are all in a tizzy because I made light of the fact that his new head of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, before he was a senator, was a plumber. And now he’s the head of Homeland Security. Which is not necessarily the kind of resume you might hope for, for the person in charge of protecting us from terrorism.”
[…]Kimmel’s efforts to deflect criticism onto others would continue as he played a montage of conservative commentators criticizing far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a bartender, but that, once again, requires Kimmel to overlook Mullin’s management experience. Even if it was a fair comparison, it wouldn’t make Kimmel’s comments appear any better.
Christy didn’t mention that his employer mocked Ocasio-Cortez’s bartender experience as well. For instance:
- A November 2022 post by Tim Graham huffed that former Fox News host Chris Wallace “aided the myth of AOC by underlining how she somehow offered brilliant questioning of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, allegedly due to her “razor-sharp” instincts gleaned from being a bartender
- A March 2024 post by Kathryn Eller asserted that Ocasio-Cortez “was just a former bartender and didn’t attend law school.”
- It took Dan Schneider, Michael Morris and Jonah Messenger to write an August 2025 post complaining that Ocasio-Cortez is an “infamous bartender.”
What’s the difference between right-wingers mocking AOC’s bartending experience and Kimmel calling Mullin’s plumber background? Christy doesn’t explain.
Jeffrey Lord piled on in a March 28 column:
Taken collectively, not to mention as a stand-alone, Kimmel’s caustic and decidedly elitist look down his nose at Mullin because the latter has a background as a plumber speaks volumes about the real mindset of today’s left-wing media types.
And in fact? Mullin is recorded as not just having started his plumbing business with six employees. He went on to grow the business considerably, growing it to the point where it now has over 100 employees. That’s in addition to building several other businesses and ranching operations in two different Oklahoma counties. In short, Mullin is a highly successful businessman.
Lord was silent about his fellow right-wingers mocking AOC’s bartending experience.
The MRC also nominated Kimmel for its “quote of the week” for his Mullin remark, but even loyal MRC right-wingers wouldn’t go along, putting the quote in second place. Perhaps they too remember how they mocked AOC for working as a bartender.