Now that he no longer has Stephen Colbert to kick around anymore, Media Research Center comedy cop Alex Christy has focused his fire on Jimmy Kimmel. He wrote in a May 27 post:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel reacted to President Trump’s recent physical at Walter Reed by suggesting he does not believe him when reported that there is “nothing wrong with him.” However, skepticism towards presidential physicals is new for Kimmel, who, when Joe Biden was president, claimed he did not care what the results were.
Kimmel was alluding to Trump’s claim that he took a cognitive test that featured some math equations as well as his new “Dumocrats” nickname for Democrats, where Trump explained that he switched out the “E” for a “U” when he claimed to have taken the same cognitive test and that there was no math, “He’s making that up. Even his lies are lies. You know, if you take the ‘E’ out of dementia—If you remove the ‘E’ and you replace it with a ‘U.’ You’ve got something called dumentia.”
According to Kimmel, he is not the one with double standards; Trump is, “And he’s very sensitive about the idea he’s losing it mentally because that’s what he kept saying about Joe Biden, and he’s sensitive about the idea he is physically unfit as well. He got another physical today. It’s his third examination in a little over a year. Do you think when they do these, he knows he’s going to the hospital? Or is it like when you trick your dog into going to the vet?”
Christy did not explain why he implicitly believes Trump’s overly sunny take on his health. Instead, he whined that Kimmel “is trying to compensate for his role in covering up Biden’s decline and paving the way for his archnemesis to retake the White House.” Who is Christy covering up for?
The next day, Christy complained that Kimmel wouldn’t endorse his favorite right-wing candidate for mayor of Los Angeles:
Polls show that former reality TV personality turned Republican candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, Spencer Pratt, has a real shot to advance to November’s general election, which caused ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel to stage an intervention on Wednesday and plead with people not to vote for him.
During a lengthy lament on Pratt’s rise in the polls, Kimmel declared, “Then you get a guy who is on a reality show, who’s on a lot of reality shows. His profession is to be the screaming jerk on reality shows, and his house burns down, and even though he had no private insurance on his house and doesn’t believe in climate change, he is understandably upset about his house burning down. And since he’s a moderately famous person, he gets attention. He’s on the news, he’s on social media, and for the first time in his life, people are agreeing with what he has to say. It’s hard not to agree with what he has to say. He’s angry about the same problems a lot of people here are angry about.”
However, Kimmel also claimed, “Does he have solutions to those problems? No. But at least he’s acknowledging that they are problems. So, then this angry reality show star, who grew up wealthy and popular and is not very wealthy or popular anymore, really starts to enjoy the attention. He starts to think, ‘You know, I should be mayor.’ Which is a statement that should make everyone laugh. But not everyone is laughing. Not everyone sees this as a joke. Right now, if you believe the polls, 22 percent of them are going, ‘You know what? You should be mayor.’”
[…]Kimmel then played a clip of CNN’s Elex Michaelson asking Pratt, “Who is your political role model?” with Pratt answering, “Jesus Christ.”
After some awkward silence and exaggerated head nodding, Kimmel retorted, “Well. I couldn’t agree more. Jesus Christ. What was Jesus’s message? Was it ‘incarcerate the homeless’? Or was it ‘heal the sick with rose quartz’? Either way, good going, L.A., we did it again!”
It is unclear what Kimmel is referring to when he talks about incarcerating homeless people. It is likely he just made it up or is grossly misrepresenting Pratt’s actual plan.
But Pratt’s actual plan does, in fact, involve imprisoning people, which is framed as a 72-hour “5150 hold,” and Christy does not explain what the difference supposedly is. He also failed to mention the other falsehoods Pratt has made about homeless people. Instead, he ranted that the other two options, incumbent Karen Bass and Nithya Raman, are ” an incompetent incumbent or radical socialist.”
Christy did more ranting in a May 29 post:
In his effort to portray President Trump as a reckless foreign policy adventurer, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel took him out of context and omitted key information on Thursday to suggest that Trump was winding down the Iran War just so he could start another one with Oman.
Reacting to the news that the U.S. and Iran are close to some sort of deal to end the war, Kimmel introduced a clip of Trump at Wednesday’s cabinet meeting, “The proposed deal would open the Strait of Hormuz and begin a 60-day negotiation period to talk about their nuclear program. An agreement would end the war in Iran and maybe give Trump the leg room to start another one.”
In the clip, ABC colleague Rachel Scott asked Trump about Iran trying to rope Oman into its desired tolling scheme in the Strait of Hormuz, “Would you accept a short-term deal that allows Iran and Oman to control the strait?”
Trump said he would not, “Nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have. They would like to control it. Nobody’s going to control it. It’s international waters. And Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up.”
Kimmel reacted, “The peace president, ladies and gentlemen. The winner of the FIFA peace prize is going to blow them up like they’re the toilet in the Lincoln bathroom. Would this be the ninth war he ended or the tenth one he started? Trump has no idea where or even what Oman is. I’m pretty sure he thinks he fired Oman on The Apprentice.”
Christy then defended Trump and his alleged negotiating skills:
First, Oman has carved out a nice little position for itself as the Switzerland of the Middle East, but if it were to abandon that by joining any Iranian effort to toll the strait, there would obviously be consequences. Second, what Kimmel’s freakout omitted was that after Trump said, “Or we’ll have to blow them up,” he added, “They understand that. They’ll be fine.” Third, thankfully, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said on Thursday that he had a conversation with the Omani ambassador, who assured him there is no such plan.
Finally, Kimmel mentioned the deal “would open the Strait of Hormuz.” Indeed, reports say that transit would be “unrestricted.” All of which means that Kimmel is freaking out over a hypothetical that is extremely unlikely, but the omission of key details means that Kimmel’s audience thinks it is much more likely than it is.
Given that there’s still no deal on permanently reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Christy’s defense of Trump seems a little premature.