Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” host Jesse Watters reacted to ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s indefinite suspension a day earlier.
Watters said he did not believe Kimmel should be fired for his comment regarding Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, but suggested that economics should have been a factor in Kimmel’s tenure with ABC.
“First of all, it wasn’t a joke,” he said. “He blamed the right for killing Charlie with a straight face. It was a lie, and it puts a target on the right’s back. And second, can late-night comedians on TV tell racist jokes? Can they tell Jewish jokes? Can you tell gay jokes on network TV? Can they talk about how fat and ugly their bosses are? Of course not. I don’t think Kimmel should be fired for a bad joke or even this comment, but there are standards in show business. Everyone in the business knows it. If he wants to tell lies and make scornful comments about half the country and get really edgy, get a podcast or do it on Netflix.”
Watters added, “Do you think Johnny Carson, before Kennedy’s funeral, could say it was the Catholics that shot him in Dallas? Everyone is making this about free speech. It’s about business. You can’t run a business when your employees make you look bad, and people are threatening not to put your product on the shelf, and when you ask your employee to apologize, he says, eff you. Straight to H.R., Kimmel. And is Kimmel even worth it? Look at his ratings from the last 15 years. Look at that. He should have been let go a long time ago. He assassinated his own numbers. The Disney stock price hasn’t gone up in the last four years. This isn’t about censorship. This is about math.”
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