Dave Portnoy Brutally Mocked — Including by Barstool Hosts — for Bizarre Defense of Kimmel Suspension

Screenshot via Barstool Sports

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy is facing backlash, including from some of his own employees, over his defense of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show being indefinitely suspended.

In a Wednesday X post, Portnoy claimed that Kimmel’s show being put on hold is not an example of “cancel culture” as critics have been saying. Portnoy has typically been a vocal critic of “cancel culture” and people losing their gigs over controversial statements.

Portnoy wrote:

With Kimmel getting canned I’m seeing lots of people talking about the hypocrisy of cancel culture. To me Cancel culture is when people go out of their way to dig up old tweets, videos etc looking for dirt on somebody they don’t like in an effort to get them fired. Like if Kimmel got canceled for shit he did on the Man Show that would be cancel culture. But when a person says something that a ton of people find offensive, rude, dumb in real time and then that person is punished for it that’s not cancel culture. That is consequences for your actions

ABC announced on Wednesday that Kimmel’s show was being put on hold indefinitely following the comedian’s comments about 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who is facing charges over the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Kimmel insisted on his show that Robinson was a right-winger, despite officials like the Utah governor and County Attorney both saying Robinson was “indoctrinated in leftist ideology” in recent years. Robinson reportedly felt Kirk was spreading hate.

Portnoy’s defense of Kimmel getting taken off the air earned plenty of pushback, with critics calling him a hypocrite, asking if he’ll support similar decisions at his own company.

“Will you also bend the knee when this shit eventually happens to Barstool?” Barstool Sports writer Brian McGonagle, aka Rear Admiral, wrote in an X post responding to Portnoy.

“Nope,” Kirk Minihane, a Barstool podcaster, simply wrote.

During Monday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Kimmel accused the “MAGA gang” of “desperately” trying to make Robinson out to be on the left, as the governor and others have described him.

“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,” Kimmel said.

The suspension of the show came just hours after Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr took aim at Kimmel.

“Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on Wednesday. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”