Hannity Claims No Conservative Wanted Kimmel Fired — Completely Ignoring Trump Doing Just That
On Wednesday night’s episode of Hannity, the Fox News primetime host addressed ABC’s indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel and bristled at the notion that conservatives bore any responsibility.
“I would argue Kimmel did this to himself, but of course, people want to blame conservatives for this happening,” Sean Hannity said. “Well, can you name one prominent conservative? I’ve been boycotted in my career, had calls for my firing many times in my career. No liberal ever came to my defense. Ever. My private text messages released. No liberal ever came to my defense. Putting all that aside, can you name one prominent conservative that said, ‘I want Jimmy Kimmel fired?’ Because I can’t.”
Fox News contributor Joe Concha backed him up. “Can’t find it. Don’t see it online. And quite frankly, that’s because it does not exist,” Concha declared, before pivoting to an extended critique of Kimmel, arguing that the late-night host doesn’t deserve a broadcast platform.
But that framing leaves out some glaring counterexamples.
President Donald Trump himself has explicitly called for ABC to fire the vocal Trump critic Kimmel, repeatedly attacking the late-night host as “talentless” and at one point demanding that ABC “get rid of Kimmel and perhaps replace him with George Stephanopoulos.”
However, that was during an Oscar hosting gig. After Stephen Colbert’s ouster earlier this year, Trump even leaned into a mob boss flourish by suggesting that Kimmel “would be the next to go.”
Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner at the FCC, went further. Following Kimmel’s controversial and regrettable politicization of the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, Carr said plainly that ABC should suspend Kimmel and suggested affiliates should refuse to air his program. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr warned, holding the network and its parent company Disney to account.
And while Hannity may want to minimize the role of conservative critics, Carr wasn’t alone. Concha himself agreed with the thrust of Hannity’s point, but then spent several minutes railing against why he felt Kimmel is unworthy of his platform — echoing the very kind of public pressure campaign Hannity insists doesn’t exist.
In short, the claim that “no prominent conservative” ever called for Kimmel’s ouster strains credulity. Trump has done so explicitly. Carr has done so in his official capacity as a regulator. And Fox News contributors have repeatedly taken aim at Kimmel’s continued employment at ABC. Hannity’s insistence otherwise amounts to, at best, selective memory — and at worst, flat-out gaslighting.
Watch above via Fox News.
