Jimmy Kimmel: ‘I Have Lost Half of My Fans’

The late night comedy host who bid the unvaccinated to "Rest in Peace" attributes his loss of fans to their pro Trump bias.

John Leake

Jimmy Kimmel, September 7, 2021. “Vaccinated person having a heart attack, yes, come right on in, we’ll take care of you. Unvaccinated person who gobbled horse goo, rest in peace, wheezy.”

As the Epoch Times recently reported:

Popular television host Jimmy Kimmel has revealed that he has lost at least half of his fanbase after cracking jokes against former president Donald Trump.

“I have lost half of my fans—maybe more than that,” Kimmel said in an interview with Stitcher’s “Naked Lunch” podcast. “Ten years ago, among Republicans, I was the most popular talk show host, at least according to the research that they did.” The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show has been airing on ABC since 2003.

Judging by his remarks in the podcast, he seems to have deduced that the former president’s supporters quit watching his show because they disliked his constant ridiculing of their hero. His complaint is in keeping with the common habit of blaming the former president—and those who liked him—for most of the misfortunes afflicting humanity.

The comedian apparently isn’t entertaining the possibility that his incessant Trump jokes were never that funny to begin with, and became less so with protracted repetition. Ridiculing easy targets seldom yields good jokes. The audience is soon irritated by its predictability—its lack of freshness and surprise.

I have heard that Jimmy Kimmel can be quite funny, so I will refrain from making a categorical judgement about his comic ability. I have only seen one segment of his show—a recording of his routine on the night of September 7, 2021. As can be heard at 2:42 on the recording, he said the following:

Fauci has said that if the hospitals get any more overcrowded, they’re going to have to make some very tough choices about who gets an ICU bed. That choice doesn’t seem so tough to me. Vaccinated person having a heart attack, yes, come right on in, we’ll take care of you. Unvaccinated person who gobbled horse goo, rest in peace, wheezy. We’ve still got a lot of pan-dimwits out there. People are still taking this ivermectin. You know the poison control centers have seen this spike in calls from people taking this livestock medicine to fight the coronavirus. But they won’t take the vaccine, which is crazy.

In light of the alarming spike of heart attacks among the vaccinated, Kimmel’s words now seem to possess an unintended, macabre irony.

He wasn’t alone in making bad jokes about COVID-19 patients who took ivermectin. As Dr. McCullough and I document in our book, in 2021 a massive propaganda campaign against ivermectin was waged in the US mainstream media. The campaign’s key talking point was calling ivermectin a “horse dewormer” while omitting to mention it’s also a WHO Essential Medicine for humans and a wonder drug for treating River Blindness and Elephantiasis.

This propaganda campaign culminated on the night of September 7, 2021, when Late-Night comedy hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers all joked about America’s multitude of rubes taking “horse dewormer” instead of getting vaccinated.

In addition to his mendacious characterization of ivermectin as “horse goo,” Kimmel also misled his audience by proclaiming that “poison control centers have seen this spike in calls from people taking this livestock medicine to fight the coronavirus.” He didn’t mention that most of the calls were inquiries about mild side effects and that none of the callers were hospitalized.

The Late-Night shows were just one segment of the US legacy media that was flooded with stories about poison control calls for ivermectin. This well-known propaganda technique, called “flooding” or “firehosing,” broadcasts the same message repetitively and simultaneously over multiple media channels. The Johns Hopkins pandemic simulation, Event 201, featured a conversation about this strategy. Planning board member Matthew Harrington, CEO of Edelman global communications, proclaimed:

We’re at a moment where the social media platforms have to step forward and recognize and to assert that their [claim] to be a technology platform and not a broadcaster is over. They in fact have to be a participant in broadcasting accurate information and partnering with the scientific and health communities to counterweight if not flood the zone of accurate information.

Mr. Harrington did not specify who—that is, what members of the scientific and health communities—would decide what information was accurate and what was misinformation. Another participant, Jane Halton, Chair of CEPI’s Board, also spoke favorably about the “flood strategy” using “trusted sources” of information. She too didn’t specify who would decide which sources were to be trusted.

Perhaps Mr. Kimmel could win back his dwindling fan base if he would stop parroting US government and corporate propaganda, and start writing original material.