Kimmel's show was suspended by Disney-owned ABC after a monologue about the shooting death of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk.
Maher rips Dems for being stupidSteve Jordahl, AFN.net How far left has the Democratic Party gone? Even comedian Bill Maher is sounding reasonable. On his HBO show “Real Time” on Friday, he dished out a bit of advice to the party that has made it a required tenet of faith that boys can become girls. “Stop coming up with radically new and often terrible ideas," he complained, "and then in the next breath insist there be no debate about any of it; that if you don’t see it right away and go along, you’re bad, stupid, deplorable, as if you were saying, ‘Duh, two plus two equals five, isn’t that obvious?” |
"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 and doing everything they can to score political points from it."
Kimmel returned to air days later and sought to clarify his remarks. He did not apologize.
"I don't think what I say is going to make much of a difference," Kimmel told his audience. "If you like me, you like me, if you don't you don't … it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man."
Since his return, CNN and other news outlets have reported a "ratings bonanza" for Kimmel.
Curtis Houck of MRC's Newsbusters thinks it's only temporary.
"Kimmel has long lagged in the ratings. Kimmel has been behind fellow partisan late-night group therapy for libs host Stephen Colbert. So, I think ratings may continue to be high compared to what they were in the past for maybe a few more days, but I would say by this time next week, barring any new revelations, you'll see his ratings come back to earth, crash back to earth."
According to ABC, Kimmel's first episode back reached an audience of 6.26 million total viewers in Live+Same calculations, with an 0.87 rating in the key 18-49 age demographic. That 0.87 marks the talk show's highest-rated regularly scheduled episode since March 2015.
Considering that the show was still preempted in markets including Seattle, St. Louis, and New Orleans (to name just a few), those numbers are missing potential viewers across 23% of households in the United States. The day after, the monologue had accumulated 26 million views across social media and YouTube.
