ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel did not take kindly to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Tuesday announcement that he is ditching the company’s relationship with its fact-checking partners. Naturally, Kimmel assumed that if a self-appointed fact-checker says something is true, it must be true, as he compared the move to a taco restaurant getting rid of health inspectors and declared the truth “as we know it” is over.
Kimmel began by introducing a clip of Zuckerberg’s announcement, “But somehow, all the other billionaire tech boys are jealous, including the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, who’s been kissing Trump's ass like it's the Blarney Stone lately. Mark Zuckerberg showed up to debase himself at Mar-a-Lago shortly after the election, today, he released a suspiciously Trump-friendly announcement.”
Zuckerberg was then shown saying, “Hey everyone, I want to talk about something important today.”
In the first of many interruptions, Kimmel retorted, “What, that you're dressed like a Molly dealer from Chechnya? No? Oh, okay, go on.”
The Zuckerberg video continued, “First, we're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the U.S.”
Kimmel replied, “Oh, good, Facebook is going to be similar to X. No fact-checkers. This is like Del Taco announcing they're done with health inspections.”
Sure, if the health inspector was corrupt or incompetent. As it was, the next Zuckerberg snippet showed him adding, “We're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
That’s a legitimate point. For example, one of PolitiFact’s hobby horses is that left-wing gender revisionism is factually correct. However, Kimmel claimed the opposite, “What did Trump do to this woman? What has happened? Imagine—imagine being one of the wealthiest people in the world and making the decision to announce the end of truth as we know it while dressed as Macklemore in 2014.”
In the final clip, Zuckerberg declared, “Finally, we're going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more.”
Kimmel responded, “Yeah, we call it the Old Suck and Zuck. That is—that's embarrassing. I'm trying to decide which part is worse: Mark Zuckerberg just flushing whatever dignity he had down Trump's golden toilet or the fact that he's clearly transitioning into one of the Golden Girls.”
It is easy for Kimmel to attack Zuckerberg’s decision because the fact-checking joke police never came for him despite the factual inaccuracies in some of his jokes or the satirical nature of others.
Here is a transcript for the January 7 show:
ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!
1/7/2025
11:45 PM ET
JIMMY KIMMEL: But somehow, all the other billionaire tech boys are jealous, including the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, who’s been kissing Trump's ass like it's the Blarney Stone lately. Mark Zuckerberg showed up to debase himself at Mar-a-Lago shortly after the election, today, he released a suspiciously Trump-friendly announcement.
MARK ZUCKERBERG: Hey everyone, I want to talk about something important today.
KIMMEL: What, that you're dressed like a Molly dealer from Chechnya? No? Oh, okay, go on.
ZUCKERBERG: First, we're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the U.S.
KIMMEL: Oh, good, Facebook is going to be similar to X. No fact-checkers. This is like Del Taco announcing they're done with health inspections.
ZUCKERBERG: We're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.
KIMMEL: What did Trump do to this woman? What has happened? Imagine — imagine being one of the wealthiest people in the world and making the decision to announce the end of truth as we know it while dressed as Macklemore in 2014.
ZUCKERBERG: Finally, we're going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more.
KIMMEL: Yeah, we call it the Old Suck and Zuck. That is — that's embarrassing. I'm trying to decide which part is worse: Mark Zuckerberg just flushing whatever dignity he had down Trump's golden toilet or the fact that he's clearly transitioning into one of the Golden Girls.
