Instead of taking the loss after getting caught in a lie, what does late night host Jimmy Kimmel do? He plays the victim instead. He opened his ABC show Monday night going on a nearly five minute rant against his critics on Twitter after they called him out for playing a deceptively edited clip of Vice President Mike Pence on his show last week.
On that show, Kimmel cut short a video clip of the VP delivering PPE boxes to a nursing home, to claim he was just carrying empty boxes for a publicity stunt. However, Pence was joking, and that was evident in the seconds that followed, which Kimmel cut out of the segment. After being called out for being misleading, Kimmel offered a snarky apology on Twitter, and then went on this unhinged tirade on his Monday night show:
[O]n Thursday night, I showed a video. It was one of these embarrassing photo ops of Mike Pence, the Vice President, carrying boxes, delivering PPE to a facility for senior citizens. It was a publicity stunt to show how much they're "doing." But that happens in politics, ok. Fine. The trouble started because at one point of the video, after awkwardly lugging a heavy box to the door, Mike Pence finds some empty boxes in the van. Why there were empty boxes in the back of the van I don't know. But he finds them and says, "Can I just carry the empty ones just for the camera?" Which turns out he was joking. How anyone can tell when Mike Pence is joking I don't know. I didn't know. But he was joking. I didn't know because I had only seen part of the video. Turns out, there were 29 minutes of this on C-SPAN, that apparently indicate he was joking about the empty boxes for the cameras. Which, again, I did not know because I don't have the mental endurance it requires to watch Mike Pence deliver boxes for 29 minutes on C-SPAN. But I should have watched the whole thing. I guess.
Bottom line is, I was wrong. He was joking. I didn't know. I made a mistake. And when I found out I was wrong I acknowledged it by taking the video down and tweeting an apology of sorts. To the best of my ability. Apologizing to the Trump administration for spreading untruth is like apologizing to Barry Bonds for using steroids. It's hard. But the outrage from the MAGA hats, the outpouring of venom was disgusting. Stupid too, but mostly digusting. Some of these lunatics have the audacity to use the word "Christian" in their bios, but that didn't stop them from wishing death on me, on my family, on my son. Some of them said they hope my son dies. They threatened my wife. There were hundreds of horrible, hateful, sometimes violent Twitter and Facebook posts. Because I showed what they kept calling a doctored video. Which was not a doctored video, by the way. We didn't do anything to it. We didn't "doctor" it. Doctors are the people Donald Trump doesn't listen to. And doctored videos are something Donald Trump posts all the time. Some of his paid campaign ads are doctored videos that had to be removed for violating the rules about that sort of thing
....
And I got an email from the Vice President's office requesting that I apologize on air. On Twitter wasn't enough I guess. They wanted it on air. Because this is what they're thinking about while thousands of Americans are dying every day. Jokes from late-night talk show hosts. But ok, you know what? It was my mistake, I do apologize to the vice president, again, for spreading misinformation about him. Spreading misinformation is their thing and I stepped on their toes...
Yikes, does someone sound bitter? Obviously no one should be getting death threats. Maybe Kimmel should think about how many death threats the VP gets from misleading segments like his.
Kimmel couldn’t even stop defending himself in his cynical apology. He feigned ignorance, saying that users got the full context from an extra 29 minutes that played on C-Span. That’s not true at all. The full context of the clip showed what actually happened in the following 15 seconds of the clip Kimmel played. So his reasoning here that he didn't see it, is pretty dubious.
Still Kimmel deserves credit for at least acknowledging he spread misinformation. Late night hosts shouldn't be held to higher standards than NBC journalists, who don't apologize for doing the same thing.
You can see the full diatribe from Kimmel below:
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
5/11/2020
KIMMEL: This was probably the strangest Mother's Day ever, especially for me. I spent some of my Mother's Day in a Twitter feud with, you know that weird baby that lives in the White House? The one with the orange face? Well, he is in a mood! And apparently part of the reason for that mood is because of something I did.
On Thursday night, I showed a video. It was one of these embarrassing photo ops of Mike Pence, the Vice President, carrying boxes, delivering PPE to a facility for senior citizens. It was a publicity stunt to show how much they're "doing." But that happens in politics, ok. Fine. The trouble started because at one point of the video, after awkwardly lugging a heavy box to the door, Mike Pence finds some empty boxes in the van. Why there were empty boxes in the back of the van I don't know. But he finds them and says, "Can I just carry the empty ones just for the camera?" Which turns out he was joking. How anyone can tell when Mike Pence is joking I don't know. I didn't know. But he was joking. I didn't know because I had only seen part of the video. Turns out, there were 29 minutes of this on C-SPAN, that apparently indicate he was joking about the empty boxes for the cameras. Which, again, I did not know because I don't have the mental endurance it requires to watch Mike Pence deliver boxes for 29 minutes on C-SPAN. But I should have watched the whole thing. I guess.
Bottom line is, I was wrong. He was joking. I didn't know. I made a mistake. And when I found out I was wrong I acknowledged it by taking the video down and tweeting an apology of sorts. To the best of my ability. Apologizing to the Trump administration for spreading untruth is like apologizing to Barry Bonds for using steroids. It's hard. But the outrage from the MAGA hats, the outpouring of venom was disgusting. Stupid too, but mostly digusting. Some of these lunatics have the audacity to use the word "Christian" in their bios, but that didn't stop them from wishing death on me, on my family, on my son. Some of them said they hope my son dies. They threatened my wife. There were hundreds of horrible, hateful, sometimes violent Twitter and Facebook posts. Because I showed what they kept calling a doctored video. Which was not a doctored video, by the way. We didn't do anything to it. We didn't "doctor" it. Doctors are the people Donald Trump doesn't listen to. And doctored videos are something Donald Trump posts all the time. Some of his paid campaign ads are doctored videos that had to be removed for violating the rules about that sort of thing.
But these people who blindly pledge their allegiance to Donald Trump instead of this country are so -- their hypocrisy runs so deep they don't even seem to be aware of it anymore. It's like when an Uber driver wears too much cologne. The communications director for Mike Pence's campaign tweeted all day about this Friday. All day it's the only thing he tweeted about.
And I got an email from the Vice President's office requesting that I apologize on air. On Twitter wasn't enough I guess. They wanted it on air. Because this is what they're thinking about while thousands of Americans are dying every day. Jokes from late-night talk show hosts. But ok, you know what? It was my mistake, I do apologize to the vice president, again, for spreading misinformation about him. Spreading misinformation is their thing and I stepped on their toes. But now that I've done that, I would like the vice president, since he asked me to apologize, to ask his boss, who lies every time there isn't a Mcnugget in his mouth, to apologize for the following perversions of decency and democracy. Mike Pence has stood by and warmly enabled with a smug little twinkle in his eye these things for four miserable years. We would like an apology for:separating thousands of migrant children from their parents, inviting the Taliban to Camp David, siding with Vladimir Putin over U.S. Intelligence. Calling neo-nazis "Very fine people." Using campaign money to pay off a porn star. Mocking a 16-year-old climate activist. Mocking Christine Blasey Ford. Obstruction of justice. Ignoring warnings on coronavirus. Downplaying the dangers of coronavirus. Mishandling the coronavirus. We still don't have tests for the coronavirus. Why are we opening the country when we have no tests for coronavirus? There are about 15,000 more. But let's start with apologizing for those, and we’ll get to the rest.
