MAGA Rages Over Jimmy Kimmel’s Return—and Reveals a Big Trump Weakness

The truth about this sleazy little game is that MAGA wants the best of both worlds. They wanted Trump and Carr to wield authoritarian pressure to bully networks into silencing someone whose speech about Kirk—but also about Trump—they hate. And when that actually worked, they tried to recast it as a sign of the cultural times, as an indication that the culture is moving inexorably in Trump’s direction.

Hannity insisted last week, for instance, that Kimmel had been removed because audiences were tired of “nonstop, never-ending hate-Donald-Trump.” In other words, the culture is registering a massive backlash to anti-Trump humor. The markets have spoken! But if that were the case, then Trump and Carr wouldn’t need to wield the pressure of the authoritarian state to oust him.

Paradoxically enough, it was that use of authoritarian state power that provoked a massive cultural backlash—but in the opposite direction. Unions representing nearly half a million workers condemned Disney for caving to Trump’s autocratic pressure. An astonishing range of figures with large followings drawn from across the culture spoke out, including the occasional conservative Republican. Data analyst G. Elliott Morris demonstrates that the backlash reached from the small-investor class to ordinary consumers. As The New York Times reports, Disney faced “pressure from its customers, some of whom canceled Disney+ subscriptions and Disney World vacations in protest.”