CNN’s John Berman hit the brakes on GOP pundit Scott Jennings during a discussion about free speech and the sudden canceling of Jimmy Kimmel by parent company Disney.
On Sept. 17, ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was yanked from the air after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr criticized Kimmel’s coverage of Charlie Kirk’s death.
Many observers are shocked by the move, claiming his remarks about Kirk weren’t inflammatory or even that outrageous. Petitions are circulating to reinstate the show, and former President Barack Obama has taken to X to warn about “government coercion” and a “dangerous level” of censorship.
Jennings, however, dug into his MAGA talking points, calling Kimmel’s show a “political propaganda show” and insisting the 57-year-old comedian should face “consequences” for telling Americans “a bunch of lies.”
“Where’s the joke?” Jennings scoffed. “Jimmy Kimmel went on TV the other night, he wasn’t telling jokes.”
That’s when Berman pounced. He reminded viewers that Kimmel had played a video clip of Donald Trump’s bizarre reaction to a question about Kirk’s killing. Instead of addressing the tragedy, Trump rambled about building a $200 million ballroom at the White House.
“The joke came—let me just say—it was a windup to a joke about President Trump’s reaction, commenting on the construction that was going on when he was asked about Charlie Kirk,” Berman explained. “That was the actual joke.”
Jennings tried to push back, “Was it a joke to lie about the shooter?”
But Berman wasn’t letting him spin. He read Kimmel’s words directly into the record.
“What he said—I’m just going to read it out loud—was, ‘We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize the kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.’ So if you read that literally, he was talking about the reaction to the killing right there.”
The rebuke left Jennings visibly flustered. Before he could recover, Berman moved on, turning to panelist Bakari Sellers for a question about Kamala Harris’s running-mate considerations.
Jennings sat awkwardly, gamely shifting into a new topic but clearly cut off mid-spin as Sellers couldn’t help but smirk at Berman’s clever pivot.
Viewers shredded Jennings for his failed performance online. Viewer Peter Colangelo wrote, “Jennings wouldn’t get a joke if it was explained to him a hundred times. He is an uptight MAGA Republican paid to be contrarian. His credibility is zero, just like his dumb incompetent leader.”
Another fumed, “How stupid is this? Humor has been fine for decades until it’s about Trump. They trashed Biden with threats and abuse, but Trump can’t take it? What a disgrace. If he can’t handle jokes, he should just stay in the office and shut up.”
Others attacked CNN for giving Jennings a platform, “Jennings is scum,” added Deborah. “The fact that CNN still allows him to spread his MAGAT talking points proves they’re complicit. I no longer watch CNN.”
And perhaps the sharpest jab, “Scott Jennings’ facial expressions are very annoying even before he opens his MAGA mouth.”
Sellers, for his part, underlined the hypocrisy, “Whether it’s on college campuses or on TV, you’re seeing individuals on the right cherry-pick free speech and cancel people.”
Jennings had earlier let slip the quiet part out loud—that Kimmel “had gone down a path that was actually causing major business trouble”—a veiled reference to the looming $6.2 billion merger.
NextStar Media Group is merging with broadcast rival Tenga to acquire more TV stations, but the deal is subject to regulatory approval by the FCC, which is chaired by Carr. Just hours after Carr spoke against Kimmel, NextStar followed suit and condemned Kimmel’s “recent comments” — although not specifying which ones — and announced his show would be “preempted indefinitely” on its stations.
