Speech in America was never free. I remind people of this regularly. The government can’t throw you in jail for calling the president an idiot, but you can be fired if knowledge of your opinion makes you an ineffective employee. Journalists, for example, who publicly take sides on an issue or political candidate can’t objectively report the news on those topics.

The First Amendment doesn’t protect you from the natural consequences of your expression.

The speech police

What about a late-night talk show host who questions the politicization of a public figure’s assassination? What should be the natural consequence of questioning a particular group’s motives for connecting an alleged murderer to an opposing political party or ideology?

Jimmy Kimmel dared to ask why Republicans are so quick to paint Charlie Kirk’s assassin as an extremist liberal. Kimmel said nothing disparaging about Kirk. He neither celebrated nor incited violence. In the flaming trash pile of problematic speech broadcast daily for public consumption, Kimmel’s question provoked an immediate response from the Federal Communication Commission.

Where were regulators in 2012 when Alex Jones broadcast to millions that a cabal of liberal fanatics staged the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School? While the FCC doesn’t have regulatory authority over internet broadcasts, I’m told by Republicans that government agencies routinely act outside the law. Where was the GOP outrage when Jones—a member of the tribe—told listeners that child actors were playing dead in crime scene photos?

It took a long, expensive civil lawsuit filed by parents of the Sandy Hook victims to finally hold Jones accountable for knowingly and maliciously lying about the shooting.

A history of partisan rhetoric

I remember Republicans in 2011 clutching their pearls at the suggestion conservative campaign rhetoric played a role in the near assassination of then Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Six years later, another Arizona lawmaker, Congressman Steve Scalise, was shot in Washington, D.C.

Predictably, the period of bipartisan civility that followed was brief. In an editorial about the dangers of escalating rhetoric, the “New York Times” connected a 2010 political mailer featuring crosshairs over Gifford’s congressional district to the 2011 shooting that critically wounded Giffords and left five adults and one child dead. Former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose Political Action Committee produced the mailer, sued the “Times” even after the publication retracted the implication that her PAC mailer incited the shooting. (A jury sided against Palin earlier this year, finding insufficient evidence the “Times’” editorial damaged her reputation.) 

Imagine if a liberal PAC distributed a mailer featuring crosshairs over the Turning Point USA logo. 

Hello Kettle

In the wake of Kirk’s assassination, The Trump Administration has threatened severe consequences for any speech or expression that may be interpreted as anti Kirk and, as of Sept. 18, anti Trump. Kimmel’s, frankly, tepid criticism of MAGA Republicans was clearly a bridge too far. Conservatives, like former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, are celebrating Kimmel’s indefinite suspension from late night TV. Hypocrisy has always run rampant in Trump World, but it’s taken a physical form like the gelatinous blob from the 1950s horror movie. JD Vance is actually complaining about incivility.

Think back to 2021 when he labeled his predecessor and other women Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made… “

What about the Haitians he terrorized in 2024 posting on Twitter that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were slaughtering and eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs? Republicans, if anything, were annoyed at “woke” liberals’ attempts to “cancel” Trump’s bearded sidekick and the king himself for maliciously subjecting an entire community to repeated bomb threats, physical violence and daily harassment both online and in person. Why should we waste compassion on people from one of the “sh** hole countries”? 

Big, beautiful …

Speaking of Trump, does anyone do incendiary rhetoric and threats of violence on a more massive scale?

There was the rally in 2016 where he “jokingly” offered to cover the legal expenses of anyone who punched out a member of the “fake news media”—the media that nevertheless fact checked photoshopped images of convicted killer Derek Chauvin wearing a MAGA hat. There was the “peaceful gathering” Trump hosted in 2020 on the National Mall where Republican “tourists” erected a gallows to execute Vice President Mike Pence. There was the Tucker Carlson interview where Trump said of former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney,

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels pointed at her… Let’s see how she feels about it when the guns are trained on her face.” 

Donald Trump

Takeaways

Kirk was a victim of gun violence. Early reports suggest he was targeted because of his commentary on politics, religion, and social issues like LGBTQ+ rights. Regardless of who Tyler Robinson assimilated with romantically, emotionally, or politically, he’s the only alleged shooter. Mark David Chapman had a copy of “The Catcher and the Rye” when he assassinated John Lennon in 1980. As far as I know, JD Salinger wasn’t charged and convicted as an accessory to murder.

If all Democrats and members of the LGBTQ+ community are assassins by association, then all associates and acquaintances of Jeffrey Epstein are pedophiles by the same token.