Jimmy Kimmel — the man ABC pays millions of dollars a year to read mean tweets and cry on camera — decided last week that the funniest thing he could think of was to joke that 81-year-old Rudy Giuliani had “risen from the grave.” Five days later, Giuliani was hospitalized in critical but stable condition.
Hilarious, right? Real knee-slapper, Jimmy. Nothing says “comedy” like mocking a dying man and then having reality prove you’re not just cruel — you’re prophetic in the worst possible way.
Here’s what happened. Giuliani appeared on a podcast and called Kimmel “one of the most distasteful beings in this country.” Which — fair. Kimmel’s response on his show was to play the clip and crack jokes about Giuliani crawling out of the grave. His audience laughed, because that’s what trained seals do when the light goes on.
Then Giuliani ended up in the ICU.
Now, a normal human being — someone with even a sliver of self-awareness — might feel a twinge of “maybe I shouldn’t have done that.” But we’re not dealing with normal human beings. We’re dealing with late-night television hosts, which is a species that abandoned shame somewhere around 2016 and never looked back.
And here’s the thing that should bother every single one of us: this isn’t even the first time Kimmel has joked about someone’s death right before something horrible happened. Remember what he said about Melania Trump just days before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting? He called her an “expectant widow” — a joke about the age gap between her and President Trump. Days later, someone opened fire at the WHCD.
Two “jokes” about people dying. Two times reality came knocking almost immediately afterward.
At what point does ABC look at this guy and say, “Hey, maybe cool it with the death humor”? (Trick question — ABC doesn’t care. They’ve never cared. The network that ran interference for every Democrat scandal since Watergate isn’t going to suddenly develop standards over a comedian wishing death on Republicans.)
But let’s zoom out for a second, because this is about more than one unfunny man on a soundstage in Hollywood.
This is who they are.
They mocked Giuliani when he was America’s Mayor after 9/11, and they’ll mock him while he’s hooked up to machines in a hospital bed. There is no floor. There is no line they won’t cross. An 81-year-old man who walked through the dust of Ground Zero and held this country together during its darkest week is now a punchline for a guy whose biggest life achievement is hosting a show where celebrities read insults from anonymous Twitter accounts.
Rudy Giuliani isn’t perfect — nobody is. He’s made mistakes, he’s fought battles he probably shouldn’t have fought, and the left has spent the last six years trying to destroy him legally, financially, and personally. They took his law license. They took his money. They dragged him through court after court. And when all of that still wasn’t enough, they decided to just laugh at him dying.
That’s the progressive movement in 2026. That’s the party of “compassion” and “empathy” and “when they go low, we go high.” They go high — right to the ICU to crack jokes over your hospital bed.
Remember when these same people lectured us about “civility in politics”? Remember when they couldn’t stop talking about “the coarsening of public discourse” every time Trump posted on Truth Social? Apparently civility means you can joke about an old man dying as long as he’s a Republican. The rules, as always, only apply to us.
And Kimmel knows he’s untouchable. That’s the worst part. He sits behind that desk every night knowing that no matter what comes out of his mouth — death jokes, widow jokes, whatever vile thing pops into his head next — the machine will protect him. The same media that would end a conservative comedian’s career over a bad tweet will shrug and move on when Kimmel essentially does a comedy bit about Giuliani’s funeral.
There are reports that the FCC might actually review some of Kimmel’s content. We’ll believe that when we see it. The regulatory state has never once held a left-wing entertainer accountable for anything, and starting now would require a level of backbone that Washington bureaucrats haven’t demonstrated since — well, ever.
But here’s what we can do. We can remember. We can remember that when Rudy Giuliani was fighting for his life, Jimmy Kimmel was getting laughs about it. We can remember that ABC aired it, Disney approved it, and the entire Hollywood machine thought it was perfectly fine.
And the next time any of these people lecture us about “tone” or “decency” or “the dignity of public life,” we can remind them exactly what they thought was funny when an 81-year-old American hero was in critical condition.
Rudy — we’re pulling for you. Get well soon. And Jimmy? Maybe stick to reading mean tweets. At least those are supposed to be cruel.
