ABC announced last week that it was indefinitely pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” The network cited his dishonest remarks about MAGA and the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk. Then on Monday, the network reversed itself. Kimmel is expected to return to the air on Tuesday night.
The original decision outraged the left. Activists immediately claimed it was a violation of free speech, pretending Kimmel was a victim of “cancel culture.” The network’s change of heart likely won’t please anyone, except for Kimmel and his staff. The irony? Kimmel himself cheered when others lost their platforms.
I still live with the fallout of his lies. Many others do too. For once, at least, Kimmel faces consequences.
This isn’t a man who deserves sympathy. I know from experience.
Five years ago, while working for the California Republican Party, I promoted the party’s legal ballot collection efforts online. That one tweet turned into a smear campaign. Politicians and left-leaning groups smeared and defamed me. My own employers abandoned me.
Media figures amplified the false narrative. None did more damage than Jimmy Kimmel. Days after the controversy began, he ran a segment featuring my full name and photo. He falsely claimed my work was illegal and added a grotesque line suggesting that someone should stuff me into a ballot collection box. The box was too small to fit a person. The implication was obvious.
He wasn’t joking. The segment was a televised incitement that smeared my reputation and put my safety at even greater risk.
The consequences came fast. Threats filled my inbox. Law enforcement advised me to leave my apartment and lay low. Police guarded my parents’ home after they were harassed.
When my short-term contract with the California Republican Party ended, I couldn’t find work. Despite my clean record, military service, and two master’s degrees, doors kept closing. They still do. Kimmel wasn’t the only one who defamed me, but his national broadcast magnified the lies and hardened the damage.
Unlike Kimmel, I didn’t have millions in the bank or a network behind me. I was a junior staffer, recently out of the military, scraping by on less than $60,000 a year. His words carried a weight mine never could.
In 2023, NFL star Aaron Rodgers joked that Kimmel didn’t want the Epstein client list released. Kimmel threatened to sue him. Yet when Kimmel broadcast falsehoods about me — and encouraged violence against me — no apology ever came.
Kimmel even lectured Rodgers from his monologue: “When I do get something wrong, which happens on rare occasions, you know what I do? I apologize.” That’s an obvious lie. He certainly never apologized to me.
And I’m not the only one. He has encouraged vandalism against Tesla owners and, most recently, pushed the outrageous lie that Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin was a MAGA Republican — a smear made after evidence proved otherwise.
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Contrary to the left-liberal narrative, ABC’s move was not political interference. It was business. Kimmel’s audience had been shrinking for years. Just this month, his ratings fell another 11%. His rant about Kirk’s assassination would only have accelerated the collapse.
Networks have every right to act when a host becomes a liability. The First Amendment does not entitle Jimmy Kimmel to ABC’s airwaves.
So, in reality, Kimmel’s return to late night may be short-lived. His career decline is his own making. But unlike his targets, he’ll be fine. He will walk away with a $50 million net worth. He’ll find plenty of work again.
I, on the other hand, still live with the fallout of his lies. Many others do too. But for a moment, at least, Kimmel faced consequences. And to borrow a favorite line from his liberal supporters: Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” President Trump declared last week in a Truth Social post.
Later that Monday, he promised an executive order “to end mail-in ballots because they are corrupt. You know that we are the only country in the world, I believe — I may be wrong — but just about the only country in the world that uses them because of what's happened: massive fraud all over the place.”
Mail-in voting reopens the door to the fraud and vote-buying America worked so hard to eliminate a century ago.
Trump has remained consistent; even before the 2020 election, he warned: “There is a lot of dishonesty going along with mail-in voting.”
Trump doesn’t need to hedge about voting rules abroad. Poland was the only other country that considered conducting its 2020 presidential election by mail during the pandemic, but it also abandoned the attempt.
Countries don’t use the kind of mass mail-in voting now used in eight states, where all registered voters receive ballots automatically and then mail them back. That system differs from absentee ballots, which require a request and traditionally demand a reason, such as being out of town on Election Day.
The United States doesn’t just stand out for its use of mail-in ballots — it’s also distinct for its unusually broad use of absentee ballots. Of 47 European countries, 35 — including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden — ban absentee voting for citizens living in the country. Ten others — including England, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain — allow it only if voters pick up their ballots in person and present photo ID.
Six of those restrict absentee ballots to the military or hospitalized voters, and they require verification from the military or hospital itself. The United States, by contrast, lets anyone claim he will be out of town and receive a ballot by mail.
England once followed rules similar to America’s. But in 2004, officials uncovered a massive fraud in Birmingham City Council races. Six winning Labour candidates had acquired about 40,000 fraudulent absentee votes, mainly from Muslim neighborhoods. England responded by ending the mailing of absentee ballots and requiring in-person pickup with photo ID.
France once had similarly loose rules. But in 1975, authorities exposed large-scale fraud on the island of Corsica, where dead people “voted” in the hundreds of thousands and widespread vote-buying flourished. France responded by banning absentee voting altogether.
Concerns over absentee ballots once united both Democrats and Republicans. “Absentee ballots are the largest source of potential voter fraud.” That warning doesn’t come from Trump but from the bipartisan 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, led by Democrat President Jimmy Carter and Republican Secretary of State James Baker III.
Voters across the spectrum still share those worries. A Rasmussen poll at the end of last year found that 59% of likely voters believe mail-in voting makes cheating easier. Majorities of black, Hispanic, and white voters agreed, along with both young and old. Only Democrats, liberals, graduate-school alumni, and those earning more than $200,000 disagreed. Earlier surveys saw similar results.
Even the New York Times once raised alarms. In 2012, the paper warned that the increased use of absentee ballots “will probably result in more uncounted votes, and it increases the potential for fraud.” But these days, that same newspaper insists voter-fraud claims for absentee ballots are “baseless” and “without evidence.”
RELATED: 'Conspiracy theorists' right again? FBI reveals MASSIVE alleged Chinese voter fraud plot
American history reinforces these concerns. Between 1888 and 1950, widespread vote-buying led states to adopt the secret ballot. Once voters could no longer prove to buyers how they had voted, the payments stopped. As one state after another started using secret ballots, turnout immediately fell by 8% to 12%, according to my research with the late Larry Kenny at the University of Florida — evidence of just how rampant the practice had been.
The Carter-Baker commission also highlighted how absentee voting enables coercion.
Citizens who vote at home, at nursing homes, at the workplace, or in church are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or to intimidation. Vote-buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.
The problem is that both the buyer and seller have an incentive to hide the purchase.
Recent cases confirm the risks. Earlier this year, prosecutors indicted six Texans for harvesting ballots and buying votes by collecting absentee ballots. Absentee voting lets sellers prove how they voted, and ballot harvesting lets buyers ensure that the votes count — guaranteeing they get what they paid for.
Just this month, investigators in Hamtramck, Michigan, opened a fraud case after surveillance video showed a city council candidate’s aide stuffing three stacks of ballots into a drop box. The candidate had won by only a few dozen votes.
Mail-in voting reopens the door to the fraud and vote-buying America worked so hard to eliminate a century ago. That’s why countries such as Norway and Mexico prohibit absentee ballots for citizens voting domestically. Americans deserve the same safeguard — a voting system they can trust.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he will "lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we're at it, Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES."
The president — whose announcement comes just 10 days after a pair of councilmen in Hamtramck, Michigan, were charged with election and absentee ballot fraud — indicated that he will kick off this initiative with a forthcoming executive order aimed at ensuring honesty in the 2026 midterm elections.
'Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM.'
The president has long raised concerns over mail-in voting and voting machines.
Ahead of the 2020 election, Trump warned that mail-in voting "WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE" and noted that "unless changed by the courts, will lead to the most CORRUPT ELECTION in our Nation's History!"
Trump also warned: "RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!"
Absent corrective action over such concerns, former President Joe Biden managed to somehow win the 2020 election, netting millions more votes than Kamala Harris did in 2024.
— (@)
FBI Director Kash Patel vindicated some of Trump's concerns, revealing in June that intelligence reports from August 2020 detailed "allegations of plans from the [Chinese Communist Party] to manufacture fake driver's licenses and ship them into the United States for the purpose of facilitating fraudulent mail-in ballots — allegations which, while substantiated, were abruptly recalled and never disclosed to the public."
'ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING.'
Between January 1 and June 30, 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 1,513 shipments containing fraudulent documents, including 19,888 counterfeit U.S. driver's licenses.
RELATED: Election officials rage as Trump administration pushes for election security
In addition to possible exploitation by bad actors at home and abroad, Politico highlighted another reason why Trump might want to spike mail-in voting: Historically, Democrats have turned in more mail-in votes than Republicans, who alternatively vote more often in person.
According to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, 62% of respondents who identified as Republicans or leaned Republican said voters should be able to vote early or absentee if they had a documented reason for not voting in person on Election Day. Only 17% of Democrats or Democratic-leaning respondents said the same.
The Election Assistance Commission indicated that nearly 15 million mail-in ballots were returned at ballot drop boxes in the 2024 election.
"With their HORRIBLE Radical Left policies, like Open Borders, Men Playing in Women's Sports, Transgender and 'WOKE' for everyone, and so much more, Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM," Trump wrote on Monday. "ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS."
Trump suggested further that other countries have ditched mail-in voting "because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED."
The president suggested it would be worthwhile to scrap voting machines because they supposedly "cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election."
The Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution holds that "the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof."
Trump's allusion to working with the Republican Party to "BRING HONESTY AND INTEGRITY BACK TO OUR ELECTIONS" signals an intention to lean on congressional Republicans to wield their constitutional authority to "make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) expressed support for Trump's initiative, writing, "We must do everything we can to protect the integrity of our elections. No more mail-in ballots!"
Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray (R) called the elimination of mail-in ballots "common sense."
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The reprinted outer envelope has a colorful box where voters write the date they voted, but somehow, thousands of voters miss the date
Our country would be better off with a return to the gold standard: voting in-person on Election Day.
President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he would work to “get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS.” Democrats and their media allies reflexively attacked the president, insisting that mail-in voting is secure — as if repeating it often enough makes it true. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said on CNN that “Mail ballots are secure.” […]
It is good officials are still digging into the 2020 election, but it is past time to repair the election process for future elections.
These newly charged nine join six charged in early May, creating a group of 15 total suspects. Among them are several Pearsall Council Members, a Frio County judge, and two former local mayors, in addition to the former Democrat House candidate.
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