ABC yanked Jimmy Kimmel off the air last year after he implied a MAGA supporter killed Charlie Kirk.
He came back, went on Michelle Obama's podcast to complain about people criticizing his politics, and declared that nobody gets to tell him what his job is.
And Greg Gutfeld just told him exactly what his problem is.
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Kimmel appeared on Michelle Obama's IMO podcast this week and pushed back on viewers who say late-night should stay out of politics.
"Don't tell me what my job is," Kimmel said. "My job is whatever I decide my job is, whatever my employer allows me to do."
He added that ignoring current events and not speaking honestly would embarrass him.
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Gutfeld answered that on Friday's The Five – and he didn't hold back.
"Look, he is right," Gutfeld said. "He doesn't have to listen to criticism, but then don't complain about it."
"You can do what you want and we can tell you what sucks. You get paid handsomely so take it like a man and stop blubbering."
Then Gutfeld identified the real problem.
"My feeling is, he's hopeless because he's decided he's too important to be funny,” he said. "He's incapable of self-deprecation, he can't poke fun at himself and he lost the ability to be silly."
Gutfeld contrasted that with his own approach.
"I am a fool,” he said. “I'm the first to admit it. I embrace it. No one mocks me more than me."
Then came the challenge.
"Try to be a right winger for a year, and I don't complain,” he said.
Johnny Carson Never Told You How He Voted and Gutfeld Never Forgot It
Johnny Carson ran The Tonight Show for thirty years and nobody ever knew how he voted.
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Jay Leno took over that same desk and made fun of both parties for twenty-two years.
Both men dominated their time slots for as long as they wanted them.
Carson and Leno understood something Kimmel never figured out: the moment you pick a side, you cut your audience in half.
Gutfeld built his entire show around that lesson – hired comics who punch in every direction, and drew 3.49 million viewers a night in March without a single broadcast network behind him.
Kimmel is pulling 2.5 million viewers on a broadcast network that reaches every television in America – and Gutfeld is still beating him from cable.
Stephen Colbert is done on May 21 – CBS canceled The Late Show after it was hemorrhaging $40 million a year, and Variety called his final season "not very good TV."
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Kimmel already had his show suspended last fall after comments about Charlie Kirk's death.
ABC called those comments "ill-timed and insensitive" and pulled the show for six days.
He came back with the same politics and the same attitude – and then went on a former First Lady's podcast to explain why critics should mind their own business.
Gutfeld didn't just beat these guys in the ratings.
He beat them while taking more incoming fire than any host in television – mocked by late-night peers, ignored by mainstream press, dismissed as a cable novelty – and never once asked anyone to feel sorry for him.
Colbert's cancellation should have been Kimmel's warning shot.
It wasn't – because Kimmel can't hear it from inside the bubble where everyone tells him he's brave and important.
His show survives for now, but ABC already pulled it once and Gutfeld's total-viewer lead holds regardless of the quarterly swings.
The moment Kimmel's numbers stop being defensible to Disney's accountants, the podcast circuit with Michelle Obama is all he has left.
Kimmel stopped being a comedian and became a cause.
And causes aren't funny – Kimmel just spent years proving it.
Sources:
- Anjali Mathur, "Gutfeld blasts Kimmel, calls him 'hopeless,' dares him to live as a conservative," MEAWW, April 19, 2026.
- Alex Christy, "Broadcast Bias: Late-Night Comedy Death Spiral Shows How Leftist Hate Killed Their Humor," Fox News, January 3, 2026.
- Alexander Hall, "CBS to replace Colbert's 'Late Show' with Byron Allen's 'Comics Unleashed,'" Fox News, April 6, 2026.
- Isabella Torregiani, "Jimmy Fallon Can't Understand Fox News Star's Ratings," April 7, 2026.