The Jimmy Kimmel Trap: We Fell For It Again...

Well, that was fast. After a brief suspension and a heart-to-heart with his bettors, Jimmy Kimmel was back on the late-night roster. Kimmel had outraged the country after Charlie Kirk's death with an outright lie. We had some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it. Charlie's death brought something rare on the right. Unity. For a flickering moment, conservatives of every stripe, we stood shoulder to shoulder in mourning and outrage.

We knew instinctively that this was more than the assassination of a political figure. It was an attack on the very possibility of debate, of peaceful disagreement, of democracy itself. But then... Kimmel was suspended. That same day, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had appeared to jawbone ABC affiliates on the Benny Johnson podcast. I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action.

Frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead. The internet exploded with cries of First Amendment and government coercion. Never mind that in a healthy culture, a hack like Kimmel would have been shamed off the air years ago.

Never mind that the FCC may well have had a legal case. Democrats pounced, and principled conservatives got squeamish, as usual, about wielding power to effect change. We'll be right back. The media eagerly shifted from Charlie Kirk, political violence martyr, to Jimmy Kimmel, free speech martyr. Even conservatives scolded each other. We can't let the FCC become the Federal Censorship Commission. True, but it already has. Then came the new baby conservatives, the defectors from the left. Voices like Constantine Kissin, warning us about abandoning principle.

And Barry Weiss, remember? The Democrats will get power back someday, and then they might use the FCC against us. If we don't play nice, they won't either. Meanwhile, Jimmy is back in the saddle. Those hysterical predictions of government coercion and the end of the First Amendment now seem overblown. We've seen this a million times. Kimmel's back, enjoying his $16 million salary. He'll offer an irony-laced apology and get right back to being Jimmy Kimmel. You understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.

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We need to survey the battlefield. We conservatives love to talk about hypocrisy. We spill gallons of ink and endless megabytes pointing it out. Look, they say one thing, then they do the opposite. Look, he says he's Catholic, but he's pro-abortion. And we think that if we just prove their inconsistency, the American people will wake up and turn against them. And it might convince some people. But it will not come close to bridging the deep, deep divide in our country right now.

Let me show you that divide, because I think it also illustrates why conservatives don't have unity on our strategy. First, check out the reporting on Charlie Kirk's memorial. If you were there, or if you watched the live stream, you saw what I saw, a normie evangelical revival service with worship music, scripture, and testimonies. Yes, it included world leaders and conservative heavyweights, but it was not political theater. If anything, it was a robust case for Christ and for America, appealing to the heart, soul, and mind.

With beauty, truth, and love. And yet, within hours, the mainstream press was calling it a Christian nationalist rally. Some even compared Stephen Miller's speech to Joseph Goebbels. Why? Because both men, separated by nearly a century, mentioned storms and history. That was enough for lazy reporters to paint Erika Kirk as the next President Alma Coyne from the Hunger Games. Are we even watching the same video? Are we living in the same reality? No. Second case, the assassin's motive. Polling now shows that only 10% of Democrats are even aware that Charlie's killer was a leftist with trans sympathies.

In other words, most Democrats sympathize with Jimmy Kimmel. All the evidence be damned. Most Americans either believe we don't know his motive, or worse, they've been persuaded that he was a MAGA extremist. Now, my first instinct as a principled conservative Was to say, they must just not know the facts. If we just explain, they will understand. So, we reported the facts. We pointed out the logical fallacies. We ended with our gotcha line, you don't hate the media enough. But here's the problem.

We have been offering arguments with facts and logic for decades, and still we keep losing hearts, minds, and institutions. Because no matter how good your argument, if no one hears you, except people who are heavily on X, you're not reaching anyone. You're not actually changing anything. You're losing.

Here are just a few of the conservative losses in my lifetime. Our society redefined marriage in law and in culture. Abortion became culturally entrenched despite pro-life wins. We lost the moral majority position on family formation, and marriage collapsed. Conservatives lost their credibility with the moral and strategic failures of the war on terror. We had rapid institutional capture by transgender and Marxist extremists. ideology, and the constitutional order was usurped by judicial fiat. We need to get to the bottom of why this happened, and I believe we're starting to.

There are signs of hope, but an incident like Jimmy Kimmel shows that many of us still have not faced the music. The bottom line is the left did not beat us by being more principled than us. They beat us by breaking the rules of engagement. Do you need an example? From 2021 to 2024, the left weaponized the Department of Justice and the FBI to prosecute pro-life grandmothers and priests, while also paying the National Abortion Federation to attend the March for Life rally in order to identify more pro-life extremists.

The bottom line is, the left didn't beat us by being more principled than us. They beat us by breaking the rules of engagement. While we were carefully citing sources and writing white papers and winning arguments, they were smashing cultural norms, pulling levers, and mobilizing youth. And they did it with near impunity because they understood this key reality. People don't read white papers. Low propensity voters don't even hear you exercising your free speech. Normal people don't say facts don't care about your feelings.

That's because most people do care about feelings. God gave us reason and logic, yes, but he also gave us empathy and love and affections. People speak the language of fairness, of justice, of right and wrong, and they want to do what's right. They want to know who's good and what's evil. And here's where we've failed, by assuming that the facts would speak for themselves.

They don't. One person who truly understood that good arguments require both sound reasoning and a genuine concern for and presence to others, Charlie Kirk. Charlie went right to the center of campus liberalism, and worked hard to win both hearts and minds. The bullet that took his life was aimed at all of us, at anyone who has a winning argument. ...and is willing to pull the levers of mobilization to effect cultural change. That's why the assassination of Charlie Kirk is not an isolated act of evil.

It is a five-alarm fire. The rules we thought generally governed political discourse, civility, good faith, persuasion, are gone. And how could they not be, when people are celebrating the murder of political opponents, and refusing to back down or apologize? When Catholic thought leaders urge us to stay principled, they are not wrong. But strict adherence to principles without also making any changes on strategy or application is like watching wave after wave of British redcoats marching in straight lines across open fields, bright uniforms flashing, waiting to be mowed down by guerrilla fighters who hide in the trees.

The left has gone guerrilla. They don't warn you before they attack. They don't honor your rules or your constitution, and if we don't adapt, we are doomed to repeat the same cycle, win the argument, and lose the culture. And remember, the stakes have changed. Political violence is no longer theoretical.

By smashing our rules of engagement, the left upped the ante for us all. And acceptance of political violence in the United States is rising. A growing number of young Americans think that it's actually okay sometimes. So how do we respond? The answer, yes, involves politics. And it requires governing where we have power and trying to regain power. Where we don't. We don't have to just be depressed and wallow in our defeat. It doesn't have to be this way. We can just do things.

We're not here just to survive, but to win back the ground we've lost. So, let me lay out six rules of the joyful warrior spirit. The rules of engagement I believe conservatives, Christians, and Catholics must adopt if we are going to take what we saw at Charlie Kirk's memorial. and turn it into an all-out revival. Number one, you don't have to engage with everyone, actually. If someone doesn't even grant you humanity, they aren't asking for a civil debate. They need to be removed from public service by the democratic process.

Take Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, who casually paints pro-lifers, evangelicals, and, well, every one of her opponents, as terrorists. People who deny the dignity of their fellow man cannot be trusted to represent our community in classrooms, courtrooms, or public office. We only harm ourselves by attempting to rationally argue with someone who rejects civil discourse, good faith, and persuasion. This is not cancel culture. We don't hand matches to arsonists, and we don't hand power to people who despise us. Number two, speak truth to the head, but also appeal to the heart.

So, how do we remove them from positions of power? By winning hearts. By waking up the slumbering, silent majority. Remember, facts matter, but people vote with their gut. Most Americans are low-information voters. When it comes to politics, they don't devote their analytical powers to voting. So, we have to ask, what do they care about? Don't just say abortion is wrong. Say, abortion kills children. It wounds women. It hollows out fathers. Don't just say, gender ideology is false. Say, it confuses kids.

It steals their bodies and leaves scars they will carry forever. Reason is persuasive. Passion makes it stick. Number three, use strong, accurate language. Words shape reality. They shape how we think about reality. And the left understands this. Remember the war over replacing mothers with birthing people in the 2021 Biden budget? Or go further back. Do you remember the 2017 AP Stylebook, which unilaterally embraced they as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun? That one move helped rewire the way Americans think about pronouns. Just before the great corporate campaign for preferred pronouns dominated the culture wars in 2020 and beyond.

We don't need to cede the power of words. They have the power to shape a nation's soul and mind, but that takes discipline and a willingness to firmly buck the AP style guide. So, for example, we don't say gender-affirming care. We say surgical mutilation. We don't say pregnant persons. We say mothers. We don't say ending a pregnancy. We say killing a child. And we use accurate pronouns with number and gender. This isn't cruelty. It's speaking truth. It's clarity. Naming evil doesn't erase mercy, but mercy without clarity isn't mercy at all.

This rule is about more than just terminology and using accurate words. It's also about refusing to let our opponents use our own argument and language against us. Saul Alinsky, one of President Obama's biggest inspirations, understood how powerful this would be. His rule number four is make your opponent live up to its own book of rules, and we've all experienced that. Where non-Christians lecture us ad nauseum about how inclusive Jesus was, about what compassion and justice and mercy mean. As my favorite meme says, no, I'm not Christian, and I have nothing but contempt for your backward religious beliefs.

So, yeah, this argument wouldn't work on me, but maybe if I use it on you, you'll do what I want. And we kind of did. So, don't let the left dictate how you speak, what words you have to use in polite society. And certainly don't let people who hate Christians quote the Bible at you and tell you why you're a bad Christian. Number four.

institutions and platforms matter so that we can be principled. Building parallel institutions is good and necessary, but if we stop there, we lose. The left didn't come up with the idea of a university. They captured the universities that were founded by the Catholic Church.

They didn't just create new media. They took over the mainstream. And the healthcare system? Progressive Democrats might hate the Constitution, but they also hate the Constitution. But they're more than happy to use the structures of government to govern. For decades, Republicans would get into power and freeze.

The thought was, but if we use the government, how will we stop people from using it against us? Trump 2.0 has shown that, actually, we can just do things. We might not like the fact that presidents now govern by executive order, but it would be foolhardy not to use those executive orders when the American people have handed us that authority. To that end, Trump came out swinging in his second term and changed America. It was messy. It wasn't perfect, but he closed the border.

He ended federal funding of abortion. He restored women their hard-won rights under Title IX. We can just do things. But that's going to mean a lot of us won't circle the wagons and withdraw. We will be out in the existing bureaucracies and structures.

So, yes. Start new things. Found the Catholic colleges. Start the trade schools. Launch the new media sites. But also, don't be afraid to go on a rescue mission to take back what exists. Number five. Audit your own house. When we hold power, we must wield it, not vindictively, but with courage for the common good. We must resist the temptation to mock, to demean, and to settle for cheap shots. That looks like a daily look in the mirror, an examination of conscience.

Strength plus integrity, that is what persuades, and no one did this better than Charlie Kirk. Now we need to follow his lead. But we can think of other examples, too. St. Thomas More, John Paul II, Fulton Sheen, public servants who had their own house in order. This is not just politics. It's also about our own integrity of life, because faith is not separate from politics. The gospel itself is incarnate truth, truth that confronts sin, calls for repentance, and offers mercy only when evil is named.

So, get right with God, family, and then country. Number six, always be ready to pay the price. Truth has always been costly. It will cost reputations, jobs, friendships, and maybe even our lives. In the words of J.D. Vance, I can't promise you this is going to be easy. I can't promise you that all of us will avoid Charlie's fate. I can't promise you that I will avoid Charlie's fate.

But the way to honor him is to shine the light of truth like a torch in the very darkest places. Go do it. If you're not spiritually prepared, if you're not right with God, you won't have the courage when the moment comes for you. We don't need blowhard podcasters. We need saints. And we need fighters.

So, pray, fast, and study, and be ready. Now, to my Catholic brothers and sisters, you are right to insist on principle, for what does it profit us if we gain the whole world but lose our souls? Truth is non-negotiable, and we will be judged on charity. But principle without courage is cowardice, and principle without strategy is futility. We will all be asked, where were you when I was hungry, when I was naked in prison? And I don't think we put a free speech filter on our Facebook profile is going to cut it.

These three things should never be in conflict in our souls. Orthodoxy, never compromising our faith. Wisdom, knowing the medium, the audience, and the power structures. And courage, stepping into the arena and facing the lions. Resting power from those lions by the strength of our witness and the power of our words and actions. If we shrug, souls are lost, and faith is lost. Demands better. Charlie Kirk's assassination demands more than our mourning. It demands reckoning.

Not just justice, but truth. Not only anger, but strategy. And not just arguments, but action. If we embrace these rules of engagement, truth married to strategy, principle married to courage, we won't just win debates. We will defend the vulnerable. We will restore moral clarity.

We will create the conditions for a just, flourishing America again. And we'll do it without losing our souls. Because in the end, this isn't about redcoats and guerrilla fighters. It's about light and darkness. It is about truth and lies. It's about Christ and the enemy. And Christ has already won. If you liked this video, be sure to subscribe to The LOOPcast on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform, and be sure to leave a big thumbs up.