Dave Portnoy expanded on his controversial Jimmy Kimmel tweet on Thursday morning after the comedian’s late-night show was indefinitely suspended.
The Barstool Sports founder claimed the decision by Disney to yank “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air was not about “cancel culture” in a tweet shortly after the news surfaced — eliciting a mixed response from his 3.7 million followers.
Portnoy, who frequently dives into political discussions on social media, doubled down on his “unique” stance in a four-and-a-half-minute video posted Thursday to his social media channels.
“To me, this is not cancel culture at all,” Portnoy said. “ What cancel culture is, is when you don’t like someone. Say me. ‘We want to get rid of Dave. So we are going to comb through everything Dave has said for the past 20 years, and we are going to find things we don’t like that don’t fit in this time period,’ whatever. That’s cancel culture to me.”
Kimmel faced backlash after he characterized Tyler Robinson, the student who allegedly shot conservative activist Charlie Kirk with a rifle from the roof of a building between 100 and 200 yards away, as a part of the “MAGA gang.”
Two of ABC’s largest affiliate holders, Nexstar and Sinclair, took the show off the air in their markets.
Portnoy explained why he did not think this was a “free speech issue,” as many have suggested.
“This, what happened to Kimmel, I would say is consequences for actions in real time,” Portnoy said.
“Statements in real time. He made jokes people didn’t like. He tried to say the assassin was a part of the far-right MAGA. He’s not. And then Sinclair communications was like, ‘This is garbage our people in our markets don’t want to see this. We are preemptively pulling him off the air,’ forcing ABC’s hand.
“This is not a free speech issue to me. I have always said to our employees, you can say whatever you want on your personals, but your speech has consequences. If advertisers or people start putting pressure on me because you’re saying things that they don’t like, this is a capitalist market — if the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, decisions have to be made…
“His ratings are clearly down, he’s making a ton of money. He’s creating, clearly, headaches for ABC and the affiliate. He’s not a journalist. This isn’t freedom of the press.
“This isn’t freedom of speech. This isn’t cancel culture. This is Jimmy Kimmel isn’t being successful enough right now, right here in time for all of these headaches to be worth it to keep him on the air. Anytime you work for somebody else, anything you say that creates giant headaches for your boss could end with career repercussions.”
Kimmel is reportedly “absolutely f–king livid” with the decision to ax his late-night talk show.
“With Kimmel getting canned I’m seeing lots of people talking about the hypocrisy of cancel culture,” Portnoy said in the original tweet. “To me Cancel culture is when people go out of their way to dig up old tweets, videos etc looking for dirt on somebody they don’t like in an effort to get them fired.
“Like if Kimmel got canceled for s–t he did on the Man Show that would be cancel culture. But when a person says something that a ton of people find offensive, rude, dumb in real time and then that person is punished for it that’s not cancel culture. That is consequences for your actions.”
CBS previously canceled Stephen Colbert’s show in July in a move that was announced as a result of cost-cutting.
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