Kimmel affair shows Trump is all talk on free speech

Nothing reveals Donald Trump's double standards on free speech more emphatically than way the Jimmy Kimmel TV show in America has been taken off air.

- SIMON WALTERS

Talk show host Kimmel was dropped after accusing the "Maga of trying to score political points" off the murder of Charlie gang Kirk and mocking Trump's reaction to it as "how a four-year-old mourns the death of a goldfish". You can question Kimmel's sense of taste, but you would expect a champion of free speech to leap to his defence.

Trump has done the opposite and even took time out during his state visit to Britain to post his approval of Kimmel's silencing on his Truth Social platform.

No one has ever accused Trump of having a sense of irony. But you would like to think that he paused for just a moment to consider the inconsistency of praising the virtues of free speech in his Windsor Castle banquet speech, and shortly afterwards celebrating the demise of someone for exercising that supposed cherished freedom.