Fact-Checking A Late Night Crybaby Holding Up Squirming Baby

Unlike when Jimmy Kimmel took the stage in September of this year to use his sick child as a prop for his Obamacare sycophancy, this time the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” newspaper fact-checked his sloganeering for Democrats and Chuck Schumer in particular.

Holding up his son Billy who was born with a congenital heart disease, Kimmel railed against the GOP Monday night in a tear-filled plea for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).  Here was his moment highlighting the preciousness of life, the heroism of his son’s nurses and surgeons and he poisoned it with dirty, grubby politics.

It took a couple of days but The Washington Post fact-checked his schtick; they said because their readers “requested it”.

“It’s often difficult to describe Washington sausage-making in shorthand, and Kimmel fell short in several areas, appearing to pin most of the blame on Republicans.”

“CHIP always had bipartisan support. But this year, they let the money for it expire while they work on getting tax cuts for their billionaire and millionaire donors.”
— Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, in a monologue, Dec. 11, 2017

Kimmel falsely suggests that CHIP has become a bargaining chip as part of the negotiations over the GOP tax plan. It’s actually part of the usual year-end negotiations in Congress. Few lawmakers are really against CHIP; the question is how to fund it.

“I don’t know about you, I’ve had enough of this. I don’t know what could be more disgusting than putting a tax cut that mostly goes to rich people ahead of the lives of children. Why hasn’t CHIP been funded already? If these were potato chips they were taking away from us, we would be marching on Washington with pitchforks and spears right now.” — Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, in a monologue, Dec. 11, 2017

The WaPo article continues, “Again, Kimmel’s frame of reference is off. CHIP funding is being negotiated even as Congress is debating a tax plan. Both the House and Senate have signaled they support reauthorization of CHIP. The impasses over funding had led to some uncertainty in a handful of states, but there is no immediate crisis—and the recent stopgap funding bill provides flexibility to keep CHIP programs running in states.”

“The bottom line: CHIP is completely unrelated to the tax legislation; in fact, it won’t be and was never going to be part of the tax bill. Congress is able to work on several issues at once—and most of the outstanding issues get wrapped up just before important holidays.”

What Kimmel yearns for more than anything else is to portray Republicans as evil and uncaring.  As the Post clearly demonstrated, the late-night crybaby is simply dead wrong.  Further proof he is ignorant of the facts:  Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, introduced the Childhood Cancer Survivorship, Treatment, Access and Research Act, or Childhood Cancer STAR Act, which would improve efforts to identify and track childhood cancer incidences, improve the quality of life for childhood cancer survivors and identify opportunities to expand the research of therapeutics necessary to treat the approximately 15,700 children diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. every year.

When even the Washington Post isn't buying your bullshit you know it's bad. You @jimmykimmel are propagandist and mostly full of shit. Hopefully the rest of the world takes notice. https://t.co/czlTQj7oZe

— George Templeton (@rodentpolitics) December 13, 2017

On August 18, 2017 President Trump signed into law the RACE for Children Act (Research to Accelerate Cures and Equity for Children Act).

McCaul has become best friends with Sadie Keller who was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in 2015 at the age of 7.