There are reports (and denials) this morning to the effect that the head thug supervising ICE in Minnesota, Gregory Bovino, has been fired by Donald Trump.

In a normal world, this would be a step in the right direction, soon to be followed by the dismissal of Kristi Noem as head of Homeland Security, and a stated intent to abolish that entire department.

But this isn't a normal world, and both precedent and fundamentals weigh against anything Donald Trump doing any time soon making a jot of difference.

First, recent precedent suggests that Trump's firings are more performative than substantive. Just after the New Year, Trump had Venezuela's socialist dictator, Nicolas Maduro, extracted from that country and held in New York to face drug charges. Wails of protest from the left and seals clapping their flippers to the right notwithstanding, there has been no regime change.

Instead, it appears that when Trump says we're running Venezuela, he means: Socialists willing to cut a deal with him will stay in power while he pledges taxpayer money and the lives of American soldiers to prop them up while fixing the oil industry his new cronies ruined in the first place, so he can funnel money to a private account in Qatar.

Trump has made no stand for freedom, and appears to have betrayed anyone in Venezuela who didn't get the memo that we're ourselves an aspiring banana republic -- and thought we might overthrow this unfriendly regime.

Second, the very nature of ICE and Trump's war on "illegal" immigration argue that a public firing won't really matter. As Harry Binswanger recently argued:

ICE men are not police officers. Disobeying them is not anarchistic because their function and raison d'etre are to grab people and deport them.

Yes, given the laws against immigration, their actions could be called "law enforcement" in the abstract, but as we have seen, ICE acts arbitrarily, violently, thuggishly. They do not restrict their actions to criminalized immigrants. Or, more precisely, they, not the law, decide what the scope of their actions are.

The nature of an action follows from the nature of the entity that acts. The nature of ICE as an entity is: arbitrary force. They are thugs. I would never refer to them as "law enforcement."

(My use of "Gestapo" is figurative. Literally, ICE is the transition to that kind of evil agency.) [bold added]

Replacing the head of an agency designed to terrorize people will mean an uphill battle for a good person (if one would even accept such a job) and the kind of opportunity we don't want an incipient dictator to have, otherwise.

Trump sicced this agency on nonwhite immigrants in the first place and has defended it after its widely-publicized detention of an American citizen who is a veteran and now after it has murdered two American citizens in less than a month.

I can't imagine how anything Trump does now will be for any purpose other than to reduce bad publicity long enough for our easily-distracted news media to forget about it and find a more easily-dismissed (and discreditable) reason to be upset with him.

-- CAV

When it gave them an excuse to grouse about a Republican on late-night, Democrats were all for the equal-time rule.

There is no deal to be made with officials who reject the law itself. And there is no obligation for Trump to meet them halfway.

Jimmy Kimmel didn’t cry over the brutal death of Laken Riley at the hands of an illegal immigrant.

He shed no tears following the disastrous U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, handing the nation back to the barbarous Taliban regime.

When a Ukranian refugee was slaughtered on a light rail train by a man who by every right should have been in jail, Kimmel’s tears were nowhere to be found.

Not even a mention.

Now that a second U.S. citizen has inserted himself into a legal law enforcement matter with deadly results, we get the Kimmel waterworks.

Twice.

“I spent the weekend like probably a lot of you did, looking at my phone and just feeling shocked and sick at what’s happening in Minneapolis … One video after another: screaming people being torn from their families, Americans, people who were born in the United States being pulled out of their cars for the crime of having an accent or whatever. Children, small children, babies being tear-gassed, taken into custody, separated from their parents.”

For those keeping score, that’s a jumble of lies, misinformation and narrative dodging. And, sadly, it’s par for the course.

And he wasn’t done.

“Just one atrocity after another being committed by this gang of poorly trained, shamefully led, mask-wearing goons. And that is what they are: They’re goons committing vile, heartless, and even criminal acts. It’s sickening to watch, and it’s frustrating to watch.”

Kimmel, at least on paper, is a late-night comedian. He’s taken on a new role, one egged on by the Left and Legacy Media outlets (but we repeat ourselves).

He’s the King of the anti-Trump Resistance. Comedy? Laughs? Merriment? That’s no longer his prime directive, and it hasn’t been for some time.

What’s even worse is clear. He just makes stuff up to appease the Left and the Legacy Media (but we repeat our-)

It’s not the first time, and it sure won’t be the last.

Previously, Kimmel endured a one-week suspension after implying a MAGA devotee killed conservative icon Charlie Kirk. He never apologized for that lie, but he did tear up while delivering his dishonest defense of it. He draped himself in the First Amendment flag, even though there’s no proof the Trump administration played an active role in his benching.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s comments on Kimmel were tone deaf at best and destructive at worst, but we’ve since learned that an affiliates revolt led to his suspension.

More misdirection.

Kimmel also assured us that President Joe Biden, who had to pull out of his re-election campaign after his dementia-addled debate sunk his polling numbers, was as sharp as a tack. Kimmel saw him up close and said nothing.

Superstar George Clooney met the same President Biden and penned an op-ed explaining that he was no longer fit for the presidency.

More recently, Kimmel said Antifa doesn’t exist, another provable lie.

Get the picture? And those lies can have consequences.

Fellow propagandist Stephen Colbert will be leaving his gig come May. CBS decided that losing $40 million a year on “The Late Show” wasn’t a wise business model.

Kimmel, by contrast, just got a year’s extension from ABC. The network has no intention of reigning in his lies, much like studio brass let “The View” hosts say virtually anything on-air without shame. At least “The View” throws out some “legal notes” to shield itself from lawsuits.

In a way, Kimmel is the ultimate free speech symbol. He’s saying whatever he pleases, knowing his far-Left base will cheer on the lies and his bosses will look the other way to push a progressive agenda.

And, thankfully, the Twitter Files era is over. So is the Biden administration’s war on speech. 

More voices, not less, as Andrew Breitbart once said. Just don’t expect any laughs or the truth from “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

The post All Jimmy Kimmel Does Is Lie (And Cry) appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

Stuart Mark Feldman’s The Future in Our Hands By Michael Newberry Stuart Mark Feldman’s sculpture group, The Future in Our Hands (1992, Reservoir Park, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) is four life-size bronze statues placed around a large outdoor fountain. There are two males and two females, life-sized, each playing with a child. (To my knowledge, this is the […]