President Donald Trump’s push to silence late-night host Jimmy Kimmel has sparked backlash from some surprising quarters, with personalities at Barstool Sports openly mocking what they view as thin-skinned outrage. On Thursday’s episode of Bulwark Takes, Tim Miller, writer-at-large for The Bulwark, and managing editor Sam Stein broke down how the Barstool response revealed a potential weak spot for Trump and his allies.
The uproar began after “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was suspended “indefinitely,” a move critics tied to pressure from the Trump administration following Kimmel’s pointed jokes. Barstool figures such as Barstool KFC, Barstool Nate, and Kirk Minihane quickly slammed the decision, describing it as a corrupt bargain to protect the former president.
“These guys, they have the thinnest skin,” Stein said of Trump’s allies. “The Kimmel thing was a line from Monday, and it wasn’t even that it wasn’t funny particularly, but it wasn’t like wildly offensive as far as everything else goes. But they have just really thin skin.”
The podcast featured audio from The Kirk Minihane Show, where Minihane let loose on Trump and the broader political right.
“Right now…the extreme right is the biggest group of p—— that has ever existed in America,” Minihane said. “Because of a girl with green hair, or a guy swims against the girls every once in a while, you f—— p—— have broken in half, led by the duo of Donald Trump and ‘consequence culture’ [Dave] Portnoy.”
Miller noted that while Barstool does not neatly fit into conventional conservative politics, it often plays into the “conservative cultural milieu.” That made the criticism more striking.
“He’s out there being like not only is this a chill on free speech, but these guys are f—— p—— right now,” Miller said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you can’t take a little joke from Jimmy Kimmel? Oh, the Starbucks barista is mean to you?’” Miller argued that the rhetoric could prove damaging to Trump because it comes from inside a community that shares overlap with parts of his base.
“To me, I think that’s actually super important because, A) it’s coming from inside the house on Barstool; B) it’s using the language of Barstool to go after MAGA,” Miller explained. “Stop being such snowflakes about all this. I think that could work, actually, that could resonate with people.”
The suspension of Kimmel’s show continues to stir controversy, but the blunt pushback from Barstool voices suggests cracks may be emerging within Trump’s cultural support base.