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Notes -
Let me repeat myself: I watched the clip until he started talking about the Emmys. I recognize everything you're talking about, and disagree with your characterization of it.
If you want to use a "comedy" defense, then you have to actually do comedy. That was just an isolated insult slotted into position. You will never have the respect of your peers, and your appearance frightens children. He didn't need to cite the gold-standard evidence. Heck, he didn't even need to be correct. All he needed to do was make a joke with it.
Without that connection, it's just an incredibly crass insult that's (unsuccessfully for me; successfully for you) taking cover from the format.
That concludes my counterargument where everything I said is tied together into the coherent thesis that you have misinterpreted Kimmel's monologue. I'm sure that you won't find any insults masquerading as arguments because every sentence is in its proper place.
(from @Dean below)
A two-part would be best, but I'm not that strict. It can be ironic, hyperbolic, or any other way to use it.
It’s a mean joke, I didn’t find it funny, but it absolutely is a joke. I’m not gonna go down that route and analyze it in depth unless I have to, but it follows enough of the rules of comedy that it counts, with the cadence I described. Much of comedy tiptoes a line of meanness, that’s not really new. To me a joke can be insulting, the two are not mutually exclusive at all.
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We're at the point in the culture wars where we're parsing exactly which part of a comedian's routine counts as comedy and which doesn't. Line-by-line style.
We've been there since the early 2000s, with "Clown nose on; clown nose off."
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A: "It was just a joke! these guys can't take a joke!"
B: "Actually, it doesn't appear to have been a joke. That's not how jokes work."
A: "Look at these losers, arguing about jokes!"
Blues are actively attempting to deny responsibility for a political assassination, for which the perpetrator and his motives are exceedingly clear. Kimmel joined in to repeat a blatant lie about the shooter's identity and allegiances on national television. From further reporting, he refused to apologize, claiming he had said nothing wrong. I am fine with him losing his job over that. Many people have lost their jobs for much less. I am happy for Blues to complain about this; it will further highlight their hypocrisy and Streisand-Effect the facts of the case that they appear desperate to deny or bury.
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No chum, we've been there for a while. Remember Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle and Roseanne Barr and Norm Macdonald and Daniel Tosh and... You get my point. We're at the point in the culture wars where there is now symmetry in the parsing.
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As I understand it, the substance of the joke is "although Republicans claim to be very concerned about Kirk's death, this is just political posturing and in private, even Trump himself doesn't give a damn". The crack about Trumpists being desperate to prove that Robinson was a leftist is straightforwardly part of the setup half of that sentence, the scene-setting with which Trump's supposedly comical lack of concern will provide a laugh-inducing clash. This didn't require that particular misleading statement about the Right's response to the murder - it could have been anything - but setting the truth of the claim aside I do think it has an obvious place within the telling of the overall joke. It's not load-bearing, but it isn't a non sequitur.
If he'd phrased it like this he'd probably still have a job. If something turns up stolen in a workplace environment, for example, there's a big difference between saying "Bob is desperate to prove it was Steve" versus "Bob is desperate to prove it was anyone other than himself."
In the former case maybe Bob just hates Steve and wants to blame everything on him, or maybe he thinks Steve really did it, who knows? But saying the latter is to straightforwardly accuse Bob, and going "well technically.." on that count is just disingenuous shittery.
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