CNN commentator Scott Jennings accused Jimmy Kimmel of giving his left-leaning viewers “marching orders” to destroy property on Thursday after the ABC late night comedy host appeared to sarcastically urge his viewers not to vandalize Tesla vehicles.
“The message from the American Left to conservatives is unmistakable: silence yourselves, or we will do it for you. This isn’t comedy — these are marching orders,” Jennings wrote on his X account.
The CNN pundit was reacting to video clips of Kimmel’s monologue from his ABC show on Tuesday night, when he told a cheering audience that Tesla’s stock had fallen amid a backlash against CEO Elon Musk over his role in the Trump administration.
“People have been vandalizing Tesla vehicles. New Tesla vehicle. Please don’t vandalize. Don’t ever vandalize Tesla vehicles,” Kimmel said before taking a long pause while the audience laughed.
During his Tuesday night show, Kimmel remarked humorously about Musk’s management practices and Tesla’s declining stock price.
Addressing his live studio audience, Kimmel joked: “Our co-president Elon Musk sent a SpaceX vehicle to bring the astronauts back, and when they landed, he fired them immediately upon landing.”
He followed this by highlighting Tesla’s troubling financial situation: “Tesla stock is way down, almost disastrously so,” before sarcastically instructing his viewers not to vandalize Tesla cars.
Kimmel revisited the topic on his Wednesday show — directly referencing recent violence against Tesla dealerships.
He responded to criticism from Musk, who told Fox News’ Sean Hannity: “Tesla is a peaceful company. I’ve never done anything awful. I think we just have a deranged… there is some kind of mental illness thing going on here. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Responding to Musk’s apparent confusion over the hostility directed at his company, Kimmel commented on Wednesday: “Well, let me see if I can explain it for you, when you pull out a chainsaw to celebrate firing thousands of people, they get mad.”
Kimmel then amplified his criticism, saying: “This poor guy. You do one, maybe two Nazi salutes and everybody gets all bent out of shape.”
The Post has sought comment from Kimmel and ABC.
Kimmel has lashed out at Musk in the past.
In 2022, the late night host blasted the Tesla mogul as a “piece of s–t” after he shared and later deleted a conspiracy theory about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi.
