What Did You Say?

By: Jonathan Turley | October 21, 2025

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2025/10/20/jimmy-kimmel-and-making-book-burning-fun-again/

Jimmy Kimmel is back on television by less than popular demand. Kimmel’s ratings are hardly robust (Kimmel pulls in 1.85 million in comparison to Gutfeld! at 3.2 million). Still, his suspension for spreading disinformation about the killer of Charlie Kirk became a cause celebre on the left. Kimmel continues to air nightly screeds against Trump and conservatives. Of course, he is hardly unique in appealing to an echo-chambered audience. However, this week Kimmel showed children being read Eric Trump’s book by a drag queen. What was most disturbing was not the use of the children to echo talking points on how great drag queens are but showing them throwing Trump’s book into a woodchipper. It appears that nothing is funnier for the modern left than a good book burning or chipping.

Trixie Mattel led the “Drag Queen Storytime” with a group of kids in the satiric treatment of Trump’s book. Mattel asked the kids questions like “Do I scare any of you?” eliciting a response: “You just look amazing. Why would that be scary?”

The children are given choices to read like Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich.

It may be the most bizarre element of the skit, even bordering on the ironically humorous. After all, Mattel was portraying the Trump Administration as Nazis but was about to show the children how to destroy books that have views that they do not like. That may not bring back memories of collectible Nazi spoons, but it does bring back memories of Nazi book burning.

The audience delights as one child says that she would “kick” Donald Trump “in the…” before the show bleeped out the rest of her response.

Mattel then shows the kids how to “make excellent confetti” out of a book that they do not like with a giant wood chipper outside of the studio. It is the type of comedic styling that would have had Joseph Goebbels rolling on the ground laughing.

For the free-speech community, there are few more disgraceful images as the burning or destruction of books because you do not agree with the author’s viewpoints. To see children participating in such an exercise is even more troubling. It is easy to dismiss this as simply another bizarre skit on a show struggling for ratings. However, some of us have been raising concerns for years about the embrace of the American left in effective (or even actual) book burning. Some on the right have also embraced book burning.

Cancel campaigns of conservative speakers were not enough for many on the left. They have pressured companies not to publish books by conservatives, including figures like Justice Amy Coney Barrett.  It is far easier (and environmentally sound) to ban opposing books than to physically burn them. However, the sentiment is the same. Rather than responding to those who oppose you, you fight to silence them and prevent others from reading them.

Books by JK Rowling have been burned because of her opposition to certain transgender policies that she views as undermining women’s rights.

That is why the image of children happily tossing books into a woodchipper is so disturbing for many in the free speech community. This is not just satire but reality as many push to destroy books with opposing views. None of this means that there is any crime in this comedic sketch. Even book burning is protected speech. Yet, the humor is missed by many of us who have been objecting to the rise of a new generation of self-righteous book burners in America.