Jimmy Kimmel is standing up for Scott Pelley after the longtime broadcast journalist was fired from “60 Minutes.”
Pelley was cut from the newsmagazine program after accusing newly appointed CBS News boss Bari Weiss of “murdering” the show and saying new executive producer Nick Bilton has “slender qualifications for this job.”
“Last night, the Trump suck-ups at CBS fired a great and deeply respected journalist, Scott Pelley, from his job at ‘60 Minutes,'” Kimmel said during his Wednesday night monologue, “because he stood up for truth and integrity at a show that’s been the gold standard for broadcast journalism for 57 years.”
Kimmel said Pelley “had enough” after the “clowns who now run that show and the CBS News division” fired his colleagues, including Tanya Simon, Draggan Mihailovich, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. “That was it for Scott Pelley,” Kimmel said. “He said the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. And he let him have it in a staff meeting right to the new guy’s face.” (Pelley’s tirade against new “60 Minutes” leadership was leaked to the press, and it resulted in a meeting the following day that led to his firing.)
“The president, of course, applauded this cowardly decision,” Kimmel added, quipping: “He said Scott Pelley is part of a gang of crooked stupid people — different from the gang of crooked stupid people he’s a part of.”
