The Fellas don’t bruise easily.
The four “Ruthless” hosts have all done their time in the political trenches. They don’t clutch many pearls like some podcasters, and they’re quick to laugh about the latest inside-the-Beltway tomfoolery.
There’s something very journo about stealing a $12… on camera… after a live shooter has shut your event down.
Stay classy, DC.
Watch @HolmesJosh, @ComfortablySmug, @MichaelDuncan and @JohnAshbrook with some first-hand WHCD analysis – link in replies. pic.twitter.com/NRfgpxTdY6
— Ruthless Podcast (@RuthlessPodcast) April 28, 2026
Yet the quartet – John Ashbrook, Josh Holmes, Michael Duncan and the man known as Comfortably Smug – still excoriated Jimmy Kimmel for his recent Trump assassination yuks.
The podcasters replayed the now-infamous clip Tuesday in which Jimmy Kimmel said First Lady Melania Trump has the “glow of an expectant widow.”
Duncan noticed the laughter that ensued, recalling how other late-night audiences have similarly egged on political violence. He recalled “The Late Show” crowd yukking it up when Stephen Colbert mentioned Tesla dealerships coming under attack during the early days of Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative.
Other hard-Left showcases, like “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show,” also featured in-studio fans who howled over real-world violence. And it all came from the Left.
“You get the sense that the audience now for these shows do agree with violence,” Duncan said. “They like it.”
“It’s incredible to me that if you mainstream and normalize assassinations of the president of the United States, which is what [Kimmel’s joke] is,” Holmes said. “Don’t make any mistake. That’s not like a flippant comment or joke or whatever. I’m all for the edgiest humor you can possibly find. But when it’s consistently partisan and edging on assassinating a president, I don’t care if it’s Republican or Democrat, I really don’t … you’re in a different ballgame.”
“A critical part of this whole story is the media environment and the political environment [which] is only towards one direction on this,” Smug said. “Imagine if you’re a late-night host, and you crack a joke about, ‘boy, wouldn’t it be funny if somebody assassinated Obama.’ You’re career is over.”
Duncan noted the 2013 case of a rodeo clown who, while wearing a Barack Obama mask, invited an angry bull to take a run at him. Said clown earned a lifetime ban from the rodeo plus national medial condemnation.
“It became national news because it was disrespectful to the President of the United States, ” Duncan said of the skit. “Think about that. It wasn’t that long ago.”
The Kimmel crack was far worse, as the Fellas see it.
Kimmel’s comments are “agenda-based, but they’re also as corrosive as s***,” Holmes said.
