There was some initial social media reaction portraying this guy as some hard right fascist or whatever, as well. So it wasn't something just Kimmel had come up with. It could be that by the time the show started more evidence came out and he was looking more one way, and Jimmy just had stale info or his staffers were lazy and didn't update him.

> Nothing he said was false though, the Republicans were trying to paint the shooter as anyone other than one of their own.

Yeah, and the show owners could have fought it. There might be a warning, a lawsuit, maybe a period to comply and make changes etc. But they folded immediately. They probably figured technically they could have explained it, but the PR aspect of it was a losing battle. Here is another part of the country flying flags half staff, and what is ABC's doing? Oh right, explaining away Kimmel's news and jokes and defending him. A lot of these corporations and their leaders can smell the way the wind blows and they really hate it when the wind blows away their profits, so they just react accordingly.