We Americans, it seems, continue to live in two separate countries. Consider two items in the news this week and the inconsistent responses they evoked.

One was the conviction in Florida of Ryan Routh, the second man who attempted to assassinate then-candidate Donald Trump in mid-September 2024. The news appeared on page A24 of the print edition of The New York Times.

Very different treatment was accorded to the return of Jimmy Kimmel, the third-highest-rated of the three broadcast network late-night show hosts, from the suspension imposed on him last week.

That action was prompted by Kimmel’s statement that “the MAGA gang … was desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Presumably, Kimmel thought he was speaking truth to power, but actually, he was speaking falsehood to people who were eager to believe it. This, of course, doesn’t excuse Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr from issuing thuggish threats that may have persuaded ABC to yank Kimmel from the air — a sharp and shameful contrast from Carr’s justified protests at Biden administration speech suppression. The government shouldn’t be repressing speech protected by the First Amendment.

Still, it’s off-putting that Kimmel is hailed as a martyr for free expression when he was relaying what Biden Democrats were quick to label and often mislabel “misinformation.” Kimmel’s monologue was one example, perhaps an unwitting one, of what my Washington Examiner colleague Timothy Carney has described as “many prominent public figures peddling a conspiracy theory that Kirk’s assassin was a Republican, right-winger, or MAGA type.”

That theory was pretty well scotched by the release by law enforcement of emails sent by the accused killer and his trans boyfriend. But Democratic voters are apparently reluctant to draw the obvious conclusion. It hurts people to think that someone with views resembling their own has committed a horrific murder, particularly when you preen yourself on your enlightenment and moral superiority.

But faced with an ogre like Trump, some people don’t mind. YouGov polling conducted after Kirk’s murder showed that 10% of liberals and 24% of “very liberal” people considered it acceptable to be happy about a public figure’s death, compared to 4% of conservatives and 3% who are “very conservative.” Similarly, conservatives are significantly more likely than liberals to say that political violence is never justified.

The difference should not be overstated. One of the strongest and most heartfelt denunciations of political violence after Kirk’s assassination came from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Political assassinations should not be treated as statistically meaningful events and are often the acts of delusional people. Examples include the shooting of then-Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 and the murder of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman last June.