Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, we hardly knew ye!

After 22 years of late-night barbs and blasts at the political establishment, the censorship hand of the lord of Disney, fearing the almighty intervention of the Federal Communications Commission, bowed to the avowed purge of the orange king and his minions.

And like that, Jimmy Kimmel, one of the clearest voices of dissent and criticism of the Trump administration, was gone from his ABC late-night talk show, joining the award-winning Stephen Colbert in dissenter’s purgatory. Sadly, only Jimmy Fallon — the least political of the big three — remained to fight the culture war.

But surprise, surprise, Disney relented. Kimmel was back. Was it the fear of boycotts? The potential besmirching of the Mickey Mouse legend? Or did they just not want to be associated with a censorship purge that was being associated with an authoritarianism we thought we defeated in 1945?

What started as another American political assassination, albeit of a firebrand conservative, is turning into a full-blown witch hunt of not only anyone who does not worship the fallen Charlie Kirk but also as President Donald Trump brands them: “The radical left [which] has done tremendous damage to the country. But we’re fixing it.”

Thomas Jefferson and the creators of the Bill of Rights are squirming mightily. You do recall that the First Amendment — ratified by the states — guarantees that central governmental authorities cannot silence speech they dislike, unless it incites violence or threatens an individual.

And yet Trump is bringing America down a path we have not trod in many years. Maybe ever since the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791.

The name John Peter Zenger keeps coming into my head. In the middle 1990s I twice received the New York Bar........

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