Laura Ingraham to Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Stick to the Schtick’

“The Ingraham Angle” on Wednesday night called out the increasingly political late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for using his own son as a prop to push for government health care on a recent episode of his program.

Kimmel brought out his young child, who suffers from a heart condition, to push for government health care and to convince people not to support the GOP’s tax plan.

CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, “always had bipartisan support. But this year, they let the money for it expire while they work on getting tax cuts for their billionaire and millionaire donors,” Kimmel told his audience, while holding his adorable young child in front of cameras.

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“Kudos to Washington Post fact-checkers,” said “Angle” host Laura Ingraham as she pointed to a piece in The Post by Glenn Kessler, who tore apart Kimmel’s claims about health care for Americans being so tied to the GOP’s tax plan.

“CHIP was created in 1997 during the Bill Clinton administration as part of a balanced-budget deal signed by the president,” noted The Post’s report. “By all accounts, the prime mover behind CHIP was the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). He was inspired by a similar Massachusetts program and then enlisted Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) as his partner in the effort. The original idea was to fund children’s health care with money raised from taxes on tobacco products. Hatch is still in the Senate and chairman of the Finance Committee, making him a key player in the negotiations.” The Post piece also noted that around 9 million people were covered under the program.

Kessler added, “[Jimmy] Kimmel falsely suggests that CHIP has become a bargaining chip as part of the negotiations over the tax plan. It’s actually part of the usual year-end negotiations in Congress. Few lawmakers are really against CHIP; the question is how to fund it.”

Related: Jimmy Kimmel Brings His Son on Stage — and Talks Policy

Ingraham accused Kimmel of using a false narrative to make the “wild suggestion that Republicans are just ecstatic about killing kids for Christmas.”

CHIP is “unrelated to tax regulation,” she added.

While putting his child forward as a political prop was “very cute,” Ingraham also noted that Kimmel was trying to speak about something about which he appears to know little.

“Stick to the schtick,” she said — suggesting Kimmel back off politics and go back to trying to provide a few laughs to an already divided country.