Jimmy Kimmel’s show pulled off-air after he mocked Donald Trump over Charlie Kirk’s death

The surprise axing has sent shockwaves through Hollywood and has been slammed on social media as an “attack on free speech,” with actor Ben Stiller tweeting simply: “This isn’t right.”

The shock decision also comes two months after US President Donald Trump had publicly declared Kimmel would be the “next” talk show host to have their show cancelled. 

And Trump today celebrated the news, publicly calling for other major US late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers to also have their shows axed: “Do it NBC!!!” he posted. 

Controversial founder of the Barstool Sports empire, Dave Portnoy, has supported ABC’s decision, saying that Kimmel’s axing is nothing more than “consequences” for his actions. 

“With Kimmel getting canned I’m seeing lots of people talking about the hypocrisy of cancel culture,” wrote Portnoy in a post on Facebook. 

“To me Cancel culture is when people go out of their way to dig up old tweets, videos etc looking for dirt on somebody they don’t like in an effort to get them fired. Like if Kimmel got cancelled for shit he did on the Man Show that would be cancel culture. But when a person says something that a ton of people find offensive, rude, dumb in real time and then that person is punished for it that’s not cancel culture.”

“That is consequences for your actions,” he added. 

What Kimmel said

Kimmel had insinuated that Kirk’s alleged assassin was a member of the “MAGA gang” while mocking US President Donald Trump’s response to his death during his opening monologue in Monday night’s episode of his talk show. 

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said.

He then mocked President Trump’s response to the deadly shooting, slamming the White House for flying flags at half-mast and calling out Trump for discussing the construction of a new White House ballroom when asked about Kirk in an interview days after the killing. 

“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody he called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK?” Kimmel said.

Network pulls the plug

Today, Nexstar Media Group, which has more than 200 partner stations across the US, announced that it would pull Kimmel’s show indefinitely in light of the remarks, The Wrap reports. 

In doing so, the President of Nexstar labelled Kimmel’s jokes “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse.”

Read More (...)