Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension reverberates beyond late-night TV
Critics accused ABC of bowing to President Donald Trump after it suspended Kimmel’s show over his remarks about the suspect in the Charlie Kirk killing.
The right-wing campaign to shut down perceived detractors of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk reverberated through the entertainment industry on Thursday after ABC announced it would indefinitely suspend late night host Jimmy Kimmel. The news, announced late Wednesday, rocked Hollywood, prompting many to accuse ABC of buckling to a censorship campaign targeting one of President Donald Trump’s most vocal critics.
ABC did not give an explanation for suspending “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after the host delivered a monologue accusing “the president and his henchmen” of trying to capitalize on Kirk’s fatal shooting in Utah last week. In the aftermath of Kirk’s death, Trump and his allies have urged people to drum the activist’s perceived detractors out of their jobs.
Kimmel’s suspension was announced hours after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr criticized the comedian and implied that the FCC could retaliate against those who aired him.
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Trump, who has complained about being the target of Kimmel’s jokes since long before Kirk’s death, reacted with glee. “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” he wrote on social media, and called for the cancellation of two other late-night shows that have criticized him: NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
Later, at a news conference as he visited England, Trump downplayed concerns about free speech. He said Kimmel was “fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else,” and added: “you can call that free speech or not.”
Meanwhile, many fellow comedians and Hollywood figures have accused ABC of caving to the Trump administration’s pressure to censor any views of Kirk deemed as unacceptable by his supporters.
“Jimmy Kimmel has been muzzled and taken off the air,” comedian Marc Maron said in an Instagram video posted early Thursday morning. “This is what authoritarianism looks like right now in this country … This is government censorship.”
Trump “didn’t end the Ukraine war or solve Gaza within his first week, but he did end freedom of speech within his first year,” comedian Wanda Sykes said on Instagram. “Hey, for those of you who pray, now’s the time to do it. Love you, Jimmy.”
“This isn’t right,” actor and director Ben Stiller wrote on X.
Kimmel has called Kirk’s killing “senseless” and said he had seen “extraordinarily vile responses to this from both sides of the political spectrum,” including those he said were “cheering” Kirk’s death. But the host angered some on the right in his opening monologue Monday night, when he said 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.” He was referring to 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused of shooting Kirk. Robinson grew up in a Republican household but had apparently become sympathetic to LGBTQ+ causes, according to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R). Authorities have not announced a motive for Kirk’s killing.
As outrage at Kimmel’s comments was building on the right, Carr, the Trump-appointed FCC chairman, threatened to target ABC if it did not punish Kimmel. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told conservative podcast host Benny Johnson on Wednesday. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Hours later, Nexstar, which owns ABC stations in more than 30 markets, announced it would replace his show. Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, said in a statement that Kimmel’s comments were “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located.”
Notably, Nexstar is seeking the Trump administration’s approval to acquire Tegna, another big group of U.S. stations. The deal requires the FCC to loosen the government’s limits on broadcast station ownership.
Minutes after the company criticized Kimmel, ABC said the show was being yanked nationwide.
Later Wednesday evening, another big station group, Sinclair, announced it would air a one-hour special tribute to Kirk on Friday night in Kimmel’s usual time slot.
Sinclair issued a statement saying the late-night host’s suspension “is not enough” and called on the network, the FCC and Kimmel to go further. It demanded Kimmel apologize to the Kirk family and make a “meaningful” donation to his relatives and his organization, Turning Point USA, the conservative youth organization Kirk founded.
Sinclair, too, has business pending before the Trump administration. It made a bid for Tegna a day before Nexstar stepped in with its bid.
Kimmel’s contract with ABC was set to expire next year, and there was speculation about whether it would be renewed, particularly after the announcement in July that CBS owner Paramount would cancel its top-rated late-night show, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” whose host has also feuded with Trump.
The American Federation of Musicians, which represents the musicians on Kimmel’s show, and the Writers Guild of America West and East, which represents its writers, expressed solidarity with Kimmel and the show’s staff.
“If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn’t have bothered to write it into the Constitution. What we have signed on to — painful as it may be at times — is the freeing agreement to disagree,” the writers guild said in a statement. “Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth.”
The lone Biden appointee on the three-person FCC commission, Anna Gomez, issued a strong dissent from her colleagues on Thursday.
“We cannot allow an inexcusable act of political violence to be twisted into a justification for government censorship and control,” Gomez said. Gomez cited ABC News reporter Matt Gutman’s recent apology for his coverage of the Kirk shooting alongside the Kimmel decision as evidence of government pressure on media companies to punish speech it dislikes.
Such actions, she said, “put the foundation of the First Amendment in danger.”
“This FCC does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes,” Gomez added.
Patrick Svitek contributed to this report.
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