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Tag: Jimmy Kimmel

  • Anna Gomez Calls Kimmel Suspension “Most Alarming Attack” on the First Amendment in Recent Memory

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    Since its inception in the Communications Act of 1934, the Federal Communications Commission has had a broad mandate to act in “the public interest”—the phrase appears dozens of times in the agency’s organic statute. But during the second Trump administration, the commission, which Congress established as a multi-member, independent agency led by Republican and Democratic appointees, has been one of the arms of government that has taken a central role in policing broadcasters, news organizations, and public stations that don’t fall in line with Donald Trump’s worldview and policy priorities.

    Under Chairman Brendan Carr’s vision, the public interest is closely tied to Trump’s interests. In their eight months in office, Trump and Carr have gone after public media and private broadcasters alike, including ABC News and CBS News—singling them out to criticize and investigate, while Trump has secured settlements from both organizations. Jimmy Kimmel’s indefinite suspension from the ABC airwaves following a monologue in which he criticized Trumpland’s reaction to the killing of Charlie Kirk is only the latest episode to land in Carr and Trump’s sights, with more targets on the horizon.

    Since the early days of the administration, Anna Gomez, the sole Democratic member of the commission, has been one of the loudest voices from within the federal government sounding the alarm about the threats to free press and free expression coming from her own agency. In the wake of the Kimmel controversy, Vanity Fair spoke with the commissioner while she was on an Amtrak train to New York City, where she was scheduled to speak about the importance of broadband access.

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Vanity Fair: What do you make of the situation with ABC and Jimmy Kimmel?

    Anna Gomez: I am alarmed by this administration’s campaign of censorship and control. While what happened to Charlie Kirk is inexcusable, I’m concerned that we not allow this act of political violence to be used as justification for government censorship and control. And this is the clearest and most alarming attack on the First Amendment and free expression by our government in recent memory. So I am very concerned.

    To my knowledge, the FCC has never revoked a license based on disfavored views. What’s your take on these latest threats?

    The FCC doesn’t have the authority, the ability, nor the constitutional right to censor disfavored speech. These threats are just that—they are just threats. The FCC would not be able to take action as extreme as revoking a broadcast license just because of, perhaps, an inappropriate joke by a comedian.

    Nexstar, the US’s largest owner of TV stations, which is hoping to get FCC approval for a pending $6 billion merger with rival broadcast company Tegna, is choosing not to air Kimmel’s show. All of this is in an apparent effort to get the green light from the agency. What do you make of this? [The merger would likely require the FCC to raise the nationwide cap on the percentage of households a single corporation’s TV stations are allowed to reach, which is currently set at 39%. Nexstar has since denied that its preemption decision was in response to FCC pressure.]

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    Cristian Farias

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  • Adam Carolla Has Surprising Response to Jimmy Kimmel Suspension

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    Comedian and podcast host Adam Carolla has been friends with Jimmy Kimmel for some time now, and recently weighed in on Kimmel’s suspension following comments he made about Charlie Kirk.

    What did Adam Carolla say about Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension?

    Carolla, who co-hosted The Man Show with Kimmel from 1999-2004, now hosts his own podcast, The Adam Carolla Show, and is known for his now mostly right-leaning views. However, Carolla characterized Kimmel’s comments as “inaccurate,” and went on to defend his longtime friend.

    “I think a lot of people want me to comment on it. It’s a weird thing,” Carolla said (via THR). “The right and the left are always sort of misinterpreting things. He was inaccurate about something. It wasn’t like he was necessarily attacking Charlie Kirk. He was trying to dump it on Trump and inaccurate about it.”

    Carolla went on to say that he knows Jimmy as a “good guy,” and said the pair still keep in touch despite their differences.

    “I know Jimmy to be a very good guy and a generous guy, and I’ve always said that about him. And I realize that while everyone else knows Jimmy as a caricature, I know him as a person,” said Carolla. “When I run into people that don’t know Jimmy as a person, [Bill] O’Reilly or Dave Rubin, Dennis Prager, and they go, ‘what’s up with your buddy Jimmy?’ Well, I know him, so that’s why I don’t think of him like you think of him. But on the other hand, they think of you as a cartoon character too… I know Jimmy is a human and I know how good he is and I know how decent he is, and we disagree politically, but who cares? We disagree on pizza toppings as well, but it doesn’t mean we don’t talk.”

    On Wednesday night, ABC halted production on Jimmy Kimmel Live after the FCC openly threatened to take action against the network and its license following Kimmel’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s death. During his last show as of now, Kimmel commented on the potential political leanings of Kirk’s killer as well as how the MAGA movement was reacting to it.

    “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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,” said Kimmel during his monologue.

    So far, Kimmel’s show is considered on indefinite pause. Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns ABC affiliate stations alongside Nexstar, has said that in lieu of Kimmel’s upcoming Friday show, ABC will air a special memorial service to Kirk that other affiliates are free to also run. The company also demanded that Kimmel apologize for the comments and make a “meaningful personal donation” to Kirk’s family, as well as Turning Point USA.

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    Anthony Nash

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  • Who is Brendan Carr, FCC head under fire for Jimmy Kimmel suspension? – National | Globalnews.ca

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    ABC took comic Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show off the air indefinitely Wednesday, just hours after Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr called his comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination “truly sick.”

    Carr is a longtime FCC commissioner named as chairman by President Donald Trump in November. In the months since, he has launched investigations of ABC, CBS and NBC news.

    “Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change,” Carr said in July, after the FCC approved CBS owner Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance.

    Here’s what to know about Carr:

    Carr is a longtime FCC commissioner

    The FCC regulates broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband.

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    Carr was already a longtime member of the commission and served previously as the FCC’s general counsel. He was unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and both Trump and President Joe Biden nominated him to the commission.


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    Jimmy Kimmel suspension: Comedians express concerns over free speech censorship


    Before joining the commission as a staff member in 2012, he worked as an attorney at Wiley Rein LLP and clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

    He has more recently embraced Trump’s ideas about social media and tech. He wrote a section devoted to the FCC in “Project 2025,” a sweeping blueprint for gutting the federal workforce and dismantling federal agencies in a second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Trump has claimed he didn’t know anything about Project 2025, but many of its themes have aligned with his statements.

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    Carr appeared to acknowledge a connection between what happened to Kimmel and “Project 2025” with a GIF on social media Wednesday.

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    The FCC takes on broadcast networks

    In March, Carr said he was opening an investigation into Walt Disney Co. and ABC to see whether they are “promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination.” He also opened separate investigations into CBS and NBC news.

    Talking about the Kimmel situation on Fox News Wednesday, he said broadcasters with FCC licenses have “a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. And over the years, the FCC walked away from enforcing that public interest obligation. I don’t think we’re better off as a country for it.”

    In July, he hailed the Paramount-Skydance merger as an opportunity to bring more balance to “once-storied” CBS.


    Click to play video: 'Business Matters: U.S. regulators greenlight $8B USD Paramount merger with Skydance'


    Business Matters: U.S. regulators greenlight $8B USD Paramount merger with Skydance


    FCC approval of the merger came after months of turmoil around Trump’s legal battle with the CBS program “60 Minutes.” With the specter of the Trump administration potentially blocking the deal, Paramount agreed to a $16 million settlement with the president.

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    CBS then announced it was canceling Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” just days after the comedian sharply criticized the settlement on air. Paramount cited financial reasons, but big names both within and outside the company have questioned those motives.

    Shortly before the FCC approved the merger, Paramount agreed to hire an ombudsman at CBS News to investigate complaints of political bias. The job went to Kenneth Weinstein, the former head of a conservative think tank who has made several donations to Republican causes, including President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.

    On Wednesday, Carr said Kimmel appeared to be making an intentional effort to mislead the public that conservative activist Kirk’s assassin was a right-wing Trump supporter. He called Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death “truly sick” and said his agency has a strong case for holding Kimmel, ABC and Disney accountable for spreading misinformation.

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    Kirk, a top conservative podcaster, was shot and killed last week at an appearance on a college campus in Utah.


    Click to play video: 'ABC suspends Jimmy Kimmel’s show indefinitely over Charlie Kirk death monologue'


    ABC suspends Jimmy Kimmel’s show indefinitely over Charlie Kirk death monologue


    Kimmel made several remarks about the reaction to Kirk’s death last week on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” including that “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.”

    “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said on the Benny Johnson podcast. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

    House Democratic leaders on Thursday called for Carr’s resignation and accused him of “bullying” ABC into suspending Kimmel.

    In a joint statement, the leaders — including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — said the move was part of Trump and Republicans’ effort to wage a “war on the First Amendment.”

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    —With additional files from Global News


    &copy 2025 The Canadian Press

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    Globalnews Digital

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  • Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner weighs in on Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension

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    Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner is defending Jimmy Kimmel after the Disney-owned ABC network indefinitely suspended the late-night host from his show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

    “Where has all the leadership gone? If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners, and corporate chief executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up for the first amendment?” he said in a post on X Friday.

    Eisner, who led Disney for more than two decades, spoke out two days after ABC confirmed to CBS News that it had suspended Kimmel indefinitely over remarks he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The network has not said if or when the show, which began airing in 2003, will return.

    In his Monday monologue, Kimmel suggested that allies of President Trump were attempting to use Kirk’s assassination for political gain. 

    Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr referred to Kimmel’s comments as “some of the sickest conduct possible,” and said there was a “path forward for suspension over this.” 

    Eisner made it clear he disagreed with ABC’s decision.

    “The ‘suspending indefinitely’ of Jimmy Kimmel immediately after the Chairman of the FCC’s aggressive yet hollow threatening of the Disney Company is yet another example of out-of-control intimidation,” Eisner said. 

    He added, “Maybe the Constitution should have said, ‘Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, except in one’s political or financial self-interest.’ By-the-way, for the record, this ex-CEO finds Jimmy Kimmel very talented and funny.”

    Eisner’s comments come after a wave of dismissals and other sanctions by companies against workers who’ve taken public positions on the matter of Kirk’s death. 

    Disney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Eisner’s remarks.

    Megan Cerullo

    Megan Cerullo is a New York-based reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering small business, workplace, health care, consumer spending and personal finance topics. She regularly appears on CBS News 24/7 to discuss her reporting.

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  • The Media Aggressively Plays Dumb On The Liberal Hate Of Charlie Kirk’s Killer

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    Once the shock of Charlie Kirk’s murder began to wear off, it became easier to notice how today’s “news” media routinely fail to live up to their own pompous prattle about their work. They don’t “hold people accountable,” they don’t “uphold democracy,” and they aren’t “independent” or “objective.” They don’t produce “news” as much as narrative.

    You can see this in their energetic declarations that you couldn’t possibly ascribe a leftist motive to Kirk’s shooter … and even claimed you shouldn’t try. The story was going in an “unhelpful” direction, so it should be upended.

    On CNN’s weekend show Table for Five, national security analyst Juliette Kayyem demanded we all “stop looking” for a motive. The former Obama official yelled at GOP strategist Lance Trover: “The point is, who cares? A man was killed, and you have yet to say political violence is bad. Period.”

    “Who cares?” What kind of callous person can’t imagine why this man’s grieving family and friends need to know why this senseless crime happened?

    On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-host Jonathan Lemire admonished Republicans for pointing fingers at the Left: “There’s so little we know yet about this shooter and his motives. And again, they almost shouldn’t matter because what happened here, it’s a culture, a society where we’ve had this rise in political violence. We are awash in guns.”

    Motive “almost shouldn’t matter”? This makes journalists sound like they’re anti-journalism. It’s like they’re saying, “Who is rudely asking questions and seeking out answers?”

    On CBS Evening News Plus, anchorman John Dickerson was aggressively playing dumb: “Five days after Charlie Kirk’s murder, the shooter’s motive remains elusive. No writings left behind. Vague, secondhand testimony.”

    That’s not true. By Friday, we had the suspect Tyler Robinson in custody, and we learned the bullet casings had messages including “Hey fascist! Catch!” Another referred to a song, “Bella Ciao,” which celebrated the end of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. But somehow these geniuses can’t figure out this man was targeting “fascists,” which is the media’s common label for President Donald Trump and his followers.

    One man who’s not pretending to be dumb is Jimmy Kimmel, who claimed on Monday night: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Kirk as anything other than one of them.” Kimmel, the “comedian,” baldly and shamelessly stated the polar opposite of the truth.

    Even after the prosecutor laid out the evidence—and John Dickerson acknowledged reality, that it was no longer vague and secondhand information—Kayyem went on CNN still claiming the motive “may be unanswerable” to people who care about violence like she does. Robinson’s ideological motive somehow “does not explain the violence.”

    On MSNBC, former FBI agent Chris O’Leary stayed clueless, claiming the killer had a “salad bar ideology,” nothing identifiable: “It’s certainly a motive, but is it necessarily clearly an ideology and part of a broader, you know, movement and political violence or terrorism? … It probably wouldn’t get us there.”

    These purveyors of willful ignorance clearly want to absolve the Left of any responsibility for inspiring violence. They want the freedom to decry MAGA “fascists” who are “existential threats to democracy.” No one should say that could inspire kooks to hurt someone.

    But Jim Acosta routinely moaned on CNN that Trump calling them “Fake News” was going to lead to “a dead journalist on the side of the highway.” You can’t connect violence to rhetoric—unless the rhetoric is coming from conservatives. If these media people didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.

    Syndicated with permission from The Daily Signal.

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    The Daily Signal

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  • Late Night Rallies Behind Jimmy Kimmel: “Tonight, We Are All Jimmy Kimmel”

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    Late-night television may be under attack, but its hosts are sticking together. On Wednesday evening, ABC announced that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s long-running late-night series Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air following comments Kimmel made about the murder of Charlie Kirk and pressure from FCC chair Brendan Carr. One day after Kimmel’s immediate and indefinite suspension, late-night hosts, including Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Seth Meyers, took to their desks and spoke out about the blatant attack on free speech.

    Colbert knows a thing or two about being silenced by a network. Earlier this summer, Paramount abruptly announced that it was cancelling his Emmy-winning CBS late-night show, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, after Colbert’s contract expires in May. The decision came as Paramount, CBS’s parent company, was waiting for government approval for an $8 billion merger with media conglomerate SkyDance. At the time, Kimmel and the other late-night hosts rallied around Colbert, appearing together on his show and calling out CBS and Paramount for potentially kowtowing to President Donald Trump, who had made his ire for Colbert and his comedy well-known.

    Now it was time for Colbert to return the favor. “Tonight, we are all Jimmy Kimmel,” said Colbert to open his monologue. “Yesterday, after threats from the FCC chair, ABC yanked Kimmel off the air indefinitely. That is blatant censorship,” said Colbert. He then reminded the audience about Trump’s decision in his first week of his presidency to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. “Sure, seems harmless, but with an autocrat you cannot give an inch,” said Colbert, to loud cheers from the studio audience. “And if ABC thinks this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive. And clearly they never read the children’s book, If You Give A Mouse a Kimmel.”

    Colbert than addressed Kimmel directly, saying he stands with the comedian and his staff amid the suspension, before joking that the brouhaha surrounding Kimmel has overshadowed The Late Show’s recent Emmy win for outstanding talk series. “You couldn’t let me enjoy this for like one week? Come on,” said Colbert, who was holding his Emmy.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert react to Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension – National | Globalnews.ca

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    Late-night hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert opened their shows Thursday by addressing the news of Jimmy Kimmel Live! being taken off the air “indefinitely” following remarks host Jimmy Kimmel made on Monday night about the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

    On Wednesday, ABC suspended Kimmel’s late-night show after comments he made about Kirk’s killing led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say they would not air the show.

    Earlier on Thursday, The Daily Show announced on social media that Stewart would step in as host. He typically only hosts the Monday edition of the program.


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    Jimmy Kimmel suspension: Comedians express concerns over free speech censorship


    “From Comedy Central, it’s the all-new, government-approved Daily Show, with your patriotically obedient host, Jon Stewart,” the show kicked off.

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    Halfway through the show, Stewart referenced Trump’s state visit to the U.K. this week and mentioned Trump’s comments about Kimmel during a press conference on Thursday with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Chequers, Starmer’s country house in the English town of Aylesbury.

    When asked about the dismissal of Kimmel and free speech in America, Trump said, “Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else.”


    “He said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk. And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings and they should have fired him a long time ago,” Trump continued. “So, you know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent.”

    Stewart began: “You may call it free speech in jolly old England, but in America, we have a little thing called the First Amendment, and let me tell you how it works.”

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    He then went into an explanation about a “talent-o-meter,” which he joked was a device on Trump’s desk that lets him know when someone’s “talent quotient, measured mostly by niceness to the president,” reaches a low level.

    “At which point, the FCC must be notified to threaten the acquisition prospects for billion-dollar mergers of network affiliates,” Stewart said. “These affiliates are then asked to give ultimatums to even larger mega corporation that controls the flow of state-approved content. Or the FCC can just choose to threaten those licences directly. It’s basic science.”

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    Stewart went on to joke that he doesn’t know who the “Johnny Drimmel Live ABC character is,” but “the point is, our great administration has laid out very clear rules on free speech.”

    “Now, some naysayers may argue that this administration’s speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smokescreen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation, principle-less and coldly antithetical to any experiment in a constitutional republic governance. Some people would say that,” Stewart said. “Not me, though…. I think it’s great.”

    Stewart also interviewed journalist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa and asked for tips on coping with the current moment.

    Ressa recounted how she and her colleagues at the news site Rappler “just kept going” when she was faced with 11 arrest warrants in one year under then-Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.

    “We just kept doing our jobs. We just kept putting one foot in front of the other,” Ressa said.


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    ‘This is what authoritarianism looks like’: ABC suspends Jimmy Kimmel’s show indefinitely




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    Colbert, who recently announced the cancellation of The Late Show, told his audience Thursday that he stands with Kimmel and his staff.

    “And if ABC thinks this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive and clearly, they’ve never read the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Kimmel. And to Jimmy, just let me say, I stand with you and your staff 100 per cent,” Colbert said.

    He also responded to remarks Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr made about the importance for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming “they determine falls short of community values.”

    “Well, you know what my community values are, buster? Freedom of speech,” Colbert said.

    On Thursday, Jimmy Fallon opened his Tonight Show with a monologue addressing Kimmel’s suspension.

    “To be honest with you all, I don’t know what’s going on. And no one does. But I do know Jimmy Kimmel, and he’s a decent, funny and loving guy, and I hope he comes back.”

    ABC, which has aired Jimmy Kimmel Live! since 2003, did not immediately explain why it suspended the show on Wednesday. But its announcement came after broadcasters Nexstar and Sinclair said they would stop airing Kimmel’s show on their ABC-affiliated stations.

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    Carr had also warned that the network and its local affiliates could face repercussions if Kimmel was not punished.

    Carr had called Kimmel’s comments “truly sick” and said the comedian appeared to intentionally try to mislead the public about the alleged shooter’s political leanings. He later applauded the decisions to stop airing Kimmel’s show.

    In a statement shared on social media, Sinclair cited “problematic comments regarding the murder of Charlie Kirk” in its decision. Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, called Kimmel’s comments “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse.”

    Sinclair called on Kimmel to “issue a direct apology to the Kirk family” and asked him to “make a meaningful personal donation to the Kirk Family and Turning Point USA.”

    The broadcast group also announced that ABC stations will air a special in remembrance of Kirk on Friday, during the Jimmy Kimmel Live! timeslot.

    In a post on his Truth Social platform Wednesday night, Trump applauded ABC for “finally having the courage to do what had to be done” and claimed that Kimmel “has ZERO talent.”

    Kimmel, whose contract with the Walt Disney Co.-owned network expires in May 2026, did not immediately comment on the suspension.

    — with files from The Associated Press

    &copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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  • Are Studio Screwups Choking Late-Night TV?

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    As Kimmel’s suspension suggests, many aspects of the future of late night could lie outside of production teams’ control. As for the creative side, Camillo says, it’s up to writers, producers, and other talent to move past the 2000s-era late-night template. “I think that the product needs a metamorphosis,” she says. For starters, creators and execs need to figure out how to produce late-night shows designed for streaming—a challenge that has so far confounded everyone who’s tried it, besides perhaps John Mulaney. Although many viewers might not consider the comedian’s Everybody’s Live a proper late-night show (it airs weekly and steadfastly ignores current events), Wilmore praised Mulaney for breaking the rules in the same way genre leaders like Letterman have in the past.

    In addition to experiments like Mulaney’s, Wilmore expects to see more ideologically driven shows like The Daily Show and, yes, Gutfeld! (Greg Gutfeld, who has proclaimed himself the king of late night and is No. 1 in the 10 p.m. Eastern Time slot—more than an hour before any of his competitors hit the air—has made a point of laughing at Late Show’s demise, and also has been less than sympathetic about Kimmel’s suspension: “People come up to me and go, ‘If you’re a comedian and you’re on TV, you should be upset by this.’ I’m not really,” Gutfeld said on Thursday’s show.)

    As Black notes, content creators are also already finding new, cheaper ways to independently produce late-night-esque content. “I don’t think that that’s the preferred future,” she says, pointing out that audience fragmentation only makes it harder for anyone to hold a civic conversation. “[But] I think that we will probably go to a model where it gets smaller and smaller.”

    On the financial side, a few forces could actually work in late night’s favor. For one thing, the genre easily lends itself to product placement—a lever many shows already pull to offset costs. Busy Philipps, who revived her defunct E! show on QVC+, could be a particularly useful model. And as Black points out, traditional late night also gives studios a promotional vehicle that exists entirely within their control.

    Conover has no doubt that platforms like YouTube will continue to grow as well—and that as they do, they’ll absorb more and more of the entertainment market. As that happens, he wants to make sure the industry continues to pay workers fairly. It took decades for the linear TV industry to construct its ad model, set rates, and unionize, Conover says. Now the same needs to happen on the streaming side.

    As YouTube channels get bigger and bigger, their sales process has to get more sophisticated as well. That means convincing advertisers to pay higher rates and attracting bigger brands. Right now, Conover says, the biggest late-night-adjacent YouTubers mostly trade in ads from direct-to-consumer brands like Squarespace and MeUndies. “They’re dick pills,” he says. “It’s still that kind of advertiser. Coke is not yet advertising on these channels.” If the genre’s ever going to be as profitable on the internet as it was on television, that will need to change.

    Josh Gondelman, an alum of Last Week Tonight and Desus & Mero, worries that big streamers might test new formats as a way to skirt union regulations. “When you hear something like Ted Sarandos saying, ‘Oh yeah, we can see bringing premium video podcasts onto Netflix’—are these going to be union jobs, like TV talk shows are?” he wonders. “Or are people going to cultivate this new economy where they perform some kind of category fraud to avoid paying the crews and the writers what they would otherwise have to pay?”

    Conover also refuses to blame audiences, new technology, or the shows themselves for studio executives’ failures. “If 5 million people are watching a show every single night and you’re not making money off of it, that’s your fault,” he says. “It’s your problem.”

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  • John Cleese & Piers Morgan Trade Blows Over Jimmy Kimmel & Trump: “You Flaming Old Hypocrite”

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    John Cleese and Piers Morgan have renewed their social media hostilities over Jimmy Kimmel‘s suspension and Donald Trump‘s state visit to the UK.

    Cleese and Morgan are no strangers to slogging it out on X/Twitter, and the events of this week provided another battleground.

    Morgan has claimed that Kimmel “lied about Charlie Kirk’s assassin being MAGA” after the comedian said on his ABC show that the “MAGA gang desperately [is] trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”

    Responding to Morgan’s claim, Cleese wrote: “This from Piers Morgan. who has made a fortune working for Rupert Murdoch.” Morgan replied: “You took Rupert’s money too, you flaming old hypocrite.
    I’m just proud of it.”

    This is familiar territory for the duo. In January, Cleese branded Morgan “lazy” and “sloppy” for defending Murdoch following News Group Newspapers’ settlement with Prince Harry over privacy invasion.

    Morgan responded: “I’m bemused. You say you’ve chosen not to work for Rupert Murdoch yet you starred in The Day The Earth Stood Still in 2008 which was produced by 20th Century Fox, owned at the time by.. Rupert Murdoch. Were you being lazy, sloppy, or just a lying hypocrite?”

    Elsewhere on Thursday, Cleese mocked Morgan over what he saw as the presenter’s sycophancy during Trump’s state visit to Britain.

    “Piers has spotted a possible ‘in’ with Trump and he’s after it like a rat up a drainpipe,” he said, commenting on a Fox News clip in which Morgan called Melania Trump “radiant” and compared her to Jackie Kennedy as a “fashion icon.”

    Cleese withered: “Well, if you can’t get Murdoch to employ you anymore, Trump would be a good replacement.” This was a nod to the fact that Morgan has moved his show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, to YouTube.

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    Jake Kanter

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  • Why ABC ousted Jimmy Kimmel for calling Charlie Kirk’s killer a MAGA member

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    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    Jimmy Kimmel didn’t read the electronic room.

    And it cost him his job. 

    Now that Disney and ABC executives, after huddling all day, pulled the plug as Kimmel was preparing for Wednesday night’s show, it’s hard to see him returning. The brass said he’s suspended “indefinitely,” meaning “lose our number.”

    There are serious free speech concerns here, especially against the backdrop of government pressure.

    Nexstar, an ABC affiliate that owns NewsNation, also said it would preempt the show on its stations.

    DISNEY PULLS JIMMY KIMMEL’S SHOW AFTER COMMENTS ON CHARLIE KIRK’S ASSASSINATION AND MORE TOP HEADLINES

    Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from his late night show “indefinitely” for comments he made about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. (Michael Le Brecht/Disney via Getty Images)

    With Stephen Colbert confined to a final season at CBS, that would mean two of the three late-night hosts on broadcast networks would be banished. Both are social commentators, of course, and fervently anti-Trump.

    One happy camper is Donald Trump, who has been feuding with Kimmel. (I played a small role in that, as we’ll see in a moment.)

    Trump congratulated ABC on having the “courage” to boot Jimmy. When the Colbert news broke, the president predicted that Kimmel would be next.

    What Kimmel said, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, isn’t that awful. It’s about the killer, not, as some early headlines had it, Charlie himself.

    Right after the shooting, in fact, Kimmel offered a somber, respectful reaction, sending his love to Kirk’s family.

    But then he was tone-deaf about the sensitivity of the situation and the widespread anger – especially among young conservative activists, but also those who disagreed with Kirk. The atmosphere right now is like a tinderbox that only needed a single match.

    These are the words from Monday that got him in trouble:

    “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” 

    That’s it.

    Charlie Kirk on Utah Valley University campus

    Charlie Kirk speaks at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025 in Orem, Utah, prior to his assassination. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images)

    I don’t agree that the killer was part of the Trump movement. I don’t think he was part of any movement, just a crazed madman with a transgender partner who had sympathy for gays but not “fascists.” As with all these nutjob murderers and school shooters, the media’s search on a “motive” is futile.

    A month from now, maybe Kimmel’s sentence wouldn’t have caused an uproar. But he should have sensed that this was not the time.

    Now let’s look at what the other side has been saying. 

    Trump, who was close to Kirk, says left-wing radicals are to blame for his killing and that investigations are under way. Elon Musk has labeled “the left” as “the party of murder.” Pam Bondi said she would prosecute those guilty of “hate speech,” apparently missing the point that the First Amendment is meaningless unless it protects vile speech – as long as it doesn’t include threats of violence.

    Against that ocean of rhetoric, Kimmel’s comment was a small trickle.

    And that brings us to the Federal Communications Commission, which has the power to revoke broadcast licenses.

    FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who I recently interviewed, said this on a podcast:

    “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

    Sounds pretty ominous. 

    TRUMP EYES REMARKS AT CHARLIE KIRK MEMORIAL IN ARIZONA, BLAMES LEFT FOR SUSPECT’S RADICALIZATION

    But Carr kinda sorta walked it back at a Politico conference. “I think you can draw a pretty clear line, and the Supreme Court has done this for decades, that our First Amendment, our free speech tradition, protects almost all speech.”

    Even Laura Ingraham said Carr should have stayed off TV.

    Trump, meanwhile, urged NBC to fire “two total losers,” Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, which would mean a clean sweep of the late-night landscape.

    It’s worth reminding everyone that Charlie Kirk was engaging in free speech – and advocating non-violence – as he toured the country and built his Turning Point organization.

    Celebrities, Democrats and some journalists are denouncing the Disney/ABC decision to blow up “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” That makes me wonder whether, as in the case of Colbert’s “Late Show,” it was losing money – or making relatively little money – and the comments provided the pretext for getting it off the books.

    Now to the backstory. When I sat down with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last year, it was right after the Oscars, hosted, as it turned out, by Kimmel.

    President Trump speaking

    President Donald Trump speaks at a dinner with Senate Republicans at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Friday, Feb. 7, 2025. ( AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

    And he made a joke about Trump: “Isn’t it past your jail time?”

    So let the record show that Jimmy started it – at least this round.

    So I asked the candidate if he had a response.

    “Every night he hits me, I guess,” said Trump. “His ratings are terrible… So I figured I’d hit him, because I thought he was a lousy host.”

    Referring to reports that some Kimmel confidantes had begged him not to make the jail joke, Trump told me: “This guy’s even dumber than I thought.”

    Oh, but that wasn’t the end of it. 

    In his inevitable pushback, Kimmel said of course Fox had picked a guy to interview Trump “that no one’s ever heard of.” 

    Well! I’d only hosted the No. 1 cable show in its time slot for a dozen years, but I guess that didn’t matter to the wealthy La-la-land elite. 

    I shot back that while I wasn’t a heavily hyped network star like him, my Sunday ratings almost matched his. I used my higher-than-normal rating from the Trump interview, but let’s not get bogged down in details.  

    TURNING POINT USA ELECTS ERIKA KIRK AS NEW CEO, CHAIR OF THE BOARD FOLLOWING CHARLIE KIRK’S ASSASSINATION

    I’ll give the final word to Outkick founder Clay Travis, the conservative radio host and frequent guest of mine:

    “I like Jimmy and his family and have known them for years now. I don’t like the concept — as someone who talks for a living — of any person in any creative industry losing their job for any one thing they say.”

    Travis says there have been frequent attempts to cancel him, adding: “If your principle shifts based on who has power, you actually have no principles.”

    Footnote: I wish most media people, except for those covering hard-news developments, would stop using the name of the suspect in the Charlie Kirk case.

    Donald Trump on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in 2015 in a black suit and bright blue tie

    Donald Trump was a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in 2015 prior to winning the presidency. (Randy Holmes/Disney General Entertainment Content)

    For many years, I have refused to name assassins, would-be assassins, mass shooters and school shooters, because that would give them the attention they crave. Just not gonna go there.

    Do you remember the name of the killers at Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, the Orlando nightclub, the Las Vegas music festival, the Charleston church, Buffalo, Uvalde, or even the Colorado school a couple of weeks ago? I don’t either. The faster we can consign them to the dustbin of history, the better.

    Lavishing attention on them may inspire other would-be gunmen to take action, thinking it’s a way to turn nobodies into somebodies. 

    And here’s the absolute proof from the alleged Kirk killer.

    The 22-year-old texted his roommate, his romantic partner, about what he had inscribed on the bullet casings.

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP 

    If those messages wound up “on fox new[s] I might have a stroke.” 

    That’s why I say it’s dangerous to reward these heinous figures by making them household names. 

    Howard Kurtz is a media and political analyst and the former host of FOX News Channel’s MediaBuzz. Based in Washington, D.C., he joined the network in 2013 and regularly appears on Special Report with Bret Baier and The Story with Martha MacCallum among other programs.

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  • Seth Meyers Jokes He’s ‘Always Admired’ Trump After Kimmel Suspension, Promises ‘We’re Gonna Keep Doing Our Show the Way We’ve Always Done It’

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    On Thursday’s episode of “Late Night,” Seth Meyers sarcastically pretended to seek approval from Donald Trump in response to the news that ABC pulled “Jimmy Kimmel Live” off the air.

    “His administration is pursuing a crackdown on free speech — and completely unrelated, I just want to say, before we get started here, that I’ve always admired and respected Mr. Trump,” he said as the audience laughed loudly. “I’ve always believed he was a visionary, innovator, a great president, an even better golfer. And if you’ve ever seen me say anything negative about him, that’s just AI.”

    Meyers jokes were a reference to the fact that ABC made its decision about Kimmel after FCC chairman and Trump appointee Brendan Carr threatened legal action over Kimmel’s recent comments about Charlie Kirk. Following Carr’s words, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” was pulled from all ABC affiliate stations owned by Nexstar and Sinclair. Production was halted on the series indefinitely soon after. Kimmel’s suspension has been seen by many, including former president Barack Obama, as an attack on free speech and a sign of the Trump administration intimidating media companies to “fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.”

    On a more serious note, Meyers added, “It is a privilege and an honor to call Jimmy Kimmel my friend in the same way that it’s a privilege and honor to do this show every night. I wake up every day, I count my blessings that I live in a country that at least purports to value freedom of speech, and we’re gonna keep doing our show the way we’ve always done it: with enthusiasm and integrity.”

    If Trump has it his way, Meyers and his fellow NBC late night host Jimmy Fallon will be next on the chopping block. The president wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday, “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. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT.”

    Kimmel came under fire after his Monday night broadcast, during which he said the “MAGA mob” was “trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” The commentary drew a response from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who said during an appearance on Benny Johnson’s podcast Wednesday, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

    In the aftermath of Kimmel’s pre-empting, Carr wrote on X, “I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing. Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values. I hope that other broadcasters follow Nexstar’s lead.”

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  • Chuck Schumer questions whether Epstein was ‘the real reason’ Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was canceled

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    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    After news broke that late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was canceled by Disney over his comments about Charlie Kirk, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took to social media to question the motivations behind the abrupt cancellation.    

    Schumer wondered in a Thursday afternoon post on X whether “Epstein” was “the real reason” Kimmel was forcibly scrubbed from the airwaves. 

    “IS EPSTEIN THE REAL REASON TRUMP HAD KIMMEL CANCELED?!” Schumer asked in the post, which also included a screenshot of a New York Times article about how all the popular late-night hosts, including Kimmel, have used the newly released Epstein documents to roast the president over his alleged association with the disgraced financier. 

    Fox News Digital reached out to Schumer’s representatives for more details on what Schumer was attempting to imply but did not receive a response in time for publication.

    JIMMY KIMMEL CANCELLATION SPARKS FIERCE CELEBRITY SPLIT IN HOLLYWOOD

    Sen. Chuck Schumer has raised the possibility that Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was canceled due to his statements about Jeffrey Epstein, right. (Getty Images)

    Nexstar Media Group, which owns hundreds of television stations, announced Wednesday that it would be pulling Kimmel’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” talk show from its ABC affiliates “for the foreseeable future” and would replace it with other programming over his comments about alleged Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson.

    “Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are 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,” Nexstar’s broadcasting chief, Andrew Alford, said in a press release.

    “Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.” 

    Trump spoke about the cancellation Thursday while he was in the United Kingdom, telling reporters that Kimmel “was fired” because he had bad ratings.

    ABC’S ‘JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!’ HEMORRHAGED VIEWERS OVER PAST DECADE, LOST 72% AMONG KEY DEMO

    Donald Trump on Jimmy Kimmel's show in 2015

    President Donald Trump was a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Dec. 16, 2015.  (Randy Holmes/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)

    “Jimmy Kimmel was fired ’cause he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk. And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person, he had very bad ratings and they shoulda fired him a long time ago,” Trump said during a press conference Thursday alongside United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer in England. 

    “He was fired for lack of talent,” Trump added. 

    Meanwhile, in a social media post on his platform, Truth Social, on Wednesday night, Trump called the cancellation “great news for America.”  

    The Kirk comments in question reportedly stem from a Monday airing of Kimmel’s show, during which he accused conservatives of reaching “new lows” in their efforts to try to pin Kirk’s assassin as connected to some form of left-wing ideology.

    kimmel and kirk

    Jimmy Kimmel’s popular late-night show was canceled following comments he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, right.  (David Russell/Disney via Getty Images; AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

    “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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,” Kimmel said.

    Following news of the cancellation, Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr applauded local television stations for “standing up to serve the interests of their community.”

    Fox News Digital’s Joseph Wulfsohn and Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.

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  • Inside the meetings that led to Jimmy Kimmel’s preemption

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    Hollywood is grappling with concerns over free speech and censorship after comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show was abruptly pulled from the air over his monologue comments about the shooting of Charlie Kirk. Peter White, executive editor of television at Deadline, joins CBS News to unpack the chain of events that led to ABC’s decision.

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  • Donald Trump’s already bored with Jimmy Kimmel and teases his next victim | The Mary Sue

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    If comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s abrupt dismissal did not faze you enough, Donald Trump‘s latest statement listing his next targets should ring in your ears like a final alarm.

    Debates have begun everywhere about Trump’s misuse of federal power for personal gain after the news of ABC’s firing of Kimmel over an arguably distasteful comment about him. While the heat of his dismissal still hasn’t died down, the President already announced his next batch of victims—and it’s not just individual reporters this time.

    While flying back home on Air Force One after his two-day visit to the United Kingdom, Trump spoke to reporters and praised the FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, for getting Jimmy Kimmel’s show suspended. “I think Brendan Carr is doing a great job,” he said, while calling the show’s cancellation “Great News for America” in a recent social media post:

    “The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible,” he wrote.

    However, Trump doesn’t plan on stopping here. He told reporters aboard Air Force One that he will cancel licenses for any media networks that air content against him. According to him, “97 percent” of the networks are against him, and “they’re not allowed to do that.

    “When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do—if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years, or something—when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.” (via The Daily Beast)

    This means that any non-Trump-compliant local station, whose network channels air content criticizing Trump and his administration, is directly threatened with cancellation of its FCC licence. Now, one might think that the networks that we watch, including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, etc., are off the hook since they do not hold individual licenses, but all of them are affiliated with local FCC-licensed stations and thus stand in danger.

    Image via Truth Social/@realDonaldTrump

    In his earlier post celebrating his unconstitutional display of power over Kimmel, Trump also subtly warned NBC News to part ways with their late-night hosts, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, calling them “two total losers.” These open threats by the man holding the highest federal office are a direct war on the future of the free press in the country.

    It’s not about Kimmel, Fallon, or any other reporter anymore, but about whether the First Amendment can survive Trump’s authoritarianism.

    Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

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    Kopal

    Staff Writer

    Kopal primarily covers politics for The Mary Sue. Off the clock, she switches to DND mode and escapes to the mountains.

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  • Jimmy Kimmel breaks silence after late-night show pulled off-air

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    Jimmy Kimmel has broken his silence in the wake of the shocking news that his late-night talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, has been put on an indefinite hiatus following his comments about conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk. Several celebrities have come out in support of the 57-year-old, who has hosted the show since 2003 and was a vocal critic of Donald Trump. David Letterman, legendary TV personality and host of The Late Show from 1993 to 2015, shared that he had been in contact with Jimmy, and revealed how he was dealing with the news. 

    The 78-year-old spoke at the Atlantic Festival in New York City and explained that he had texted Jimmy to check up on him. “He’s up in bed, taking nourishment. He’s going to be fine,” David said, per Variety. He went on to discuss how monumental the decision to axe the show was, with Jimmy being one of the top-rated late-night hosts.

    “This is misery,” he lamented. “I feel bad about this. We see where this is all going, correct? It’s managed media. And it’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. And you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.”

    “The institution of the President of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show,” David said, adding that Jimmy’s removal “was predicted by our president right after Stephen Colbert got walked off, so you’re telling me this isn’t premeditated at some level?” Stephen, who was David’s successor on The Late Show, revealed that the series would come to an end in May 2026.  

    David then quipped that during his tenure on The Late Show, he had joked about six presidents on the air, and “not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency.” Jimmy performed a monologue on his show on Monday night, suggesting that far-right figures were trying to pin the death of Charlie Kirk onto the political left, after the podcaster was shot and killed at a university event in Utah.

    © NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
    Jimmy’s show was taken off the air on Wednesday

    “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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,” Jimmy said. He then pointed out that Donald Trump’s response to Charlie’s death was odd; when the President was asked his thoughts on the tragedy days later, he decided to discuss the White House ballroom construction instead.

    david letterman jimmy kimmel smiling together© ABC
    David shared an update on how Jimmy was faring following the news

    “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, okay?” the comedian quipped. Nexstar Media Group put pressure on ABC to take action against Jimmy due to what they claimed were “offensive” remarks, prompting the network to put the show on pause indefinitely.

    Charlie Kirk speaking on stage in 2024© Getty Images
    Jimmy commented on the death of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk

    Several high-profile celebrities and politicians have spoken out against ABC’s actions, including former President Barack Obama. “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” he wrote via X.

    barack obama jimmy kimmel live© Disney General Entertainment Con
    The former president spoke out in Jimmy’s defense

    “This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent – and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it.” Meanwhile, Donald took to Truth Social to celebrate Jimmy’s departure, writing: “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!”

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  • Hannity is wrong: Trump hoped for Jimmy Kimmel’s firing

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    On Sept. 17, ABC announced it was removing Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show from the air indefinitely, after comments the comedian made about conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s assassination. 

    Two nights earlier, Kimmel said that the “MAGA gang,” a reference to President Donald Trump’s supporters, tried to cast the person “who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”

    Suspect Tyler Robinson was charged the day after Kimmel’s comments. Robinson was an unaffiliated inactive voter who prosecutors said described Kirk as someone who “spreads too much hate.” Critics derided Kimmel’s ouster as a sign that the broadcast network caved to Trump administration pressures. 

    Fox News host Sean Hannity said he saw things differently, calling claims of “conservative censorship” false. 

    “I can’t find a single, prominent conservative voice in the country that even remotely wanted or hoped or was pushing to get Jimmy Kimmel taken off the air,” Hannity said Sept. 17 on his show “Hannity.” “Nobody — it just was simple. People changed the channel. They didn’t watch him. Not one person can I think of. Maybe there’s one, but I can’t think of him.” 

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    (Internet Archive)

    Fox News did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment.

    Has a conservative called for Kimmel to be taken off the air?

    At least one major conservative advocated for the demise of Kimmel’s show in recent months: Trump. And he did so repeatedly.

    In July, after CBS announced it would be canceling comedian Stephen Colbert’s late-night show as of May 2026, Trump said on Truth Social that he hoped Kimmel’s show would meet the same fate. 

    “The word is, and it’s a strong word at that, Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT to go in the untalented Late Night Sweepstakes and, shortly thereafter, Fallon will be gone,” he wrote July 22. “These are people with absolutely NO TALENT, who were paid Millions of Dollars for, in all cases, destroying what used to be GREAT Television. It’s really good to see them go, and I hope I played a major part in it!”

    On July 29, Trump argued that CBS canceled Cobert’s show due to his “lack of talent.” 

    “Everybody is saying that I was solely responsible for the firing of Stephen Colbert from CBS, Late Night. That is not true!” Trump wrote. “And it was only going to get WORSE! Next up will be an even less talented Jimmy Kimmel, and then, a weak, and very insecure, Jimmy Fallon. The only real question is, who will go first?”

    On Aug. 6, Trump sounded his prediction again, saying at a White House event that Fallon and Kimmel were “next.” “They’re going to be going,” he said. “I hear they’re going to be going.”

    When the news about Kimmel’s show reached Trump after midnight in the U.K., he celebrated. 

    “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED,” he wrote. “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible.”

    Trump also said Sept. 18 that federal regulators should revoke the licenses of broadcasters who “give me only bad publicity.”

    Did others push for Kimmel to be fired? 

    Yes — at least according to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who said during a podcast appearance that Kimmel’s suspension might be warranted. 

    “There’s calls for Kimmel to be fired,” Carr said Sept. 17 on conservative commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast. “You could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this.” 

    Carr, who Trump appointed as chair, formerly served as the commission’s senior Republican. 

    RELATED: Key question in the Jimmy Kimmel case: Does the FCC have the power to regulate speech? 

    Carr made the remarks in a video that Johnson — who has 5.73 million YouTube subscribers and 3.9 million followers on X — titled “Jimmy Kimmel LIES About Charlie Kirk Killer, Blames Charlie For His Murder!? Disney Must Fire Kimmel.” (Disney is ABC’s parent company.)

    Carr also said the government could take action against ABC. “They have a license granted by us at the FCC that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest,” Carr told Johnson. “…I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take actions, frankly on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

    We contacted the FCC to ask who else called for Kimmel to be fired and received no response.

    What’s behind ABC’s decision to take Kimmel’s show off the air?

    ABC said Sept. 17 that Kimmel’s show was “preempted indefinitely” following backlash to his remarks. 

    “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

    Kimmel then showed a clip of Trump answering a reporter’s question about how he was holding up after Kirk’s murder. “I think very good,” Trump answered, before directing journalists’ attention to the White House renovation underway nearby. 

    Before ABC’s announcement, two companies that own a range of ABC affiliates — Nexstar and Sinclair — said they would be preempting Kimmel’s show. (Preempting a show means not running it in an affiliate’s market.)

    Nexstar announced in August that it intended, subject to regulatory approvals, to acquire all outstanding shares of Tegna for $6.2 billion. The transaction is expected to close by the second half of 2026 and will be reviewed by the FCC. Separately, Nexstar and Sinclair are also asking the FCC to repeal a rule that limits any broadcasting company from reaching more than 39% of U.S. households.

    Our ruling

    Hannity said he found no “prominent conservative voice in the country that even remotely wanted or hoped or was pushing to get Jimmy Kimmel taken off the air.”

    Trump, the biggest conservative voice in the country, said in July that Kimmel was “next up” on the list of late night show hosts who would be fired. Trump also said of Kimmel’s and Fallon’s then-hypothetical ouster from late night shows: “It’s really good to see them go, and I hope I played a major part in it!” 

    Other prominent conservative voices also weighed in. Johnson advocated for Kimmel to be fired. And Carr said Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s assassination drew calls for — and created a possible path for — his suspension or firing. 

    We rate this claim False.

    PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird, Staff Writer Samantha Putterman and Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson contributed to this report.

    RELATED: President Trump said he ‘brought back free speech.’ His first 100 days tell a different story.

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  • ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after threat from Trump’s FCC chair

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    (CNN) — Disney’s ABC is taking Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show off the air indefinitely amid a controversy over his recent comments about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer.

    “Jimmy Kimmel Live will be pre-empted indefinitely,” an ABC spokesperson said, declining to share any further details.

    A representative for Kimmel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The stunning decision came just a few hours after the Trump administration official responsible for licensing ABC’s local stations publicly pressured the company to punish Kimmel.

    At least two major owners of ABC-affiliated stations subsequently said they would preempt Kimmel’s show, sparking speculation that the owners were trying to curry favor with the administration. The local media conglomerates are each seeking mergers that would require administration approval.

    As Kimmel prepared to tape Wednesday night’s episode in Hollywood, ABC decided to pull the plug, much to the astonishment of the entertainment industry.

    Free speech and free expression groups immediately condemned ABC, calling the suspension cowardly, while President Trump, who frequently sparred with Kimmel, celebrated all the way from the UK, where he is on a state visit.

    “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “That leaves Jimmy (Fallon) and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!”

    The indefinite hiatus underscores how politicized opinions and comments around the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk have become, with high-profile campaigns urging employers to fire people who make comments perceived as unflattering about Kirk.

    And the president has also gone after media companies, specifically, when they displease him, as with a $15 billion defamation lawsuit he filed against the New York Times this week and lawsuits against other outlets.

    During his Monday evening monologue, Kimmel said the MAGA movement was trying to score political points by trying to prove that Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, was not one of its own.

    “The MAGA Gang (is) 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,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

    The ABC late-night host’s remarks constituted “the sickest conduct possible,” FCC chair Brendan Carr told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday. Carr suggested his FCC could move to revoke ABC affiliate licenses as a way to force Disney to punish Kimmel.

    “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “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.”

    And speaking on Fox Wednesday night, Carr suggested broadcasters would see more of this kind of pressure in the future.

    “We at the FCC are going to force the public interest obligation. There are broadcasters out there that don’t like it, they can turn in their license in to the FCC,” Carr said. “But that’s our job. Again, we’re making some progress now.”

    But Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic commissioner at the FCC, wrote on X that while “an inexcusable act of political violence by one disturbed individual must never be exploited as justification for broader censorship and control,” the Trump administration “is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression.”

    Speaking with CNN’s Erin Burnett after Kimmel’s show was taken off the air, Gomez said “the First Amendment does not allow us, the FCC, to tell broadcasters what they can broadcast.”

    “I saw the clip. He did not make any unfounded claims, but he did make a joke, one that others may even find crude, but that is neither illegal nor grounds for companies to capitulate to this administration in ways that violate the First Amendment,” Gomez told CNN. “This sets a dangerous new precedent, and companies must stand firm against any efforts to trade away First Amendment freedom.”

    Pro-Trump websites and TV shows began to criticize Kimmel for his remarks on Tuesday, and as the story gained traction on Wednesday, some owners of ABC-affiliated stations felt compelled to speak out.

    Local broadcasters get involved

    Nexstar, which operates about two dozen ABC affiliates, issued a press release saying it “strongly objects” to Kimmel’s remarks and saying its stations would “replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”

    Notably, Nexstar is seeking Trump administration approval to acquire another big US station group, Tegna. The deal requires the FCC to loosen the government’s limits on broadcast station ownership.

    Minutes after Nexstar criticized Kimmel publicly, ABC said the show was being yanked nationwide.

    Later in the evening, another big station group, Sinclair, said it had also told ABC that it was preempting Kimmel’s show on its ABC-affiliated stations before the network announced its nationwide decision.

    Sinclair, too, has business pending before the Trump administration, and it made a bid for Tegna a day before Nexstar stepped in with its bid. The company announced Wednesday night that it will air a one-hour special tribute to Kirk on Friday night in Kimmel’s usual time slot.

    Following ABC’s action to indefinitely pull Kimmel’s show off the air, 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.

    “Sinclair will not lift the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on our stations until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network’s commitment to professionalism and accountability,” the company said in its statement. “Regardless of ABC’s plans for the future of the program, Sinclair intends not to return Jimmy Kimmel Live! to our air until we are confident that appropriate steps have been taken to uphold the standards expected of a national broadcast platform.”

    Sinclair said it demanded Kimmel directly apologize to the Kirk family and make a “meaningful” donation to Kirk’s family and his organization, Turning Point USA.

    The FCC’s role

    The FCC regulates the public airwaves, including broadcast signals and content. Before Trump appointed Carr to lead the agency, the FCC, for the most part, had taken a hands-off approach to broadcasters’ political content in recent years.

    But Carr has taken a broader view of the FCC’s remit to serve the public interest, and has served as a political attack dog for Trump, threatening his perceived enemies in the broadcast media.

    “I can’t imagine another time when we’ve had local broadcasters tell a national programmer like Disney that your content no longer meets the needs and the values of our community,” Carr told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday. “So this is an important turning point.”

    The Center for American Rights, which has previously lodged bias complaints against NBC, ABC and CBS, on Wednesday filed a complaint with the FCC over Kimmel’s comments, writing that “it is no defense to say that Kimmel was engaging in satire or late-night comedy rather than traditional news.”

    “ABC’s affiliates need to step up and hold ABC accountable as a network for passing through material that fails to respect the public-interest standard to which they are held,” Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights, wrote in the complaint. “Disney as ABC’s corporate owner needs to act directly to correct this problem.”

    SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, said Wednesday night that it “condemns” the suspension of Kimmel’s show.

    “Our society depends on freedom of expression. Suppression of free speech and retaliation for speaking out on significant issues of public concern run counter to the fundamental rights we all rely on,” the union said in its statement.

    “The decision to suspend airing Jimmy Kimmel Live! is the type of suppression and retaliation that endangers everyone’s freedoms.”

    Kimmel has also been a frequent target of President Trump’s ire. Shortly after CBS announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show — a move Carr publicly celebrated — Trump suggested that “Next up will be an even less talented Jimmy Kimmel.”

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  • What Is Disney Thinking?

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    “If the goal was to simmer down the temperature, it didn’t. It became volcanic.”
    Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images

    Bob Iger and Disney are used to dealing with all manner of PR crises; it comes with the territory when you’re operating one of the best known and most beloved brands in the world. But what has happened with Jimmy Kimmel over the past 24 hours has been something far different (and scarier) than a mere public-relations kerfuffle: FCC chairman Brendan Carr, a MAGA loyalist, threatened to damage a key part of Disney’s broadcast-TV business if its ABC network didn’t “take action” against Kimmel to address his concerns over a few sentences from his September 15 episode that the right-wing outrage machine had deemed problematic. Within hours, ABC announced that Kimmel’s show was being pulled from its lineup “indefinitely,” his future at the network suddenly became unclear — and Iger’s legacy as CEO was very much at risk.

    Keep in mind the timeline of how this madness has played out: On Monday night, Kimmel delivered his monologue, which included a small, admittedly awkward sentence. On Tuesday, Fox News posted video from the monologue; by Wednesday morning, podcaster Benny Johnson, a key ally of the Trump White House, released a podcast with this YouTube subject line: “Jimmy Kimmel LIES About Charlie Kirk Killer, Blames Charlie For His Murder!? Disney Must Fire Kimmel.” The guest of honor on the pod: Carr, who said ABC could “do this the easy way or the hard way.” The rest played out in front of our eyes last night: Nexstar announced it was pulling Kimmel’s show, Sinclair quickly followed suit, and within 15 minutes, an ABC publicist was texting reporters its now-famous seven-word statement: “Jimmy Kimmel Live will be preempted indefinitely.”

    This story is far from over, and it is too soon to render judgment about What It All Means. As of Thursday afternoon, Kimmel’s show had not been canceled and he is still an employee of the Walt Disney Company, despite Donald Trump celebrating the comedian’s demise Wednesday night. Indeed, according to a person familiar with the matter, the whole purpose of ABC’s vague statement was to give the network, Kimmel, and ABC’s major-affiliated-station groups time to react to Carr’s threats in a way that ensured the show remained on the air. “There is a desire to find, and folks are working toward, what a path forward looks like for the show,” one Disney insider says of the company’s thinking. Another person familiar with the matter says that Iger and Disney TV boss Dana Walden jointly made the decision to cancel the show’s Wednesday taping, with Walden personally calling Kimmel to deliver the news. Sources say the talks between Kimmel and Disney continued on Thursday with the goal of finding a way for the host to get back on TV “as soon as possible.”

    All this may sound like spin from Disney, and if this ends with Kimmel leaving the network, that is surely how it will be interpreted in many quarters. The courts of social media and punditocracy have already — and somewhat understandably — charged and convicted ABC with bending the knee to the Trump administration. Whatever happens next, there is no taking back the decision to pull Kimmel’s show, for any length of time, in response to a coordinated, deliberate attack on him and ABC by Carr and right-wing influencers and podcasters.

    But you don’t have to excuse what Disney did Wednesday to accept the possibility that the purpose of its actions were not to punish Kimmel but to get through this crisis with Jimmy Kimmel Live! standing. One veteran Hollywood insider not connected to Disney said the utter blandness of ABC’s Wednesday statement is evidence that the company was winging it and essentially stalling for time. “There was not an ounce of spin in what they said,” this person says. “That means they had nothing to say that could please the government, their employees, the affiliates, or talent. And I don’t blame them. I probably would have done the same.”

    While folks on the right celebrated what they deemed a victory, ABC’s move ended up turning a story mostly limited to the right-wing information bubble into international news. Countless Democratic officials, including former president Barack Obama, denounced what had happened; cable news offered nonstop coverage for hours; creators threatened to boycott Disney unless Kimmel returned to the air; Jon Stewart decided he would host a special edition of The Daily Show Thursday to respond. “Now what you have is a cascading effect,” the veteran Hollywood exec says. “If the goal was to simmer down the temperature, it didn’t. It became volcanic.”

    Nobody should be pulling out the violins for Iger or Disney, but U.S. corporations do not have a ton of experience dealing with a government as ruthless and shameless at going after its targets as this Trump White House has been. While Trump’s bluster was plenty loud during his first term, folks like Carr literally wrote a playbook —  Project 2025 — on how to learn from the mistakes of that administration and better execute their vision of America. With Carr, networks now have not an objective regulator, or even someone with a partisan agenda, but something unprecedented in recent history: a mercenary who seems intent on using the regulatory state to serve the personal whims of the president. Trump perceives late-night comedians and network newscasters as his enemies; Carr has gone after both within his first year on the job.

    Even people outside Disney are shocked at what he has done. “Brendan Carr is drunk with power and glee,” a longtime TV-industry executive says. “He’s like the nerd who was bullied in high school, gets power, and has gone crazy with it.” Furthermore, a person familiar with the matter says that as right-wing outrage over Kimmel’s comments grew, employees inside ABC began getting threats to their personal safety. That has factored into Disney’s handling of the situation, a person with knowledge of the situation said.

    Still, it’s not as if Iger & Co. have not had time now to prepare for these sorts of incidents and devise a clear strategy to fight back. Even if this ends with Kimmel back on the air, Iger’s silence has caused at least some short-term damage to Disney’s brand and his personal image. He has long been regarded as among the most talent-friendly of CEOs, and Kimmel has been among the most loyal of Disney soldiers. Would it have really hurt the cause for Iger (or Walden) to come out with a statement Thursday morning defending Kimmel while showing sensitivity to Charlie Kirk’s death?

    But Disney clearly decided to play things safe and not add any fuel to the fire by saying anything until it decides what comes next. While nobody from Disney or Kimmel’s team would comment on Thursday afternoon, it seems likely the two sides have been in discussions about what, if anything, Kimmel needs to say to make ABC comfortable with putting him back on the air. (The show will remain off the air Thursday night.) Just as important, the network is likely in discussions with Nexstar and other affiliate groups about what they will require in order for them to resume airing Kimmel’s show. ABC would want to get both of them back onboard, but Nexstar — which is trying to get a huge merger deal approved by the FCC — in particular has proved it’s in full suck-up mode to Carr and Trump. “Nexstar saw all this as an opportunity to score points with the FCC,” an industry insider says. And with fellow affiliate group Sinclair joining the Kimmel pile on, it has even more leverage with Disney.

    That said, if ABC can come to an agreement with Kimmel over an appropriate response, Disney could, in theory, decide to just live with Nexstar and Sinclair boycotting Kimmel’s show. While it would mean some loss of ad revenue, it’s not as if late night is a giant profit center for networks; just the opposite. This isn’t 1995, or even 2005, where a Kimmel blackout in, say, 20 percent of the country would be a financial disaster. Much of Kimmel’s viewership now takes place on YouTube and Hulu. Disney could even go with a nuclear option and just make Jimmy Kimmel Live! a Hulu exclusive and let affiliates fill the hour with local news. CBS’s decision to cancel The Late Show With Stephen Colbert at the end of this season makes such a move even less risky, since it’s not as if ABC would be the lone big-three network without a late-night show.

    Regardless of the outcome, what is becoming sadly clear is that this will not be the last time big media companies are forced to deal with the MAGA machine moving swiftly, and with full government support, to achieve its goals. And broadcasters like ABC will keep butting up against this dynamic again and again because they program not only prime-time entertainment shows but topical talk series and newscasts. “It’s the worst time ever to be at a broadcast network, especially if you work in PR. Literally every day now, someone is going to say something,” the Hollywood veteran says. And while such controversies happened long before Trump, the mood in Hollywood is different now. “Before, when you had a backlash, it felt like social justice. Now, it feels like the full power of the U.S. government coming for you.”

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    Josef Adalian

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  • Jimmy Kimmel cancellation sparks fierce celebrity split in Hollywood

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    Jimmy Kimmel’s indefinite suspension from ABC’s late-night lineup has Hollywood stars in a tailspin.

    The network’s decision to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” has set off widespread controversy, with many of Kimmel’s famous friends calling it censorship, while others argue the move was justified.

    Kimmel’s show was pulled over his comments about alleged Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson.

    LIBERALS RAGE AS ABC PULLS JIMMY KIMMEL OFF AIR FOLLOWING CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSIN COMMENTS

    From comedians to actors, celebrities have flooded social media with both support and criticism of the unexpected shake-up.  (Michael Tullberg/Getty Images; Easterseals/Getty Images; Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

    “Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are 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,” Nexstar Media Group’s broadcasting chief, Andrew Alford, said in a press release.  

    On the show Monday, Kimmel suggested that the 22-year-old Utah man charged with Kirk’s assassination was part of the “MAGA gang” despite reports he had a left-wing ideology, which was later reaffirmed in Tuesday’s indictment.

    “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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,” Kimmel said.

    WATCH: ABC PULLS JIMMY KIMMEL OF AIR ‘INDEFINITELY’ OVER KIRK COMMENTS

    From comedians to actors, celebrities have flooded social media with both support and criticism of the unexpected shake-up.

    Actor Rob Schneider posted about the news on X, writing, “I don’t want to hear about someone getting upset for losing a ‘show.’ When they weren’t upset about a young father getting murdered for having conversations.”

    During an appearance on “The Will Cain Show” on Thursday, Schneider elaborated on how he feels about the decision to suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely. 

    WATCH: RON SCHNEIDER: THERE WAS NO ATTEMPT AT HUMOR WITH KIMMEL

    “I woke up this morning to the incredible shock that, apparently, TV shows are not guaranteed in our Constitution. I mean, wow. So, that was tough to swallow first. Second, I’m still waiting for the left, the liberals, to get outraged about Roseanne getting fired for her free speech,” he said on the show. 

    “Jimmy Kimmel can be funny, and I don’t mean to take anything away from that, but the fact of the matter, can you remember a political joke that went viral that was something really funny of his? There was no attempt in humor at all in what he said, and, as a matter of fact, it was a lie,” he later added. 

    “I don’t ever want to celebrate somebody losing their TV show. I think the outrage over somebody losing their TV show should be dwarfed over the outrage of somebody losing their life over a decent, God-fearing, wonderful, lovely person trying to have conversations.”

    While “Hercules” star Kevin Sorbo didn’t mention Kimmel by name, his reaction to the late-night shake-up was clear. Sorbo took to X and posted, “I sure miss Johnny Carson. He was the best! Jay Leno takes a close 2nd place!” He appeared to be taking a jab at the current state of late-night TV.

    Country star John Rich shared his suggestion, posting on X, “If ABC was smart, they’d replace the @jimmykimmel show with the @therealroseanne show 🙂 It would be YUGE!!”

    Roseanne Bar appeared to agree, posting, “I’m available to fill in @ABCNetwork.”

    She additionally posted on X, “Yeah imagine an administration putting pressure on a television channel to fire a comedian they didn’t like.”

    Savannah Chrisley shared Team Trump’s social media post about Kimmel on her Instagram story. The social media account shared a photo that made it appear Kimmel was crying, including a previous tweet from Kirk that said, “Jimmy Kimmel isn’t funny.” 

    A screenshot of Savannah Chrisley’s Instagram story showing Jimmy Kimmel wiping his eye during a monologue.

    Savannah Chrisley posted an Instagram story about Jimmy Kimmel’s show being taken off the air after comments about Charlie Kirk. (Instagram)

    President Donald Trump praised Disney’s decision to preempt Kimmel’s late-night show as “great news for America” on Wednesday.

    Donald Trump Israel Strike Doha Qatar

    Trump praised Disney’s decision to indefinitely preempt Kimmel’s late-night show as “great news for America.” (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

    TRUMP CALLS DISNEY PULLING JIMMY KIMMEL’S SHOW ‘GREAT NEWS FOR AMERICA’

    Other Hollywood stars rallied behind Kimmel, calling the move a major blow to comedy.

    Christie Brinkley posted a photo of several late-night hosts, including Kimmel, on her Instagram story.

    Jimmy Kimmel speaks onstage

    Jimmy Kimmel suggested that the 22-year-old Utah man charged with Kirk’s assassination was part of the “MAGA gang” despite reports he had a left-wing ideology. (Michael Le Brecht/Disney via Getty Images)

    “Love these guys,” she wrote over the photo. “The laughter they provide us is as important as the air we breath[e]! And they are taking another one of them off the air tonight! WE MUST PROTECT their and OUR 1st [Amendment] RIGHTS!!!!”

    A group photo of late-night hosts John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon smiling together, posted by Christie Brinkley on Instagram with supportive text.

    Christie Brinkley posted support for Jimmy Kimmel and other late-night comedians, stressing the importance of their comedy and free speech. (Instagram)

    During a morning show appearance, Kimmel’s good friend Jason Bateman spoke about the news.

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    “Well, it’s troubling to say the least,” Bateman said on the “Today” show. “And we all have to really take a moment and figure how we feel about this type of thing, especially people doing what you do.

    “I’m sure there’s going to be some sort of collective move to respond to this, but I’m not smart enough or powerful enough to be the one to do it. But I imagine there’s plenty of conversations going on to do something, because you just can’t stand by and let stuff like that go on.”

    Jimmy Kimmel performs on stage before show suspension

    Jimmy Kimmel hosts his late-night program in Los Angeles.  (David Russell/Disney via Getty Images)

    The host then asked, “Stuff like?” to which Bateman replied, “Well, Jimmy getting his show pulled for freedom of speech.”

    Bateman has previously vacationed with Kimmel, along with another famous friend, Jennifer Aniston. 

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    In 2023, Aniston shared an Instagram post of a “summertime photo dump,” while she was on holiday with Bateman, Kimmel and their spouses. 

    Jennifer Aniston smiles with a hand on her hip wearing a plunging chain dress on the carpet at the SAG Awards

    In 2023, Jennifer Aniston shared an Instagram “summertime photo dump” while vacationing with Jason Bateman, Jimmy Kimmel and their spouses. She has not commented on Kimmel’s suspension. (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

    Rosie O’Donnell also voiced support for Kimmel. She posted a photo of the late-night host on Instagram with the caption, “this is unacceptable … america is no more.”

    Comedian Wanda Sykes revealed she had been scheduled to appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Wednesday night. 

    “Let’s see. He didn’t end the Ukraine war or solve Gaza within his first week. But he did end freedom of speech within his first year. Hey, for those of you who pray, now’s the time to do it. Love you, Jimmy,” Sykes said in an Instagram video. 

    Ben Stiller wrote on X, “This isn’t right,” while “Happy Days” actor Henry Winkler posted, “@jimmykimmel his humor, his insights are important to keep showing us who we are. AND he is a most wonderful fellow.”

    Emmy-winning actress Jean Smart expressed outrage over the move.

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    “I am horrified at the cancellation of ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live.’ What Jimmy said was FREE speech, not hate speech,” she wrote on Instagram alongside a photo of the late-night host.

    “People seem to only want to protect free speech when it suits THEIR agenda. Though I didn’t agree at ALL with Charlie Kirk; his shooting death sickened me; and should have sickened any decent human being. What is happening to our country?”

    Reps for Kimmel did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

    Fox News Digital’s Lindsay Kornick and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report. 

    Stephanie Giang-Paunon is an Entertainment Writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to stephanie.giang@fox.com and on Twitter: @SGiangPaunon.

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  • Trump’s Beef With Jimmy Kimmel: A Brief History

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    Toward the end of the 2024 Academy Awards broadcast, Kimmel, who was hosting, gave an impromptu performance of his recurring “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets” sketch.

    “I just got a review: ‘Has there ever been a worst host than Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars?’” he read from his phone. “His opening was that of a less-than-average person trying too hard to be something which he is not and never can be.”

    As the tirade veered off into jabs at “George Slopanopoulous” and a call to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” it became clear Kimmel wasn’t reading a comment from some rando on the internet, but the then-former president, who had posted this to Truth Social during the show:

    Six weeks later, Trump was still upset about Kimmel mocking him on “Hollywood’s biggest night.” He posted this follow-up rant, which included multiple errors (the post suggests Kimmel botched the Best Picture announcement, but it was Al Pacino):

    Five months later, Trump brought up the incident again on the campaign rally. “Remember I put a truth?” he asked the crowd, “I said how he’s the worst host in the history of the Academy Awards.” Then he reenacted Kimmel’s live reading of his post, concluding, “he’s one of the dumbest human being after.”

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    Margaret Hartmann

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