The decision by ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show made the comedian the second late-night host to be forced off the air for offending President Donald Trump in two months — a shocking blow to free speech rights in America.
The network did not have to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” which it did “indefinitely.”
It announced the decision after Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr appeared on a far-right podcast and attacked Kimmel for a comment he made about the death of late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed last week in Utah.
The man accused of taking the shot, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, did not have clear political affiliations. He came from a conservative family, and some members told investigators that they noticed he was becoming more politically conscious in recent years.
On Monday, Kimmel joked that “the MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” He said Trump, who claimed to have been close with Kirk, was mourning him like a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish. (A widely circulated clip of Trump showed the president immediately moving on from a question about Kirk to the construction of his new White House ballroom.)
