Another late-night host is silenced

Last night, ABC announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be put on indefinite hiatus effective immediately following “controversial” statements Jimmy Kimmel made in Monday night’s monologue regarding the assassination of right-wing advocate Charlie Kirk. Notably, Kimmel’s comments were not about Kirk himself, but about his alleged killer. Kimmel said: “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.” 

Following this very mild remark—I’m not going to speculate on Tyler Robinson’s political beliefs or motivations, because it is still not clear why he did what he (allegedly) did – the head of the FCC, Brendan Carr, threatened ABC’s broadcast license, saying: “It's long past the time that Comcast and Disney say, ‘We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC.’”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr: "There's actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. It's long past the time that...Comcast and Disney say 'We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore...because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibly of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC.'"

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2025-09-17T19:15:56.173Z

Hours later, ABC put Jimmy Kimmel Live! on indefinite hiatus, so that threat worked. 

Also tangled up in this mess is ANOTHER merger. This one is between local TV station ownership groups Nexstar and Tegna, and they still need FCC approval to complete their merger. Regarding Kimmel, Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar, said, “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.” 

if Jimmy Kimmel's political humor is too hot for you to handle, I'm not sure "snowflake" even cuts it as a term of derision for the level of fragility you've achieved

— e.w. niedermeyer (@niedermeyer.online) 2025-09-17T23:00:07.551Z

I don’t care if you don’t think Jimmy Kimmel is funny, if you don’t watch his show, if you think late night TV is dying anyway—I agree with all of those sentiments to varying degrees!—but we are now living in a world where two late-night hosts who consistently criticize Trump are being silenced. Meanwhile, Brian Kilmeade, a co-host on the Fox News program Fox & Friends, fully said that unhoused people experiencing mental health crises should be subjected to “involuntary lethal injection, or something. Just kill ’em.”

Kilmeade has since apologized, but the point is that at no time was he taken off the air, was his show cancelled, or was his job in any way threatened by doing the Mitchell and Webb “Kill all the poor” bit but for real, live on air. 

 

We should ALL be asking ourselves why one person can openly suggest murdering the unhoused and get away with only issuing an apology, while another guy points out that there is a politicized agenda surrounding an assassination narrative, and he’s yanked off the air. They’re both rich white guys, they’re both TV hosts, there’s only one obvious difference between Brian Kilmeade and Jimmy Kimmel, and we should be asking ourselves if we’re really, truly okay with the double standard that is—and has been—in effect. “Free speech for me but not for thee” is not what the constitution says. It says freedom of speech is an inalienable human right.

And this IS a constitutional issue, because no matter how hard people try to misunderstand it, freedom of speech is not about protecting us from our own idiot opinions and the personal consequences that may follow from voicing them. The First Amendment protects US citizens from governmental interference with their right to speech. And what happened to Kimmel coming just hours after the head of the FCC openly threatened ABC’s broadcast license, sure as hell looks like governmental interference in his right to free speech. 

According to CNBC, though, Kimmel “is not fired” and someone at Disney “plans to speak with him about what he should say when he goes back on the air”. Whether or not his show would be put back on Nexstar’s stations is unclear, but if it does happen, it doesn’t seem likely that it’s possible until their merger goes through. In the meantime, Sinclair, ABC’s largest affiliate group, has already issued a statement saying that they won’t put Kimmel’s show back on air until “formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network’s commitment to professionalism and accountability”. They also want (demand) Kimmel apologize to the Kirk family and make a “meaningful” donation to Kirk’s right-wing advocacy group, Turning Point USA. 

Sinclair, run by right-wing media mogul David Smith, says suspending the Jimmy Kimmel show isn’t enough. It is going to run a tribute to Kirk during Kimmel’s time slot. Sinclair stations will run not consider putting Kimmel back on air until he apologizes and donates to Turning Point USA

— Judd Legum (@juddlegum.bsky.social) 2025-09-18T00:58:58.678Z

I just don’t know what you expect Jimmy Kimmel to say if/when he goes back on air. He didn’t say anything about Kirk, he pointed out the politicization of an assassination—which is already a political act. Not only did Kimmel not say anything disparaging about Charlie Kirk—though people have been fired for merely QUOTING Kirk’s own words—he didn’t even disparage a particular person. He just made a comment about a specific political agenda that is openly being pursued across multiple facets of politics and daily life in the US. None of this stuff is secret, it’s all happening out in the open and we’re, what? Not supposed to talk about it?

I mean, yeah, it feels like we’re not supposed to talk about it. It feels like we’re not supposed to talk about anything other than the approved party line. It feels like the Trump administration is using the FCC, particularly its merger approval power, to force media companies into compliance, it feels like Trump is working his way down a list and getting rid of thorns in his side. It feels like it doesn’t even matter what the latest horror is, because whatever it is, it will be wielded as a cudgel against critics of the administration. 

And it’s working, because I am scared. I don’t even want to be writing this, and I am genuinely worried about how it will be received. I know there are people who like everything that is happening, who think their enemies are being punished, people who are excited to see public figures lose jobs and be silenced for saying things they don’t like. I don’t know how to talk to those people, except to say that, unfortunately, we’re all Americans. And whatever you think you’re getting out of this moment right now, eventually, this moment will end. It might take a while, years, even, but it will end. All moments do. And when it does end, what then? Because we’ll all still be Americans. We’ll all still be stuck with each other. And I just don’t know where we’re supposed to go from here.

Source