ABC, like CBS, is bowing to Donald Trump. The Disney-controlled network has announced the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the wildly popular late-night show hosted for 23 years by the celebrated comedian, who moved to Italy this year "to escape Donald Trump." The decision immediately won praise from the tycoon, who has now asked NBC to cancel the broadcasts of two other famous comedians hostile to him: Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers .
Kimmel's comments on the Kirk case cost him his show, after the Trump administration launched a campaign to purge those who made controversial comments on the matter and prosecute radical left-wing organizations, such as Antifa, which the president has designated a terrorist organization. Kimmel's dismissal outraged Hollywood and the opposition, which invoked censorship and the repression of dissent, sparking broader concerns for free speech.
For Barack Obama, the Trump administration "is taking 'cancel culture' to a new and dangerous level," while for far-right anchor Tucker Carlson, it is using Kirk's killing to trample on the First Amendment.
On Monday night's episode, the comedian said that "we hit new lows last weekend, with the Maga gang desperately trying to paint this guy who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of their own and doing everything they can to get political traction out of it."
Kimmel also mocked Trump's mourning of Kirk: "This isn't how an adult mourns the murder of someone they call a friend, it's how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish," he quipped , showing a clip of the tycoon talking about building a ballroom at the White House immediately after the shooting.
Trump-backed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr, whose resignation the Democrats are now calling for, criticized Kimmel's remarks and threatened to revoke their TV licenses. This intimidation prompted some owners of ABC-affiliated stations, including major groups Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair, to announce they would stop broadcasting the show, prompting the network to suspend the program . "These remarks are offensive and unacceptable," explained Nexstar, which, however, also needs FCC approval for its $6.2 billion acquisition of the broadcaster Tegna.
Some suspect that the program's suspension is a "duty" paid for the green light to the operation, similar to CBS's previous moves in anticipation of the merger of its parent company Paramount with Skydance : the $16 million paid to settle a lawsuit with Trump regarding a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris and the termination of the Late Show by Stephen Colbert, another famous anti-Trump comedian, starting in 2026 (officially for financial reasons). The decision to suspend Kimmel's show—which employs 200 people—was made by the top management of Disney and ABC, the broadcaster having already agreed last December to pay Trump $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos.
On "Truth," the tycoon congratulated ABC "for finally having the courage to do what needed to be done. Kimmel has no talent whatsoever and even gets worse ratings than Colbert." These accusations were repeated in the press conference with Keir Starmer, where he accused him of having said "horrible things about a gentleman like Charlie Kirk," someone who "could have been president one day." "You can call this free speech or not. But he was fired for lack of talent," reiterated Trump, who had already prophesied Kimmel's ouster when the Colbert Show was suspended. Now, he wrote, there remain "two other absolute losers" on NBC, Fallon and Meyers. Kimmel is described as "fucking furious" with ABC and intent on "severing his relationship with the network forever," even preparing a guest appearance on Colbert's talk show before it is canceled. Meanwhile, The Donald has declared Antifa a terrorist organization, calling for investigations into its funding, convinced that the violence that led to Kirk's killing is confined to the left, and not, for example, the paramilitary groups that participated in the Capitol assault. This move, however, is difficult to implement because the movement, which mobilizes—sometimes violently—against racism, supremacism, and other right-wing ideologies, is decentralized, without a leader or headquarters.
(Unioneonline)