ABC shelves ‘Kimmel Live’ after Trump FCC threat

What happened

ABC last night “indefinitely” suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after station owner Nexstar said it would pull the program over comments Kimmel made about the conservative response to Charlie Kirk’s death. Hours earlier, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr had threatened to punish the Disney-owned network if it did not take action against the late-night comedy show.

Who said what

Conservatives slammed Kimmel for saying during his Monday night monologue that 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.” 

Carr told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson yesterday that Kimmel’s “lie” about the political beliefs of Kirk’s shooter was “a very, very serious issue right now for Disney” and ABC’s “licensed” affiliate stations. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said, and if “these companies” don’t “take action, frankly, on Kimmel,” then the FCC would. The agency can revoke licenses for stations or levy fines. After Nexstar said it would preempt Kimmel, Carr publicly thanked the company, which owns 32 ABC stations and needs FCC permission and a media-consolidation waiver for its proposed $6.2 billion purchase of rival station owner Tegna. 

Kimmel’s suspension drew widespread condemnation from free-speech advocates and others outside President Donald Trump’s orbit. “A free and democratic society cannot silence comedians because the president doesn’t like what they say," Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said on social media. ABC “caved,” said Ari Cohn at the advocacy group FIRE, and “until institutions grow a backbone and learn to resist government pressure,” the U.S. is a “country where late-night talk show hosts serve at the pleasure of the president.”

What next?

Trump, writing on social media from Windsor Castle during a state visit to Britain, congratulated ABC for “finally having the courage to do what had to be done” and urged NBC to fire late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. When CBS canceled Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” in July — days before the FCC approved its parent company’s long-pending merger with Skydance — Trump similarly applauded and posted, “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”

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