ABC shocked the TV industry last night by pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! off air under pressure from the Trump administration, prompting anxiety over state censorship and a wave of support for the late-night host. Earlier Wednesday (September 17), Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, had threatened the network with retaliation if it did not punish host Jimmy Kimmel for a joke, on Monday night’s telecast, that linked Charlie Kirk’s alleged shooter with “the MAGA gang.” Celebrities including Ben Stiller, Wanda Sykes, and Jean Smart, as well as unions such as the Writers Guild of America, strongly criticized ABC’s decision.
In the comments for which he is under fire, Kimmel said 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 added, “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”
Carr, interviewed on a right-wing podcast on Wednesday, said Kimmel’s remarks were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people.” The FCC, he added, “have remedies that we can look at.”
Conservatives have portrayed Kirk’s alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, as a politically motivated radical leftist, but analysis of his communications paints a more ambiguous picture. Robinson’s mother told prosecutors that her son had recently become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.” But, as a Ken Klippenstein investigation uncovered, some of Robinson’s friends questioned the notion that his beliefs on sexuality represented a wider left-leaning position—noting, for instance, his support for the Second Amendment.
Some of the strongest condemnations of ABC’s decision came from unions: the Writers Guild of America (WGA), the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), and the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). Their statements criticized both the government and ABC, a network owned by the Walt Disney Company. Disney’s chief executive, Bob Iger, and television chief, Dana Walden, made the decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live!, sources told The New York Times.
The AFM, which represents Kimmel’s band, lamented “government overreach” and called for protections of free speech and artistic expression. “This is not complicated,” the statement reads. “Trump’s FCC identified speech it did not like and threatened ABC with extreme reprisals. This is state censorship. It’s now happening in the United States of America, not some far-off country. It’s happening right here and right now.”
The WGA added in its own statement, “The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other—to disturb, even—is at the very heart of what it means to be a free people. It is not to be denied. Not by violence, not by the abuse of governmental power, nor by acts of corporate cowardice.” SAG-AFTRA echoed those points, writing, that the decision represents “the type of suppression and retaliation that endangers everyone’s freedoms.”
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