The remaining late-night talk show writers have their work cut out for them in coming up with material suitable for Thursday night’s episode. And every other episode in the foreseeable future.
Now that ABC has yanked Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air, following a conservative pressure campaign over a recent monologue, it’s unclear what Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and the hosts of The Daily Show can even say about the incident without crossing an undefined line of offense.
On Monday night, Kimmel kicked off his show with a monologue touching on the latest developments in the reaction to Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend,” the host said, “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.”
Kimmel went on to lampoon Trump for his seeming lack of grief over Kirk, airing a widely circulated clip from last Friday, in which the president quickly pivoted from a reporter’s question about Kirk to happily hyping up renovations at the White House.
The reaction was quiet, until suddenly it wasn’t.
Anyone not paying close enough attention to right-wing influencers over the following 36 hours might not have even noticed. There certainly wasn’t the kind of instant widespread backlash that led to ABC canceling Roseanne in 2017 roughly eight hours after the show’s creator and star tweeted an arguably racist remark about former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett.
Primarily pushing the backlash was Benny Johnson, a right-wing influencer and podcaster who was a personal friend and peer of Kirk’s. Johnson zeroed in on the part of Kimmel’s monologue that could be construed as a formal declaration of the alleged shooter being confirmed as a MAGA activist—an inaccurate representation of events.
“Something demonstrably evil happened on Jimmy Kimmel’s show,” Johnson said at the top of his Wednesday episode—an episode entitled “Jimmy Kimmel LIES About Charlie Kirk Killer, Blames Charlie For His Murder!? Disney Must Fire Kimmel.”
Later on the show, Johnson had an unlikely guest for a video podcast: Trump’s hand-picked chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr.
The FCC chair weighed in on Kimmel’s segment, which at that point had seemingly not yet become controversial outside of the conservative media ecosystem. Carr described Kimmel’s comments as part of a “concerted effort to try to lie to the American people about the nature… of one of the most significant newsworthy public interest acts that we’ve seen in a long time.”
Carr went on to describe FCC broadcasting license-holders as having “an obligation to operate in the public interest.” Lest there be any confusion that he was suggesting ABC had defaulted on this obligation by airing Kimmel’s Monday night monologue, Carr added: “I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Kimmel had indeed made a mistake. Like many other public figures on both sides, he’d commented on a still-unfolding situation with details that could be easily contradicted pending further information. The host’s remark about alleged shooter Tyler Robinson being “one of their own” came after a moment where it seemed as if Robinson was part of the far-right “groyper” movement. Although some ambiguity remains, evidence now points to the shooter acting against Kirk’s “hatred,” which many have interpreted as suggesting a left-leaning motivation. No definitive answers have yet been determined to fully explain the shooter’s actions.
A clarification on Kimmel’s part was reasonable to expect, following the backlash, and he reportedly planned on delivering one Wednesday night. He never got the chance, however.
Following Carr’s appearance on Johnson’s show, which the host quickly hyped to his nearly four million followers on X, Nexstar, which runs 32 ABC affiliates and happens to be awaiting FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger, signaled it would not broadcast Kimmel’s show for the foreseeable future. (Carr subsequently thanked Nexstar for “doing the right thing” in a tweet.)
ABC responded soon after, announcing Kimmel’s show was on an indefinite hiatus, without explaining the decision. ABC’s move eerily echoed CBS parting ways with vocal Trump critic Stephen Colbert back in July—at a time when the company was awaiting FCC approval for a merger. It also fulfilled a prophecy from Trump at that moment: “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”
More recently, Kimmel’s indefinite suspension follows a wave of firings that has hit journalists, cable news pundits, professors, and many others whose comments about Kirk were deemed offensive in certain circles. Kimmel’s sidelining, however, is by far the most high-profile, and may have a chilling effect on what people feel comfortable saying on TV going forward.
The ongoing, wide-ranging blowback should be reminiscent of the censorial post-9/11 atmosphere, for Americans old enough to remember it. Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect (also an ABC show) was cancelled in June 2002 following the host’s controversial comments about 9/11 terrorists not being cowards. (Maher’s replacement? Ironically, it was Jimmy Kimmel.) The following year, when the U.S. officially invaded Iraq, Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines told a London audience she was “ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas,” a statement that led to death threats, radio boycotts, demonstrations of bulldozers running over Dixie Chicks CDs, and the effective end of the superstar group’s career.
Several prominent voices have already called out Kimmel’s indefinite suspension as a similar threat to free speech, including Governor JB Pritzker, the Writers Guild of America, and comedian Wanda Sykes, who had been scheduled to appear on Kimmel’s show Wednesday night. (“He didn’t end the Ukraine War or solve Gaza within his first week,” Sykes said of President Trump in an Instagram reel. “But he did end freedom of speech within his first year.”
As for Trump and his allies, they are celebrating the outcome. Fox News host Sean Hannity called Kimmel’s sidelining “long overdue”, which is difficult to reconcile with the idea that Kimmel’s primary offense was his inaccurate comment from Monday night.
Johnson went a step further and took credit for the firing, quote-tweeting a 2017 Kirk tweet expressing distaste for Kimmel, adding: “We did it for you, Charlie.”
More ominous was the next line in Johnson’s tweet: “And we’re just getting started…”