American late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was back on the air Tuesday night, after being suspended by the ABC television network September 17 for comments about the killing of fascist podcaster Charlie Kirk. Kimmel’s return, as the result of widespread outrage at ABC’s act of censorship and the huge audience it generated, represents a slap in the face for Donald Trump and his fascist cohorts.
In his comments, the comic condemned the “president of the United States [who] made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”
Noting that Trump is going after other talkshow hosts and the “hundreds of Americans who work for their shows who don’t make millions of dollars.” He added, “I hope that if that happens or if there’s even any hint of that happening, you will be 10 times as loud as you were this week. We have to speak out against this because he’s not stopping.”
Kimmel went on:
And it’s not just comedy. He’s [Trump] gunning for our journalists, too. He’s suing them. He’s bullying them. Over the weekend, his Foxy friend Pete Hegseth announced a new policy that requires journalists with Pentagon press credentials to sign a pledge, promising not to report information that hasn’t been explicitly authorized for release. That includes unclassified information. They want to pick and choose what the news is. I know that’s not as interesting as muscling a comedian, but it’s so important to have a free press, and it is nuts that we aren’t paying more attention to it.
After noting that he had done almost 4,000 shows on ABC, a division of the Disney entertainment corporation, and that he had not had any prior interference with his “right to poke fun at our leaders and to advocate for subjects that I think are important by allowing me to use their platform,” Kimmel continued:
With that said, I was not happy when they [ABC executives] pulled me off the air on Wednesday. I did not agree with that decision and I told them that and we had many conversations. I shared my point of view. They shared theirs. We talked it through and at the end, even though they didn’t have to—they really didn’t have to, this is a giant company, we have short attention spans and I am a tiny part of the Disney Corporation—they welcomed me back on the air and I thank them for that because I know that unfortunately and, I think, unjustly, this puts them at risk.
Kimmel is a comedian, not a political leader. However, in not bowing down before ABC, Disney, Carr or Trump, and in calling for public protests against Trump’s purge, Kimmel stands in stark contrast to the Democratic Party leadership, the New York Times and all those who adapted themselves quickly and unquestioningly to the pro-Kirk hysteria.
No prominent Democrats have called for the mobilization of opposition to Trump’s efforts to use the killing of the overtly racist and fascist podcaster as a pretext to criminalize political opposition. In fact, they enable Trump’s dictatorship. The Democrats, the official “opposition” but in fact also a party of the billionaires, fear nothing more than stirring up anger in the working class, which they sense is building and threatens to burst to the surface.
Indeed, this opposition found expression in the response to Kimmel’s suspension. Some 6.26 million viewers watched Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday, compared to an average nightly audience of 1.42 million during the September to May 2024-2025 season.
CNBC explained that in addition
to linear ratings [the viewership of regularly scheduled television programs broadcast on a fixed schedule], Kimmel’s monologue, which clocked in at over 28 minutes, garnered more than 26 million views across YouTube and social platforms, Disney reported Wednesday. The company also touted that Tuesday’s show earned its highest rating among adults aged 18 to 49 years in more than a decade.
CNN’s Chief Data Analyst Harry Enter called Kimmel’s monologue video the “largest [YouTube] video in at least six months.” He pointed out that Google searches for “What time is Jimmy Kimmel?” were up 10,000 percent worldwide on Tuesday.
Two major television station groups, Nexstar and Sinclair, notorious for the right-wing views of their owners, continue their policy of not airing Kimmel, affecting some 60 markets (approximately 25 percent of the US television audience), including Washington D.C., Seattle, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, New Orleans, Tulsa, Little Rock and numerous other cities.
The right-wing campaign leading to Kimmel’s suspension was launched in the wake of his comments September 15. In his opening monologue that night, he remarked on the fact that Donald Trump’s “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.”
Kimmel’s “outrageous” words unleashed or provided the pretext for an unprecedented attack on free speech, a witch-hunt against critics, media figures, academics and workers, driven by fascist forces in and around the Trump administration. Trump himself, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr (a close associate of Elon Musk), and a trainload of right-wing politicians threatened Kimmel with retribution and cheered his “indefinite” suspension by ABC.
However, despite the best efforts of the media to legitimize or minimize Kimmel’s removal, which was wishfully hinted at to be permanent, the action provoked outrage as an infamous attack on democratic rights, with the US president, a would-be dictator, telling the population who it could or could not watch on television. Trump went on to threaten any other critics of his with prosecution.
Disney and ABC faced protests, cancellations of subscriptions and threats by performers and producers to boycott the network. An open letter from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) signed by 400 entertainment industry personalities was released Monday condemning Trump and ABC-Disney. The signatories are a Hollywood who’s who, including Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Jason Bateman, Bryan Cranston, Selena Gomez, Frances McDormand, Martin Short, Joaquin Phoenix, Ben Stiller, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Keaton and many others.
The letter stated in part that:
We the people must never accept government threats to our freedom of speech. … Last week, Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air after the government threatened a private company with retaliation, marking a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation. In an attempt to silence its critics, our government has resorted to threatening the livelihoods of journalists, talk show hosts, artists, creatives, and entertainers across the board. This runs counter to the values our nation was built upon, and our Constitution guarantees. … Teachers, government employees, law firms, researchers, universities, students and so many more are also facing direct attacks on their freedom of expression.
In the face of the public anger and sensing genuine dangers in the situation, Disney and ABC were obliged to back down and allow the Kimmel show to return, essentially on the comic’s own terms.
When he walked out in front of the television studio audience Tuesday, Kimmel was greeted with a standing ovation lasting several minutes. He began, “As I was saying before I was interrupted …”
The 57-year-old comedian thanked everyone he had heard from “all over the world over the last six days. … Anyone I have ever met has reached out 10 or 11 times.” He added, addressing the studio and viewing audience, “And I also want to thank all of you. Thanks to (all) who supported our show, cared enough to do something about it, to make your voices heard so that mine could be heard. I will never forget it.”
To his credit, Kimmel was unrepentant in his observations. After noting it had not been his intention “to make light” of Kirk’s murder, he went on to refer to the dangers faced by comedians in countries where they get “thrown in prison for making fun of those in power.”
Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country. And that’s something I’m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen [Colbert] off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air. That’s not legal. That’s not American. That is un-American and it is so dangerous.
Kimmel played a video clip of Trump ranting incoherently:
He [Kimmel] had no talent. He’s a whack job, but he had no talent. And more importantly than talent he had no—because a lot of people have no talent (but) they get ratings—but he had no ratings.
Kimmel joked, “Well, I do tonight. … You almost have to feel sorry for him. He [Trump] tried, did his best to cancel me. Instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show. … He might have to release the Epstein files to distract us from this now.”
After a commercial break, Kimmel and Robert De Niro did a comic bit in which the veteran actor pretended to be the new FCC chairman, a mob boss.
Notwithstanding its sinister and very dangerous character, the attempt to make the antisemite and racist Charlie Kirk into a national hero has gone over with the majority of the American people like a lead balloon. A syllogism of an elementary kind, but with an infallible class logic, is passing through the minds of many: “Trump is for the rich, I hate Trump. He says we should celebrate Charlie Kirk—whoever he was. That’s good enough reason to distrust the whole Kirk hullabaloo.”
This failure to convince the public about Kirk only sends the far-right forces into greater hysteria. Trump fumed Tuesday night:
I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled. Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his “talent” was never there. Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE.
A remarkable admission, that ABC assured the White House that Kimmel was “cancelled”!
Along with everything else, the Kimmel episode should help further dispel the myth that Trump is all-powerful, much less widely popular. A late-night comedian developed a mass following overnight because he stood up to Trump. This helps put things in proper perspective.
Trump and the oligarchy he represents—the Ellisons, Musks, Bezoses, Zuckerbergs—are held in contempt and despised by tens of millions. The crisis-ridden administration stays in power primarily because of the refusal of the Democrats, the trade unions, the official “left” to act. Their only role is to smother, strangle and suffocate each sign of protest and revolt. That will not continue “indefinitely” either.