NEW YORK (AP) — ABC has suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show indefinitely after comments that he made about Charlie Kirk’s killing led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say it would not air the show
Kimmel, the veteran late-night comic, made several comments about the reaction to Kirk’s assassination on his show Monday and Tuesday nights. He said that “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.”
ABC, which has aired Kimmel’s late-night show since 2003, moved swiftly after Nextstar Communications Group said it would pull the show starting Wednesday. Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death “are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division. Nexstar operates 23 ABC affiliates.
There was no immediate comment from Kimmel.
On Twitter Wednesday night, White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich posted: “Welcome to Consequence Culture. Normal, common sense Americans are no longer taking the b———- and companies like ABC are finally willing to do the right and reasonable thing.”
In his monologue on Monday, Kimmel said that “we hit some new lows over the weekend 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 said that Trump’s response to Kirk’s death “is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK?” He also said that FBI chief Kash Patel has handled the investigation into the murder “like a kid who didn’t read the book, BS’ing his way through an oral report.
He returned to the topic on Tuesday night, mocking Vice President JD Vance’s performance as guest host for Kirk’s podcast.
He said Trump was “fanning the flames” by attacking people on the left. “Which is it, are they a bunch of sissy pickleball players because they’re too scared to be hit by tennis balls, or a well-organized deadly team of commandos, because they can’t be both of those things.”
Kimmel, like CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert, has consistently been critical of President Donald Trump and many of his policies on his ABC show. CBS said this past summer that it was canceling Colbert’s show at the end of this season for financial reasons, although some critics have wondered if his stance on Trump played a role.
