As Jimmy Kimmel Live! faces an uncertain fate at ABC, Conan O’Brien is criticizing the network’s decision to take host Jimmy Kimmel off air for his Charle Kirk comments.
“The suspension of @jimmykimmel and the promise to silence other Late Night hosts for criticizing the administration should disturb everyone on the Right, Left, and Center,” O’Brien, the former host of late-night shows Late Night, The Tonight Show, and Conan, wrote on X on Friday. “It’s wrong and anyone with a conscience knows it’s wrong.”
ABC suspended Kimmel on Wednesday over comments he made about Kirk, the slain conservative activist, on Monday’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! “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 during the show.
Those comments spurred backlash from conservatives and from Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, per The New York Times. And on Wednesday, Nexstar Media Group announced it would pull Kimmel’s show from its 32 ABC affiliate stations, and later that day, ABC paused the show.
Jean Smart, Ben Stiller, Obama & More React to Jimmy Kimmel Being Pulled From ABC
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Jean Smart, Ben Stiller, Obama & More React to Jimmy Kimmel Being Pulled From ABC
Other late-night hosts, past and present, have spoken out about ABC’s treatment of Kimmel as well. “This is misery,” former Late Show host David Letterman said at The Atlantic Festival on Thursday. “We see where this is all going, correct? It’s managed media. And it’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. And you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian, criminal administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.”
Stephen Colbert, meanwhile, called the suspension “blatant censorship” during his show on Thursday. “With an autocrat, you cannot give an inch, and if ABC thinks that this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naïve,” said the currentLate Show host, who’s losing his job next yearin what some critics believe was a political decision from CBS. “To Jimmy, I stand you and your staff 100 percent.”
And Jay Leno, former Tonight Show host, told reporters on Thursday that he’s on Kimmel’s side. “You don’t get canceled saying popular things,” he said. “Usually, it’s the truth that winds up getting canceled, so we’ll see what happens.”
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