Jimmy Kimmel is not only open to the idea of Donald Trump appearing on his late-night show, but he has also said he will “ask” the President himself if he’s interested.
The late-night host spoke on the matter on Wednesday (October 8) at the Bloomberg Screentime event in Hollywood. On whether he’d asked Trump or FCC chairman Brendan Carr to come on the show since returning to air following his temporary suspension, Kimmel said he hasn’t.
“I wouldn’t necessarily be interested in Brendan Carr on the show,” he said. “But yeah, I’d love to have Trump on the show, for sure. I mean, I feel like he knows that if… he wants, I dunno… alright, I’ll ask him.”
On September 17, ABC and Disney pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air amid backlash over comments the comedian made on-air about the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. This came after powerful station group Nexstar announced it would preempt the show on its 32 ABC affiliate stations. Sinclair soon followed suit.
Earlier in the day, Carr made thinly veiled threats when he told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
At the time, Trump celebrated Kimmel’s suspension, blasting the late-night host as unfunny and untalented, and claiming ABC had “fired” him due to poor ratings. Kimmel returned to TV on September 22 after Disney and ABC ended the suspension amid backlash over censoring free speech and threats to boycott the company.
At the Bloomberg Screentime event, Kimmel admitted he thought his show was over for good once it was taken off the air.
“The idea that I would not have 40 affiliates, I was like, ‘Well, that’s it.’ Because there seemed to be a list of demands presented to me and I was not going to go along with any of them,” he said, per Variety, referring to Sinclair’s list of demands, which included an apology.
He continued, “So it’s was like, ‘Well, I guess we’re done.’ I said to my wife, ‘That’s it. It’s over.’”
Ultimately, Kimmel returned to the air, and Nexstar and Sinclair began broadcasting the show again on their affiliate stations. The Emmy-winning host said his return “probably went about as good as it could go,” saying he wanted to be “truthful” and “lay it all out there” about “what I was feeling and what I’d experienced.”
“And I think I did. I knew that it wasn’t going to be perfect. There were always going to be people that didn’t like it and didn’t accept it, but the important thing to me was that I was able to explain what I was saying, what I was trying to say,” he added.
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Weeknights, 11:35 p.m. ET, ABC
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