When unfunny man Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from his ABC late-night show in September 2025 over his toxic and untrue statements about the assassination of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, the Left immediately accused the network of caving to pressure from Trump.
They didn’t care that Kimmel said the “MAGA gang” was trying to portray the shooter as “anything other than one of them” and “working very hard to capitalize on the murder.”
Instead of showing the slightest sense of decency, many leftists tried to somehow blame Trump and the conservative movement. Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, has no known ties to MAGA, and that had been widely reported in the news, so Kimmel was blasting misinformation to his dwindling audience during a time of national tragedy.
While it’s true that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr publicly condemned the sick remarks, and ABC affiliates owned by Nexstar and Sinclair pulled the show, it was not any legal action or Trump arm-twisting that led to the decision to suspend him. That’s at least what former long-term Disney CEO Bob Iger, who stepped down in March, told The Financial Times in a Sunday interview.
It was simply that Kimmel’s “jokes” were disgusting, though Iger used gentler language:
[Iger’s] approach to the Trump administration was scrutinised when Kimmel was taken off the air following his comments about the shooting of the rightwing culture warrior Charlie Kirk. That decision came hours after the Federal Communications Commission had threatened to act against the company. Iger says people mistook the move as being politically motivated. “That was not the case . . . We thought it was in bad taste.” Kimmel was asked to apologise. “We just wanted him to acknowledge that it was an ill-timed and probably inappropriate comment.”
Ex-Disney CEO Bob Iger defends suspending Jimmy Kimmel last year over Charlie Kirk comments and denies it had anything to do with politics or capitulating to the Trump administration.
— Variety (@Variety) June 24, 2026
“That was not the case. We thought it was in bad taste. We just wanted him to acknowledge that… pic.twitter.com/TTEU4R6LD5
Ex-Disney CEO Bob Iger defends suspending Jimmy Kimmel last year over Charlie Kirk comments and denies it had anything to do with politics or capitulating to the Trump administration.
“That was not the case. We thought it was in bad taste. We just wanted him to acknowledge that it was an ill-timed and probably inappropriate comment.”
(via Financial Times)
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Although the creepy comedian did address the Kirk remarks when he returned to the airwaves, he notably did not apologize. In fact, in an October '25 interview with Bloomberg, he went with ye olde pathetic “taken out of context” defense:
“It was intentionally, and I think maliciously, mischaracterized.
“I think what has happened over the last, like, three weeks, I think was very unfair to my bosses at Disney. I don’t think anyone should ever be put in a position like this. It is insane,” Kimmel said.
What a crock.
If Disney caved, it wasn’t to the Right — it was to the Left. After initially suspending Kimmel “indefinitely,” they put the venomous partisan back on air in less than a week. This was in no small part due to the endless shrieking of harpies about “free speech.” Yes, it’s true that in this country, the First Amendment says you can say just about anything — but that doesn’t mean a network is required to put you on their airwaves and pay you gobs of money.
I applauded Disney’s decision to yank Kimmel at the time, but I would have really been impressed if they had done what they should have — fired his rear end.
Editor’s Note: Hollywood, academia, and liberal elites are out of touch with the average American.
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