President Trump on Thursday weighed in on Jimmy Kimmel’s firing, saying the far-left late night talk show host was yanked of the air because of his low ratings and “lack of talent.”
Trump wrapped up his state visit to Great Britain with a joint press conference at British prime minister Keir Starmer’s country home in Chequers.
In light of ABC’s decision to suspend Kimmel, a British reporter asked the president if free speech in the United States was more under attack than in Great Britain.
“Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk,” Trump replied. “And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings and they should have fired him a long time ago,” he added. “So, you know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent.”
Earlier Wednesday, the president had celebrated the news on Truth Social.
“Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible,” Trump posted. “That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT.”
Left-wing commentators and influencers have reacted with fury to Kimmel’s suspension, calling it an attack on free speech, despite their own histories of applauding the firings of conservatives like Rosanne Barr from her ABC sitcom, Gina Carano from Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian, and Tucker Carlson from Fox News.
Barr was fired from her top rated show in 2018 over a joke she had made on Twitter about former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett that was deemed by the left to be racist. In February 2021, Carano was fired over an Instagram post that compared “hating someone for their political views” to the persecution of Jews by their fellow citizens during the Holocaust.
And in April 2023, Fox News fired Carlson and canceled his show without any explanation.
Kimmel was suspended on Wednesday after he deliberately misled his audience about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. During his opening monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Monday night, the host suggested that Kirk’s assassin, Tyler Robinson, was a MAGA Republican. He then went on to ridicule President Trump for not exhibiting what he deemed a suitable amount of grief in his public appearances following Kirk’s horrific murder.
Earlier Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr warned ABC and Disney to hold Kimmel accountable for distorting the news or the agency would have to take action.
During an appearance on conservative podcaster Benny Johnson’s show, Carr explained that the FCC gives broadcasters a license to operate “and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest.”
Carr spoke more about the responsibility of FCC licensed broadcasters to serve the public good on CNBC, Thursday.
“We’re on a cable show right now. If you don’t have an FCC license, you don’t have an obligation to serve the public interest,” he explained. “But if you have a broadcast TV license, that means that you have something that very few people have. And you’re excluding other people from having access to that valuable public resource. And it comes with an obligation to serve the public interest.”
He noted that these FCC rules have been in place for years, allowing local TV stations “to preempt programming that they don’t think meets the needs of their communities.”
Carr added ABC’s move to cancel Kimmel was “significant” because “local broadcasters are now pushing back on national programmers.”