ABC’s decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show on Wednesday marks the latest hit to the mainstream media that President Donald Trump is touting as a win. 

Trump has long decried legacy media, which he perceives as a cesspool of biased outlets entrenched in corruption that are seeking to manipulate narratives against his Make America Great Again movement. 

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Kimmel, who was put on indefinite leave on Wednesday after the late-night host made controversial remarks on conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination, was one of the many legacy media figures Trump has attacked. Kimmel’s fall from grace comes shortly after comedian Stephen Colbert’s CBS show, which was similarly attacked by Trump, was recently axed for “financial” reasons, leading the president to issue a celebratory statement hailing “great news for America.”

As Trump turns his sights to NBC late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers for removal, he can add Kimmel and Colbert’s dethronement as the latest string of victories he has declared against the mainstream media. 

In July, the president secured a $16 million settlement from CBS after he accused the network of doctoring his political rival’s 60 Minutes interview to make her look better during the 2024 presidential campaign cycle. Trump’s team highlighted the settlement as a “win for the American people” and held “fake news media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit.”

The previous December, Trump secured a similar $15 million settlement deal from ABC News after the president accused its top anchor, George Stephanopoulos, of defaming him on live television for claiming he had been found liable for rape. The network was forced to issue an apology and recant the claims. 

Trump has also defied the mainstream media during his second term in office by revolutionizing the White House press corps. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has ushered in sweeping changes on the president’s behalf, scorning legacy outlets in a push to expand access to “new media” amid concerns that “Americans’ trust in mass media has fallen to a record low.” The new media pool expands access to independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers, and content creators to cover Trump.

Some of the president’s efforts to resist mainstream outlets continue to play out in court battles, including when he filed a lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal seeking $10 billion in damages over allegations the outlet made libelous claims against him. The outcome of the July lawsuit, which accuses the Journal of authorizing a story lying about Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, remains uncertain. 

Trump’s legal battles against what he believes to be left-wing media are also embodied in his effort to defund and dismantle government-funded media. U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees news networks like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has come under scrutiny by leading White House officials, a move that has prompted judicial pushback. 

Another Trump-led push to defund taxpayer-funded media outlets accused of left-wing bias has had a more successful outcome. In July, Congress voted to claw back $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting over a two-year period, which will financially damage PBS and National Public Radio. 

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Trump’s efforts come as he has long expressed concern that establishment media is biased against him, amid data from the Media Research Center showing 92% of the major network media coverage of him during his first 100 days in office this year was negative. 

Many media outlets are “political arms of the Democrat party,” the president alleged during a speech at the Justice Department in March. “And in my opinion, they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal. What they do is illegal.”