ABC Suspends Jimmy Kimmel Live! Following FCC Chair Brendan Carr's Threats Over Charlie Kirk Monologue Comments

Details

From September 17 through September 22, 2025, ABC and its parent company Walt Disney suspended production of Jimmy Kimmel Live! following threats from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Brendan Carr over Kimmel's monologue commentary about President Trump's and his supporters' reaction to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025. The suspension sparked widespread debate about First Amendment protections, government coercion of media, and concerns about authoritarianism. Disney reinstated Kimmel on September 22, and his return episode drew 6.26 million viewers—the most-watched regular episode in the show's history.

Background

Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA and a close ally of President Trump, was assassinated on September 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, while speaking at an outdoor campus debate. He was fatally shot with a single bullet by Tyler James Robinson, a 22-year-old who surrendered to authorities the following day. Prosecutors charged Robinson with aggravated murder and announced they would seek the death penalty.

On his September 15, 2025, monologue, Kimmel commented on the reaction from Trump and his supporters to Kirk's assassination: "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."

FCC Chairman's Threats

On September 17, 2025, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr appeared on conservative commentator Benny Johnson's podcast and threatened punitive action against ABC:

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

Carr called Kimmel's comments "some of the sickest conduct possible" and suggested the FCC had "remedies we can look at," including potential license revocations for ABC affiliate stations. He stated: "You could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this."

Hours after Carr's remarks, Nexstar Media Group (which operates 28 ABC stations) and Sinclair Broadcast Group (which operates 38 ABC stations) announced they would pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! from their ABC affiliates immediately. Shortly afterward, ABC announced the show would be suspended indefinitely.

Corporate Context

The timing was notable given pending regulatory matters:

• Nexstar was seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna
• Sinclair had recently filed with the FCC to acquire several stations
• Disney was seeking federal approval for its purchases of streaming service Fubo and a majority stake in NFL Media

Both Nexstar and Sinclair were among station owners lobbying the FCC to revise broadcast ownership rules, including the 39% national coverage cap.

Presidential Response

President Trump celebrated the suspension on Truth Social on September 18, 2025:

"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... That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!"

Trump called on NBC to fire both Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon and Late Night host Seth Meyers. The official White House Rapid Response account on X celebrated the suspension: "They're doing their viewers a favor. Jimmy is a sick freak!"

Public Backlash and Reinstatement

The suspension triggered widespread backlash:

• Entertainment Unions: SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America, the American Federation of Musicians, IATSE, and the Directors Guild of America issued statements condemning the decision
• Fellow Hosts: Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Bill Maher, John Oliver, David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Conan O'Brien expressed support for Kimmel
• Entertainers: Over 400 entertainers—including Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Robert De Niro, and Selena Gomez—signed an ACLU open letter calling out "government threats to our freedom of speech"
• Consumer Boycotts: Disney+ and Hulu cancellation rates doubled during the suspension, with the streaming services' cancellation pages crashing multiple times

On September 22, 2025, Disney announced Jimmy Kimmel Live! would resume production the following day. An unnamed source told Deadline Hollywood: "Jimmy will say what Jimmy wants to say."

Kimmel's Return

The September 23 episode opened with Kimmel quoting Jack Paar's 1960 return from his own walkout: "As I was saying before I was interrupted..." In an emotional 17-minute monologue, Kimmel:

• Called Carr's threats "un-American," "dangerous," and "not a particularly intelligent threat to make in public"
• Criticized Trump for "rooting" for the cancellation of late-night programs
• Praised Charlie Kirk's widow, Erika, for forgiving her husband's assassin during his memorial service
• Featured a cameo by Robert De Niro portraying an FCC chairman in the mold of a mafia boss

The episode drew 6.26 million viewers—the most-watched regular episode in the show's history. The monologue received 26 million views across social media platforms within 24 hours. The New York Times observed: "To score 6.2 million viewers on a late-night show in 2025, without an NFL playoff game providing a lead-in boost, is highly unusual. To do it without a few dozen local affiliates airing the show is even more eye-opening."

Political Response

Republican Criticism of Carr: Several Republican senators criticized or expressed concern about Carr's comments, including Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Thom Tillis, and Rand Paul. Cruz stated that Carr's threat was "right out of Goodfellas... right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, 'Nice bar you have here; it'd be a shame if something happened to it.'"

Democratic Response: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and numerous Democratic members of Congress called for Carr's resignation. California Representative Ro Khanna described Carr's actions as "the largest assault on the First Amendment and free speech in modern history."

Conservative Commentators: Reactions were mixed. Joe Rogan warned conservatives celebrating the suspension: "You're crazy for supporting this, because this will be used on you." Ben Shapiro held that the FCC "should not be threatening action against ABC or its affiliates or Disney." Candace Owens argued Kimmel's suspension was not justified and that she wanted "the attacks on free speech to stop."

Legal Analysis

Constitutional scholars widely viewed Carr's threats as jawboning—informal government pressure to influence private action—which was prohibited by Supreme Court First Amendment precedents. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) stated:

"The FCC has no authority to control what a late night TV host can say, and the First Amendment protects Americans' right to speculate on current events even if those speculations later turn out to be incorrect."

University of Chicago law professor Genevieve Lakier viewed Carr's threats as unconstitutional jawboning. Former FCC chair Tom Wheeler told Wired: "[Carr's] been very artful in not making formal decisions that are appealable to the court, but instead having these informal, coercive activities that are not appealable."

Carr's Prior Statements

Social media users found previous statements by Carr contradicting his actions against Kimmel:

• 2019: "The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the 'public interest.'"
• 2022: "Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more into the discussion. That's why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship."
• 2023: "Free speech is the counterweight – it is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian's dream."

Context: Late Night Under Pressure

The Kimmel suspension occurred two months after CBS announced it would cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in May 2026. CBS called it "purely a financial decision," though the cancellation came just days after Paramount settled a Trump lawsuit for $16 million—a settlement Colbert had criticized on-air as "a big fat bribe." The decision occurred while Paramount's merger with Skydance Media, requiring FCC approval, was pending.

Following the Colbert cancellation in July 2025, Trump had posted on Truth Social: "I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next."

International Comparisons

The New York Times writer Damien Cave compared the suspension to situations comedians and journalists face in contemporary authoritarian regimes, including China under Xi Jinping, Hungary under Viktor Orbán, Russia under Vladimir Putin, and Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter wrote: "That's how Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán consolidated control of the media in his country... President Trump and his allies appear to be running the same playbook against media outlets in the US."

Public Opinion

According to a YouGov survey conducted on September 18, 2025:

• 50% of respondents disapproved of ABC pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! following Carr's comments
• 35% supported the decision
• 16% were not sure

A separate YouGov survey found 44% of respondents viewed the federal government as the greatest threat to free speech—more than activist groups (17%), social media companies (12%), or corporations (6%).

Aftermath

On December 8, 2025, Kimmel announced a one-year contract extension with Disney, taking his late-night show through May 2027. At the 2026 Critics' Choice Awards on January 4, 2026, Jimmy Kimmel Live! won Best Talk Show. In his acceptance speech, Kimmel thanked supporters who stood by him "during a tumultuous year" and said: "I want to thank our President, Donald Jennifer Trump. Without whom, we would be going home empty-handed tonight."

Escalation: The 2026 License Review

The September 2025 confrontation proved to be a prelude. In late April 2026, the dispute between the Trump administration and ABC reignited—this time following a second Kimmel joke and an attempted assassination of the president—and the FCC moved from verbal threats to a formal, unprecedented review of every broadcast license Disney owns.

Kimmel's "Expectant Widow" Joke

On his April 23 broadcast, Kimmel delivered a mock-roast imagining himself hosting that weekend's White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Amid a string of jokes about Trump and his family, Kimmel showed a fabricated video placing Melania and Barron Trump in his studio audience and quipped that the first lady had "the glow" of "an expectant widow."

The Correspondents' Dinner Shooting

Two days later, on the evening of April 25, 2026, gunshots were fired near the main security screening area for the White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the Washington Hilton—the same hotel where Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It was the first Correspondents' Dinner Trump attended as president, after declining in his first term and in 2025. Trump, Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and members of the Cabinet were evacuated by the Secret Service. A Secret Service officer wearing a ballistic vest was struck in the chest and hospitalized but released.

According to the Department of Justice, the suspect—31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, a tutor and amateur video-game developer—ran through a magnetometer while armed and fired before being subdued. Prosecutors said Allen had checked into the hotel as a guest days earlier, traveling by train from Los Angeles, and had emailed family and a former employer shortly beforehand. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told NBC's Meet the Press that Allen "did in fact set out to target" administration officials, likely including the president. Allen was charged with attempting to assassinate the president, transporting a firearm with intent to commit a felony, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence; he later pleaded not guilty. A manifesto attributed to him cited grievances including U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats in the Pacific and did not name Trump.

The Trumps Demand Kimmel's Firing

On April 27, both Trump and Melania Trump publicly linked Kimmel's joke to the shooting and called for his dismissal. Melania wrote on X that "people like Kimmel" should not be allowed "to enter our homes each evening to spread hate" and urged ABC to "take a stand," accusing him of "hateful and violent rhetoric." Trump posted on Truth Social that the joke was "really shocking," called it a "call to violence," and demanded that Disney and ABC fire the host "immediately." White House communications director Steven Cheung and press secretary Karoline Leavitt amplified the demand.

Kimmel pushed back on April 27, calling the bit "a very light roast" about the age gap between the 79-year-old president and his younger wife and saying it was "not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination." On his show he reframed the dispute as a free-speech matter, telling the audience that under the First Amendment "we have a right as Americans to free speech."

The FCC Orders an Early License Review

On April 28—a day after the Trumps' demands, and first reported by Semafor—the FCC ordered Disney to file early renewal applications for all eight of its owned-and-operated ABC stations within 30 days, by May 28. The stations are WABC New York, KABC Los Angeles, WLS Chicago, WPVI Philadelphia, KTRK Houston, KGO San Francisco, WTVD Raleigh-Durham, and KFSN Fresno; their licenses were not otherwise due for renewal until between 2028 and 2031.

The order is unprecedented in scope. The FCC had not issued an early-renewal order in roughly five decades; the agency's only comparable recent action came the day before, against a small license-holder called Bridge News. The order cited the agency's "public interest standard" and an ongoing investigation, opened in March 2025, into whether Disney's diversity, equity, and inclusion practices violated the Communications Act of 1934 and FCC anti-discrimination rules. The FCC did not mention Kimmel in the order.

Carr's DEI Rationale and Denial of Pressure

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr insisted the review was unrelated to Kimmel or the First Amendment: "There was no pressure from the outside. There was no suggestion from the outside. There was no call for agency action from the outside." He attributed the timing to Disney's allegedly insufficient document production in the DEI probe, telling reporters it "felt to us like they were playing rope a dope." Carr argued the DEI findings could "raise character questions" about Disney as a licensee, since the FCC evaluates the "character" of license-holders. He has separately threatened broadcasters over alleged "news distortion," including in coverage of the administration's Iran war.

Anna Gomez, the FCC's sole Democratic commissioner—whose term was set to end June 30—rejected Carr's explanation. She called the action "the most egregious" First Amendment violation the commission had taken and, of the DEI rationale, told reporters: "This is clearly a pretext. I mean, give me a break." Gomez has argued the FCC has no authority over employment discrimination and that the maneuver was designed to pressure Disney to capitulate. With two other seats vacant and unfilled, the commission was operating with only three members.

Legal and Press-Freedom Reaction

Press-freedom and legal organizations across the spectrum condemned the move as retaliatory. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) said the DEI justification was "a fig leaf" and that "the First Amendment requires those in government to be strong enough to take a joke." Jameel Jaffer of Columbia's Knight First Amendment Institute said the FCC "has no authority to cancel broadcasters' licenses because of their perceived political views." The Freedom of the Press Foundation's Seth Stern called it "illegal jawboning" intended to intimidate ABC, noting that Carr himself had once argued the FCC has no role policing content. PEN America, Reporters Without Borders, and Jane Fonda's Committee for the First Amendment issued similar statements.

Some on the right also objected. Senator Ted Cruz—who had criticized Carr in 2025—again told Punchbowl News that "it is not government's job to censor speech, and I do not believe the FCC should serve as the speech police." The National Association of Broadcasters, the industry's main trade group, warned that the early review "creates significant uncertainty" for local stations.

Legal analysts emphasized that actually stripping a license is extraordinarily difficult. Media lawyer Andrew Schwartzman told CNN that "the legal standard for denying a license renewal is almost insurmountable" and that any hearing and judicial review would take years, during which the stations could keep broadcasting. Most observers viewed the proceeding itself—not an eventual revocation—as the instrument of pressure.

Disney Digs In

Unlike Paramount, which settled a Trump lawsuit and saw CBS cancel Colbert while its Skydance merger awaited FCC approval, Disney chose to fight. The company filed its renewals on May 28 "under protest in response to an unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional order," telling the FCC the order "has no legitimate purpose." In June, ABC went further, launching on-air spots urging viewers to comment to the FCC in defense of free speech. Tens of thousands did. The posture stood in sharp contrast to Disney's December 2024 decision to pay Trump $15 million to settle a defamation suit over remarks by ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos—a settlement free-speech advocates believed the network would have won.

The license fight was not the only front. The FCC also opened a separate inquiry into whether ABC's daytime program The View had violated equal-time rules after an appearance by James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas. Gomez characterized that probe as a manufactured pretext, alleging the FCC had encouraged non-Disney affiliates to file complaints so that a Disney-owned station would stand out as the target. ABC argued in a 52-page filing that The View qualifies as a "bona fide news program" exempt from equal-time requirements under a designation granted more than two decades ago.

Status (as of June 2026)

The license review remains open and unresolved. On June 25, Carr told Reuters that "all options remain on the table," including potential non-renewal, and dismissed ABC's viewer campaign as "a fairly standard off-the-shelf PR strategy," vowing to "follow the facts and the law wherever they take this." The FCC's next procedural step is a public-notice period in which parties may petition to deny the renewals, opening a months- or years-long hearing process subject to eventual judicial review. Disney has signaled it is prepared to litigate the matter as a First Amendment case. Cole Tomas Allen's prosecution, meanwhile, was proceeding, with his attorneys seeking to disqualify Blanche and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro—both present at the dinner—as potential witnesses.

The episode marks an escalation from the 2025 confrontation in both directions at once: the government's instrument has hardened from informal jawboning into formal license machinery aimed at an entire station group, while the targeted company, rather than self-censoring, has chosen to resist. Which of those facts proves more durable—the precedent of a regulator calling in licenses over disfavored speech, or a major broadcaster's willingness to fight it in court—is the central open question the proceeding will answer.