Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be suspended “indefinitely” after the late night host’s comments about the killing of Charlie Kirk, ABC has announced.
The network, which is owned by Disney, announced on Wednesday night that it would remove Jimmy Kimmel’s show from its schedule for the foreseeable future.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be preempted indefinitely,” an ABC spokesperson said in a statement. Preempting means ABC will broadcast another show in the slot instead.
ABC’s decision to suspend Kimmel came just minutes after one of the biggest owners of TV stations in the US, Nexstar Media, announced it would preempt any episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live! set to air on the stations it owns across the country due to his comments.
“Nexstar’s owned and partner television stations affiliated with the ABC Television Network will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight’s show,” Nexstar said in a statement. “Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”
During his opening monologue for Monday night’s show, Kimmel said that “many in Maga-land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk”, less than a week after Kirk was shot dead while on a speaking tour in Utah on 10 September.
The suspect, Tyler Robinson, has been charged with aggravated murder, felony discharge of firearm and witness tampering, and could face the death penalty.
During his Tuesday monologue Kimmel said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga gang trying to characterise this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
On Monday’s show Kimmel also criticised US vice president JD Vance for blaming the left for Kirk’s death without evidence while hosting an episode of Kirk’s podcast from the White House.
“While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left,” Vance said.
“And by ‘statistical fact’, he means ‘complete bullshit’,” Kimmel said to applause, citing a study that found far-right groups were the greatest source of domestic terror and extremist violence in the US. The Department of Justice has removed the study from its website.
“Here’s a question JD Vance might be able to answer: who wanted to hang the guy who was vice president before you? Was that the liberal left? Or the toothless army who stormed the Capitol on January 6?” he added.
Andrew Alford, the president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, called Kimmel’s comments “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse”.
“Continuing to give Mr Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue,” Alford said.
Kimmel has yet to issue any statement on the matter.
More to come
