09.18.25

Red alert: Kimmel's cancellation

Yesterday, Constitution Day, ABC helped the Trump administration to cancel the First Amendment.

ABC suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live” “indefinitely” because of a joke the host made about MAGA—not even about Kirk. The decision was made by Robert A. Iger, chief executive of ABC’s parent company, The Walt Disney Company, and Dana Walden, the company’s TV chief.

This is what Kimmel said in Monday’s monologue:

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.

Some time in 2024, it became illegal to criticize Israel. Now it is illegal to criticize Charlie Kirk or anyone who liked him.

Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, threatened action against ABC affiliates, claiming that Kimmel was making a “concerted effort to lie to the American people” about the beliefs of Tyler Robinson, Kirk’s killer. The official line is that Robinson, a disturbed and confused young man who had access to his grandfather’s rifle, had left-wing, “pro-trans” views. Robinson was in a relationship with a transgender woman.

Nexstar, one of the country’s largest owners of local TV stations, including 28 ABC affiliates, said it would “preempt the series for the immediate future.“ Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, released this statement:

Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located.

And ABC pulled the show “indefinitely.”

The move follows CBS’s cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show in July, because he is critical of the Trump administration.

As a friend commented, we are losing the last sources of news and opinion shared by a large and varied swath of the population.

Will the Republican Congress have the guts to protest this huge step toward autocracy? Will the Democrats finally behave like an opposition party? Will the Supreme Court sanction Trump’s actions?

Only mass popular protest can stop this. On Wednesday night, Chris Murphy, Democratic Senator from Connecticut, went immediately online to sound the alarm over “the systematic destruction of free speech in this country.”

Understand what is happening at this moment. This is a moment for the country to mobilize. This is a moment for all of us to be on the street protesting. Because if you don’t raise your voice right now about the assault on free speech . . . there may be no democracy to save.

This is a red-alert moment.

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