Jimmy Kimmel, I am not another person to give you my opinion on this matter saying “it was right to cancel him!” or “they shouldn’t have canceled Kimmel!”, I am here to tell you the facts about this situation and that is what you will read.
Jimmy Kimmel is the host of the talk-show Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC, which began in 2003 and still goes on to this day. Initially the show aired at 12:05 am but in 2013 the show got moved up to an earlier time slot. One of the show’s popular segments that you might have seen is “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets” where celebrities ranging from former President Obama to Megan Trainor, read out mean comments about them that are on Twitter. One of the show’s real life security guards Guillermo is a contributor to the show, one of the segments that he does is talking to celebrities at for example a red carpet. When Kimmel’s show started, Letterman and Leno still were the hosts of the Late Show and The Tonight Show respectively. Now more than 20 years after, with Steven Colbert and Jimmy Fallon taking over Letterman and Leno’s spots respectively, Jimmy Kimmel’s show is still around today.
Before I can begin to talk about the whole situation with Jimmy Kimmel, I need to give you the reader some context. Charlie Kirk was a conservative activist who was assassinated on September 10th 2025, shot at Utah Valley University.….Now, Jimmy Kimmel, the Monday after Kirk’s assassination Kimmel’s show was on the air as it normally was. His monologue that night got him in trouble. In his monologue he did talk about Kirk’s murder with arguably his most well-known thing he said being, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,”. Later, the chair of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) Brendan Carr, on a podcast suggested that Kimmel should be suspended for his comments on his Monday show and he also suggested that the remarks could cost ABC its licence to broadcast. After this one of the biggest broadcast companies in the United States Nexstar later announced that it was pulling the plug on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Sinclair, another broadcasting company also announced that it was pulling the plug, and called on Jimmy Kimmel to apologize and to make a donation to Kirk’s widow Erica Kirk and to donate to Turning Point USA (an organization that Charlie Kirk co-founded). The show was suspended indefinitely by ABC on Wednesday September 17th, just two days after the monologue, Kimmel earlier in the day actually promoted the Wednesday show but around 7pm there came the word that the show was not going to happen. Instead of Jimmy Kimmel an episode of Celebrity Family Feud played on TV.
Some people supported the suspension and others opposed it and the First Amendment and Free Speech were also brought up as well. Such as Democrats and late-night hosts Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers, and etc all opposed Kimmel’s suspension and others such as President Trump and etc supported it. Kimmel did come back on the air on September 23, eight days after his controversial monologue.
