When Jimmy Kimmel returns to TV Tuesday night, he’ll likely have fewer viewers than ever, thanks to a continuing blackout of his late-night show by the Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar amid outrage about his comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, suspended Kimmel indefinitely after the comedian suggested that the person who shot Kirk at Utah Valley University was part of the Make American Great Again movement led by President Donald Trump.
The company announced Monday that Kimmel would return to the air Tuesday night, saying in a statement, “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
The announcement came after widespread dismay about the perceived heavy-handedness of the Trump administration in the Kimmel affair, even among Republicans.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a stalwart Trump supporter who attended Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona on Sunday, was troubled by the language of FCC Director Brendan Carr, who suggested that the government would get involved if Disney and ABC didn’t act.
“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 told podcaster Benny Johnson.
On his own podcast Friday, Cruz said of Carr’s remarks: “That’s right out of ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s 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.’”
Cruz went on to say: “It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.”
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal praised Cruz for his commentary, calling it “Ted Cruz’s finest hour.” Even Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, usually Cruz’s ideological opposite, agreed.
With his return to the airwaves, though not in Utah, will Kimmel have his finest hour as well?
Unfortunately, there’s some evidence he won’t. The Journal had previously reported that one reason Kimmel was suspended was that, even as anger was building about his ill-timed, insensitive and factually wrong remark, he’d planned to double down in a subsequent monologue.
“A person close to the show said that Kimmel was planning to say that his words were being purposefully twisted by some members of the Make America Great Again movement,” the Journal reported Sept. 18.
It’s hard to defend what Kimmel said in any context, particularly while half the country was in shock and grieving. As Jay Evensen noted, what Kimmel and his supporters called a joke was actually misinformation.
Kimmel said, “We had 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” and then went on to liken Trump’s reaction to the murder to a child upset about the death of a goldfish.
A suspension was certainly appropriate, and it’s fair to say a week wasn’t enough.
But as Cruz and other Republicans have pointed out, consequences in a matter like this shouldn’t come at the hands of the government, but the market.
Carr and his defenders have since noted that the FCC didn’t do anything, that the decision to suspend and reinstate was Disney’s.
“Jimmy Kimmel is in the situation that he’s in because of his ratings, not because of anything that’s happened at the federal government level,” Carr said, per Variety.
Both Carr and Kimmel crossed a line, and now the ball is in Kimmel’s court. With late-night talk shows in trouble generally, due to diminished viewership amid changing consumer habits, these hosts can ill afford to operate with a model that regularly insults half of the nation.
And at this moment in particular, when it’s unclear whether Kirk’s murder will lead us to a better or worse place as a nation, what Kimmel says tonight and in subsequent days might matter more than anything else he’s ever said.