“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” has been “pre-empted” indefinitely, following Kimmel’s comments about conservative influencer Charlie Kirk’s killer, Tyler Robinson, on Tuesday.
In a press release Wednesday, Nexstar Media Group announced that their owned and partner stations affiliated with ABC will preempt Kimmel’s show for the foreseeable future, beginning Wednesday night.
Nexstar said company officials “strongly object” 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.”
On Tuesday, Kimmel said, “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.”
Kimmel also mocked President Donald Trump’s reaction to Kirk’s assassination.
“(Trump is) at the fourth stage of grief: construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish,” Kimmel said.
The president of Nexstar’s broadcast division, Andrew Alford, 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.