Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers hosted their respective late-night shows and commented on Jimmy Kimmel’s ouster.
Several late-night TV show hosts on Thursday addressed ABC’s decision to suspend fellow host Jimmy Kimmel after he made comments about the late conservative influencer Charlie Kirk earlier in the week.
Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers hosted their respective late-night shows on Sept. 18, with most expressing solidarity with Kimmel. Earlier this week, Kimmel made a statement on Monday’s monologue, saying that “the MAGA gang [were] 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.”
Prosecutors and officials say the suspect held left-wing views.
CBS’s Stephen Colbert started his show by stating that “we are all Jimmy Kimmel,” and said that he believed Kimmel’s removal was a “blatant assault on freedom of speech.”
Colbert had his own show canceled earlier this year by CBS executives, with the network saying that it was for financial reasons. It will end in May 2026.
Meyers, the host of NBC’s “Late Night,” started his show by saying the Trump administration is “pursuing a crackdown on free speech.”
“It is a privilege and honor to call Jimmy Kimmel my friend, in the same way it’s a privilege and honor to do this show every night,” he also said.
Kimmel’s suspension was carried out by ABC, which is owned by Disney, after broadcasting networks Sinclair and Nexstar said they wouldn’t carry the late-night show on their stations following his comments about Kirk and the suspected assassin.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has not taken any action against ABC in response to Kimmel’s comments, according to an Epoch Times review. Its chairman, Brendan Carr, said this week that ABC should take action against Kimmel, while he noted that ABC, NBC, and CBS are over-the-air broadcasters that use public airwaves and are subject to special rules that require them to serve the “public interest.”
Carr, who has said that cable news networks such as Fox News and CNN are not subject to the same rules, said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that Kimmel appeared to be misleading the public with his comments on Monday.
Aside from Colbert and Meyers, NBC’s Jimmy Fallon said that Kimmel is “a decent, funny, and loving guy,” while both he and Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” used sarcasm to criticize the Trump administration on their respective shows.
“Now some naysayers may argue that this administration’s speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smoke screen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation, principleless, and coldly antithetical … to any experiment in a constitutional republic governance,” Stewart said. “Some people would say that.”
President Donald Trump told reporters in the UK that he believed Kimmel was sacked by ABC due to “very bad ratings” in combination with his remarks about Kirk. “He was fired for a lack of talent,” Trump said.
While hailing Kimmel’s suspension, Trump also pointed to Colbert’s ratings in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, while calling for the ousters of Fallon and Meyers.
“Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC,” he wrote.
Kimmel has not commented on the matter. The Epoch Times has contacted ABC for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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