ABC suspends Kimmel’s show indefinitely over remarks about Charlie Kirk’s death

NEW YORK — ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show indefinitely beginning Wednesday after comments that he made about Charlie Kirk’s killing led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say it would not air the show.

Kimmel, the veteran late-night comic, made several comments about the reaction to Kirk’s assassination on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Monday and Tuesday nights, including that “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.”

ABC, which has aired Kimmel’s late-night show since 2003, moved swiftly after Nexstar Communications Group said it would pull the show starting Wednesday. Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death “are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division. Nexstar operates 23 ABC affiliates.

There was no immediate comment from Kimmel, whose contract is up in May 2026. ABC’s statement did not cite a reason for why his show was preempted.

President Donald Trump celebrated ABC’s move on the social media site Truth Social, writing: “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”

He also targeted two other late-night hosts, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, and said they should be canceled too, calling them “two total losers.” In July, after CBS canceled “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Trump wrote on his social media platform: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” Like Colbert, Kimmel has been consistently been critical of Trump and many of his policies.

In his monologue on Monday, Kimmel said that “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.”

Authorities say Tyler Robinson, 22, who is charged with killing Kirk, grew up in a conservative household in southern Utah but was enmeshed in “leftist ideology.” His parents told investigators he had turned politically left and pro-LGBTQ rights in the last year. Utah records show he was registered as a voter, but not affiliated with either political party. His voter status is inactive, meaning he did not vote in two regular general elections. He told his transgender partner that he targeted Kirk because he “had enough of his hatred.”

Kimmel’s show pulled as audience waited for taping

An audience was lined up outside the theater where “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” tapes when they were told Wednesday’s show was canceled.

“We were just about to walk in — interestingly enough, they waited to pull the plug on this right as the studio audience was about to walk in,” Tommy Williams, a would-be audience member from Jacksonville, Florida, told The Associated Press outside the theater. “They didn’t tell us what had happened. They just said that the show was canceled.”

Williams said he was worried someone had been injured — until he saw that ABC had announced nearly at the same time online that the preemption was indefinite. Williams hadn’t been aware of Kimmel’s comments on Kirk, but sought them out after the announcement.

“They didn’t really seem to justify the means. It seemed to be a bit extreme. And it wasn’t like insulting to, it really had nothing to do with Charlie Kirk at all. He didn’t even mention anything ill about Charlie Kirk — it was about the shooter,” Williams said.

What Kimmel said on his show and reaction to it

Kimmel said that Trump’s response to Kirk’s death “is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK?” He also said that FBI chief Kash Patel has handled the investigation into the killing “like a kid who didn’t read the book, BSing his way through an oral report.”

He returned to the topic on Tuesday night, mocking Vice President JD Vance’s performance as guest host for Kirk’s podcast.

He said Trump was “fanning the flames” by attacking people on the left. “Which is it, are they a bunch of sissy pickleball players because they’re too scared to be hit by tennis balls, or a well-organized deadly team of commandos, because they can’t be both of those things.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, called Kimmel’s comments on Kirk some of the “sickest conduct possible” in an interview Wednesday morning with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson.

“There are calls for Kimmel to be fired. I think you could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this,” Carr said.

Carr said it appeared to be an “intentional effort” to mislead the public that Charlie Kirk’s assassin was a right-wing Trump supporter.

The conservative group interest group Center for American Rights cited Carr’s comments in lodging a complaint Wednesday against ABC in addition to a prior complaint from early September accusing ABC of political bias. They wrote in the complaint that Kimmel showed a “reckless indifference or willful defiance of facts” and asked the commission to take ABC off air, if ABC did not take Kimmel off air first.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez criticized the administration for “using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression” in a post on X.

The move comes as the president, his administration and political party have stepped up their effort to police speech about Kirk’s death. Vance earlier this week urged Americans to turn in fellow citizens who mocked the assassination. It is also the latest effort by the administration to use its power to lean on the media. Carr has launched investigations of outlets that have angered Trump and the president has sued numerous media organizations for negative coverage.

CBS said this past summer that it was canceling Colbert’s show at the end of this season for financial reasons, although some critics have wondered if his stance on Trump played a role. Soon after the cancellation, the FCC approved CBS parent company Paramount’s long-pending deal with Skydance. ABC parent company Disney is currently awaiting regulatory approval for ESPN’s acquisition of the NFL Network.

Kimmel was raised in Las Vegas, where he graduated from Clark High School and attended UNLV. He gave a passionate 10-minute monologue touching on gun violence and his love for Las Vegas and its residents after a gunman opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest music festival in 2017.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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Associated Press journalists Liam McEwan and Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles and Nicholas Riccardi contributed reporting.