Jimmy Kimmel’s return to late night sparks reactions from celebrities and politicians

NEW YORK – The lights came up late on Sept 23 on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and there he was: Jimmy Kimmel,

returning to his late-night desk

after nearly a week of being off the air.

The long-time ABC star had been sidelined after remarks he made on Sept 15 about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Kimmel’s defiant, joke-filled opening monologue addressing the controversy earned immediate praise from some of his supporters.

“What a brilliant monologue from Jimmy Kimmel,” actor and comedian Ben Stiller wrote on social media.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat and a frequent critic of US President Donald Trump, said: “Welcome back Jimmy Kimmel!”

Some commentators on the right accused Kimmel of faking his getting choked up as he discussed Mr Kirk’s death, while others did not believe he was sufficiently apologetic.

Kimmel’s remarks on Mr Kirk

sparked a storm of criticism

and a pointed warning from Mr Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission. The result was a network suddenly caught between its late-night host and Washington power, forced to balance free speech with corporate caution.

Disney executives, wary of inflaming tensions, decided to suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live! before the host could deliver his planned rebuttal on Sept 17. The pause, indefinite at the time, quickly turned into a cultural flashpoint: Was this a prudent business move? Or was it suppression of speech?

Shortly before the show aired, Mr Trump, in a post on Truth Social, criticised ABC for putting Kimmel back on the air and threatened legal action against the network.

“Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the network in jeopardy by playing 99 per cent positive Democrat garbage,” he wrote.

At the core of the uproar were Kimmel’s comments suggesting that “the Maga (Make America Great Again) gang” was scrambling to reframe the motives of Mr Kirk’s assassin.

Conservatives pushed back, saying the comedian had distorted facts about the accused.

Prosecutors, for their part, have said only that the gunman objected to Mr Kirk’s “hatred”, without specifying which statements he found hateful. His mother said he recently moved to the political left.

Meanwhile, anticipation built.

On a normal night, Kimmel draws about 1.6 million viewers.

But television executives expected far more on Sept 23, even with affiliates owned by Nexstar and Sinclair, which together account for about a fifth of ABC’s national reach, deciding to pre-empt the programme. NYTIMES