Trump cheers suspension of comedian Jimmy Kimmel for on-air Charlie Kirk remarks

CHEQUERS, England – US President Donald Trump celebrated the suspension of talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves, inflaming a debate over whether Mr Trump and Republicans are infringing free speech as they sought to punish some critics of murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Mr Trump, speaking during a state visit to Britain on Sept 18, said Kimmel had been punished for “saying a horrible thing” about Mr Kirk, a close political ally of the president who is credited with building support for Mr Trump among young conservative voters.

The broadcaster ABC announced on Sept 17 that

it was yanking Jimmy Kimmel Live indefinitely.

Kimmel’s suspension was condemned as capitulation to unconstitutional government pressure by writers, performers, former US president Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats.

Since returning to the White House in January, Mr Trump has used his office and the courts to attack unflattering speech about him that he considers to be defamatory or false.

Kimmel’s suspension came after two major owners of local TV stations had said they would stop broadcasting his celebrity-filled late-night show, and the nation’s top communications regulator threatened to investigate Kimmel’s commentary about Mr Kirk.

Kimmel, a comedian who frequently lampoons Mr Trump, said during his nine-minute opening monologue on Sept 15 that allies of Mr Kirk were using his assassination last week to “score political points”.

Mr Kirk, 31, was

shot onstage at a university in Utah

on Sept 10, where he was holding one of his frequent public debates with students over his political views in an event organised by his advocacy group, Turning Point USA.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and do everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said, using an abbreviation of Mr Trump’s slogan: Make America Great Again.

Kimmel, who tapes his show in Los Angeles, also mocked Mr Trump’s responses to Mr Kirk’s death: “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”

Mr Trump, who hosted the TV show The Apprentice before becoming president, said that Kimmel was not talented, had bad ratings, and “said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk.”

“So, you know, you can call that free speech or not,” Mr Trump said, stood alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “He was fired for lack of talent.”

ABC has not said that it has fired Kimmel, who did not respond to a request for comment.

In the week since Mr Kirk’s murder, Kimmel is the most famous American to face professional blowback for making comments condemned by conservatives as disrespectful of Mr Kirk, alongside media figures, academic workers, teachers and corporate employees.

A 22-year-old technical college student and videogame-enthusiast from Utah was

charged with Mr Kirk’s murder

on Sept 16.

Prominent Democrats said Mr Trump and his Republican Party were mounting an assault on free speech rights guaranteed in the US Constitution’s First Amendment. Republicans have said they are fighting against “hate speech” that can spiral into violence, and accuse some Kirk critics of trying to justify his murder.

Mr Obama, who was succeeded by Mr Trump in 2017, said media companies must not capitulate to government coercion or censorship.

“After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” Mr Obama said in a statement.

Writers’ and actors’ labour unions said the move amounted to an unconstitutional attack on the right to disagree.

“Silencing us impoverishes the whole world,” the Writers Guild of America said in a statement.

PEN America condemned what it called “an act of government-instigated censorship against satire and comedy” in a statement by Summer Lopez, who runs the advocacy group’s free expression programmes.

Free speech, public interest

Mr Kirk’s death spurred an outpouring of grief among fans and some critics alike, who saw him as a staunch advocate for public debate and conservative values. Others have challenged or derided Mr Kirk’s support for right-wing politics and Christian nationalism and derogatory comments he has made about immigrants, black people, leftists and transgender people.

Long before Mr Kirk’s murder, Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull licences from television stations, pressured broadcasters to stop airing content he finds objectionable and tried to control what universities, which he says are overrun by Marxists, can research and teach. He has also trained his ire on print media, filing

a US$15 billion defamation lawsuit

against the New York Times. 

Hours before Kimmel’s suspension, Mr Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, urged local broadcasters to stop airing the show.

ABC, owned by Walt Disney, pulled the show after Nexstar, which owns 32 of ABC’s local TV affiliates, said it would stop airing the show following Kimmel’s monologue. Sinclair Broadcast Group, another major owner of local TV stations, said it was suspending broadcasts of the show until Kimmel apologises to the Kirk family.

Shares of Disney traded down nearly 1 per cent after the market opened on Sept 18, suggesting investors did not think the suspension would damage the company’s financial prospects.

“This is a very significant moment, because local broadcasters are now pushing back on national programmers for the first time that I can think of in modern history,” Mr Carr, the FCC chairman, said in an interview with CNBC. He said the FCC would defend the principle that licensed broadcasters must act in the “public interest.”

US Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer demanded that Mr Trump fire Mr Carr, calling him “one of the greatest threats to free speech America has ever seen.”

Mr Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to the US, complained that he had read somewhere that television networks “were 97 per cent against me” and only gave him bad publicity.

“I would think maybe their licence should be taken away,” Mr Trump said. “It will be up to Brendan Carr.” REUTERS