On September 17, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was pulled off the air shortly after airing for a joke about the man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk. The joke was made on September 15 during Kimmel’s monologue, “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,”
The simple statement made by Kimmel went absolutely crazy on social media, and many users believed that Kimmel’s comments were in poor taste and disrespectful towards the now deceased political activist.
Nexstar who is one of the largest local broadcasting companies in the U.S, who also own about 32 ABC affiliated stations, reported that they would pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air indefinitely. The company said that the certain comment made by Kimmel was ill-timed and insensitive about the assassination.
Social media went into a frenzy after getting wind of the news, many online users believed that they were trying to take away Jimmy Kimmel’s freedom speech. Others, like President Donald Trump, believed that ABC had done the right thing by canceling the show.
Trump, when being asked how he felt about the situation said, “Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk.” Trump then stated that he believes that Kimmel should’ve been fired a long time ago, and that he lacked talent.
However, on Monday September 22 2025 it was announced by Disney, who owns the ABC network, that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” would be returning the following day. The show had also received 6.2 million viewers the day after it was reported to come back.
Kimmel was very grateful when coming back on the show in his opening monologue and thanked all of the people who showed him support and checked up on him during the 6 days that his show wasn’t on air. He soon discussed the joke that started the whole discussion of his show being pulled off the network. Jimmy Kimmel soon confronted the main topic of discussion on why his show got canceled, the statement he made about the man who assassinated Charlie Kirk.
Jimmy Kimmel stated while tearing up, “But I do wanna make something clear because it’s important to me as a human and that is you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.” He talks about how he sent his condolences out to Kirk’s family and how upsetting the whole thing really was to see someone get killed over their beliefs. He says that he would also probably be offended if it was the other way around.
This whole controversy is a good conversation we need to have. People should be allowed to speak their mind and say their opinions as long as they aren’t hurting anyone…and they should never be silenced for it.