The chief of the FCC plans to charge Kimmel, ABC to spread the disinformation on the jokes of Charlie Kirk

The veteran comic strip at the end of the evening made several comments on Monday and Tuesday on the reaction to the assassination of the conservative activist, in particular by saying that “many Maga Land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk”.

ABC, who broadcast “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Since 2003, has moved quickly after Nexstar Communications Group said that it would draw the show from Wednesday. Kimmel’s comments on Kirk ‘death were “offensive and insensitive to a critical moment in our national political speech,” said Andrew Alford, president of the Nexstar broadcasting division. Nexstar operates 28 ABC affiliates.

Another company that has 38 local television stations, Sinclair, called Kimmel to apologize to the Kirk family and to make a “significant personal donation” to the political organization of the activist, Turning Point USA. Sinclair says that his ABC stations will pay tribute to Kirk Friday in Kimmel’s time slot.

During an appearance on CNBC Thursday, the president of the FCC, Brendan Carr, applauded the movements of the two affiliation groups to push the network. Although the Federal Communications Commission has no power on television networks, it has the power to suspend the licenses of their individual stations on the local markets.

“We are invigorating the application by the FCC of the public interest,” said Carr, “and I think it’s a good thing.”

There was no immediate commentary by Kimmel, whose contract was underway in May 2026. ABC’s declaration did not quote the reason why its program was pre -empted.

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

On Wednesday, Carr described Kimmel’s comments as “really sick” and said that his agency had a solid argument to hold Kimmel, ABC and the parent of the Walt Disney Co. network responsible for the spread of disinformation. He said the comic strip seemed to make an intentional effort to mislead the public that the Kirk assassin was a supporter of the right of Trump.

During his Monday evening monologue, Kimmel suggested that the suspect in the murder of Kirk, Tyler Robinson, could have been a pro-Trump republican.

“The gang Maga (desperately tries to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as something other than one of them and do everything they can to score political points,” said Kimmel. “Between the point of the hand, there was mourning.”

The authorities say that the 22 -year -old grew up in a conservative household in southern Utah, but was tangled in “Left ideology”. His parents told investigators that he had made politically left and pro-LGBTQ rights in the past year. His voter status is inactive, which means that he did not vote during two regular general elections. He told his Transgender partner that he had targeted Kirk because he “had enough of his hatred”.

The business landscape around television late at night

Disney and Nexstar have FCC affairs in front of them. Disney requests the regulatory approval of the ESPN acquisition of the NFL network, and Nexstar needs the blessing of the Trump administration to supplement its purchase of $ 6.2 billion in Tegna diffusion rival.

For the two companies, Kimmel’s reinstatement after a suspension would risk the anger of Trump, who has already said that the show had been canceled.

Kimmel’s suspension comes two months after CBS announced that he cancels Stephen Colbert’s program next May for financial reasons. But some criticisms wondered if his position on Trump played a role.

Colbert and Kimmel made the president the frequent target of jokes. Shortly after Colbert’s cancellation, the FCC approved the long -standing agreement of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, with Skydance.

Trump also celebrated Colbert’s imminent release.

“I love the fact that Colbert was dismissed,” said Trump in July. “His talent was even less than his notes. I hear that Jimmy Kimmel is the next one.”

During the last year, Disney and the parent of CBS Paramount have chosen to settle the proceedings brought by Trump against their divisions of news rather than fighting him in court.

In an article on X, the FCC commissioner Anna Gomez criticized the administration to “use the weight of government power to remove legal expression”.

“Another media has fallen under pressure from the government, ensuring that the administration will continue to extort and resume exactly on the broadcasters and the publishers who criticize it,” said Ari Cohn, principal lawyer for technological policy at the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression. “We cannot be a country where the end-of-evening talk shows are used for the president.”

The scene outside Kimmel’s studio after the show was suspended

Kimmel left the Hollywood Theater where his show is recorded about three hours after ABC’s decision. He kept his head down while he entered a waiting vehicle.

An audience was aligned outside the theater when Wednesday’s show was informed.

“Interestingly, they waited to put the branch on this right while the studio audience was about to return,” said Tommy Williams, a potential public member of Jacksonville, Florida, at the Associated Press outside the theater. “They didn’t tell us what had happened. They just said that the show had been canceled.”

More of what Kimmel said in his show

Kimmel said Trump’s response to Kirk’s death “is not how an adult cried the murder of someone whom he called a friend. This is a 4 -year -old child crying a goldfish, ok?”

He also said that FBI chief Kash Patel had managed the murder investigation “like a child who has not read the book, making his way through an oral report.”

He returned to the subject on Tuesday evening, mocking the performance of vice-president JD Vance as guest host for the Kirk podcast.

He said Trump “attracted the flames” by attacking people on the left. “Which one is they? Are they a bunch of Sissy pickleball players because they are too afraid to be touched by tennis balls? Or a well-organized deadly team of commandos? Because they cannot be these two things.”

This decision comes as president, his administration and his political party intensified their efforts in the police speech on the death of Kirk. Vance earlier this week urged the Americans to put their colleagues citizens who laughed at the assassination.

It is also the last effort of the administration to use its power to rely on the media. Carr has launched surveys on points of sale that made Trump angry, and the president continued several media organizations for negative coverage.

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Journalists from the Associated Press Liam Mcewan and Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.