Sept. 21, 2025
Kimmel vs. Trump - "Nice Work If You Can Keep It: The Night Trump Silenced Late Night"
September 17, 2025: Jimmy Kimmel Live goes dark. After FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatens broadcast licenses over Kimmel's comments about Charlie Kirk's assassination, ABC caves to pressure and pulls the show "indefinitely." Behind the corporate surrender: Nexstar's $6.2 billion merger hanging in the balance, death threats to Disney employees, and Donald Trump's twenty-year vendetta against the comedian who refused to stop mocking him. From Obama birther jokes to COVID callouts, from Oscar tweets to January 6th rage, Marcus Reid chronicles how a late-night host became Trump's most persistent enemy—and the first casualty in his war on comedy. Featuring the backroom executive meetings, the regulatory extortion, and the chilling message sent to every comedian in America: mock power at your own peril. As of this recording, Kimmel remains silenced. Fallon and Meyers are threatened next. The First Amendment meets corporate cowardice, and corporate cowardice wins.
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Calaruga, Shark Media, September seventeenth, twenty twenty five, four forty
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seven pm Pacific Time. In his Hollywood office, Jimmy Kimmel
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sits across from Disney executives who've flown in from Burbank.
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On the table. Tonight's monologue script in Kimmel's hand, Pages
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of jokes about Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, and the Republican
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response to an assassination in the executive's hands, their phones
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buzzing with threats from the FCC chairman, alerts about next
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star pulling the show, Warnings from corporate lawyers. We need
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you to take the temperature down, one executive says, carefully,
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just for tonight, just until this blows over. Kimmel looks
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at the script. Twenty two years of hosting this show,
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twenty two years of speaking truth to power, four administrations
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skewered nightly, and now they want him to apologize for
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doing his job. You know what, Kimmel says, standing up,
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pull the show, pull it indefinitely, But I'm not apologizing
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for calling out people who politicize murder. Two hours later,
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ABC issues the statement Jimmy Kimmel Live will be preempted. Indefinitely,
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no explanation, no timeline, just silence where laughter used to
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be In ma a Lago, Donald Trump sees the news
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on his phone and smiles. After nineteen years of being
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the punchline, He's finally found a way to stop the joke.
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All it took was threatening a few broadcast licenses and
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having his FCC chairman make some calls. This amendment, it
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turns out, is only as strong as the corporations that
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supposedly defend it. Welcome back to feuds, power, pride, and payback.
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I'm Marcus Reid. Some feuds are fought with fists, others
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with lawsuits, but the most dangerous feuds are fought with
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government power. When the ability to silence your critics comes
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not from winning the argument, but from controlling the apparatus
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of the state. This is the story of how a
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reality TV star turned president finally got his revenge on
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the comedian who mocked him for two decades. It's about
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how a six point two billion dollar merger became more
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important than free speech. It's about what happens when corporations
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choose profits over principles, and when late night laughter becomes
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too dangerous for prime time This is episode thirty. Nice
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work if you can keep it. The night Trump silenced
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Late Night as we record this on Friday, there is
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no word on Kimmel's return or cancelation. What we do
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know is that, for the first time in American history,
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a president has successfully used regulatory pressure to remove a
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critic from the airwaves, and he's just getting started. Act one,
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The Joker and the Thin Skinned Billionaire. To understand how
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Jimmy Kimmel became the first casualty in Trump's war on
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Late Night, you need to understand that their feud began
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long before Trump had political power to wield like a cudgel.
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James Christian Kimmel was an unlikely warrior in the battle
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for America's soul. The son of an IBM executive and
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a homemaker from Brooklyn, he grew up in Las Vegas
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dreaming of being the next David Letterman. He started in
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radio doing morning Zoo cru antics and fark jokes, eventually
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landing on Comedy Central's Wynn ben Stein's Money, where his
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everyman charm made him a star. When ABC gave him
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a late night show in two thousand and three, he
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was the underdog third place behind Letterman and Leno, the
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guy who used to co host The Man Show, now
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trying to be taken seriously. For years, he played it safe,
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doing celebrity pranks and viral videos, building an audience slowly
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but steadily. Donald Trump, meanwhile, was in his Apprentice era,
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a cartoonish businessman playing a successful mogul on TV while
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his actual empire crumbled in the background. He was a
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frequent late night target, but the jokes were gentle, almost affectionate.
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He was the harmless buffoon with the bad and the
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gold toilets, more punchline than threat. Their first real conflict
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came in twenty thirteen, a preview of Battles to Come.
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Trump had spent years pushing the racist birther conspiracy about
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Barack Obama. When Kimmel had Trump on as a guest,
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he decided to confront the lie directly. Why don't you
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just believe the president? Kimmel asked, holding up Obama's birth certificate.
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Trump's mask slipped For just a moment, the genial reality
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star disappeared, replaced by something harder, meaner. I don't discuss
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this anymore, he said, curtly, his jaw clenched. People love
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me for it. Kimmel pressed on mocking Trump's investigators in Hawaii,
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who supposedly found evidence that never materialized. The audience laughed,
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Trump didn't. In that moment, an enemy was made. But
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it was the twenty sixteen presidential campaign that transformed their
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relationship from casual antagonism to genuine hatred. As Trump rose
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in the Republican primary, Kimmel's jokes grew sharper. He wasn't
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just mocking Trump's hair anymore. He was calling out the racism,
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the misogyny, the fundamental unfitness for office. Right wing Republicans
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are secretly praying for a freak accident or a murder suicide,
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Kimmel joked during the primaries, and you know what, they
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brought this on themselves. They've spent years stirring up the crazies.
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Now the crazies are in charge. Trump responded the way
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he always did, with three AM tweets and personal attacks.
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He called Kimmel terrible, unwatchable, and a total loser, but
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there was something different about his hatred for Kimmel. Compared
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to other late night hosts. Colbet was cleverer, Meyer's more political,
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but Kimmel got under Trump's skin in a unique way.
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Maybe it was Kimmel's everyman quality, the sense that he
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represented the average American's exhaustion with Trump's antics. Maybe it
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was his emotional authenticity, like when he cried on air
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about his newborn son's heart condition while pleading for health
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care reform. Or maybe it was simply that Kimmel refused
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to treat Trump as either a harmless joke or an
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existential threat, but simply is what he was, a corrupt,
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incompetent narcissist who somehow failed upward into the presidency. The
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moment that perhaps sealed their mutual enmity came at the
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twenty seventeen Oscars Kimmel was hosting. Trump was rage tweeting,
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and Kimmel decided to tweet back live from the Dolby Theater.
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Hey at real, Donald Trump, you up, Kimmel tweeted from
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the stage hashtag Merrill says hi. The audience roared, Trump fumed,
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and the battle lines were drawn for a war that
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would last nearly a decade. Act too, the Nightly Torture.
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For four years of Trump's first presidency, Kimmel turned his
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show into a nightly fact check wrapped in jokes. While
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other hosts aimed for cleverness or absurdity, Kimmel went for
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the jugular, with a working class directness that connected with
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audiences tired of Trump's chaos. He didn't just mock Trump's policies,
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he explained their real world consequences. When Trump tried to
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repeal Obamacare, Kimmel brought his son's medical bills on stage.
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When Trump bungled COVID response, Kimmel's monologs became public health PSAs.
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When January sixth happened, Kimmel's rage was palpable through the screen.
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I get that Republicans have to lie to their constituents,
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Kimmel said, after the insurrection. They can't admit Trump lost
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fair and square, but they know, they all know, and
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history will remember them as cowards who chose power over democracy.
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Trump's responses grew increasingly unhinged. He called for boycotts of ABC.
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He tweeted about Kimmel's ratings, which were actually strong. He
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nicknamed him worst host, Jimmy Kimmel, and suggested the FCC
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should investigate whether late night shows counted as campaign contributions
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to Democrats. But here's what really drove Trump crazy. He
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couldn't hurt Kimmel. In the entertainment industry, Trump was toxic.
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Being attacked by him only increased Kimmel's credibility. ABC and Disney,
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run by Bob Iger, who openly despised Trump, backed their
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host completely. Advertisers stuck around, ratings held steady. When Trump
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lost in twenty twenty, Kimmel's victory lap was epic. Donald Trump,
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You're fired, he said on election night, tears in his eyes,
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and to everyone who voted for him, after everything he's done,
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I hope you learned something, but I doubt it. For
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four years of Biden's presidency, Kimmel continued hitting Trump, but
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it felt different, like mocking a caged animal rather than
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fighting an active threat. Trump was banned from Twitter under
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multiple indictments, seemingly finished. Then came twenty twenty four, the
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Second Rise, and suddenly the jokes weren't funny anymore. Act three,
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The Machinery of Silence. Trump's second administration began with the
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promise retribution against everyone who had wronged him. The media
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was at the top of the list, and late night
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comedians were the most visible targets. His first move was
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installing Brendan Carr as FCC chairman. Carr, who had contributed
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to Project twenty twenty five's chapter on crushing woke media,
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understood his assignment perfectly. The FCC couldn't legally censor content,
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but it could make life hell for companies that broadcast it.
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The strategy was simple, threatened the broadcast licenses of local
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affiliates and let corporate cowardice do the rest. It had
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already worked with Colbert CBS canceled The Late Show in
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June twenty twenty five, citing financial considerations that everyone understood
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were really about appeasing the administration. But Kimmel was different.
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He'd survived one Trump presidency, He'd won Emmys, he was
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an institution. Disney and ABC initially stood firm, knowing that
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caving would set a dangerous precedent. Then came September fifteenth,
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twenty twenty five, and the Charlie Kirk assassination. Kirk, the
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baby faced founder of Turning Point USA and one of
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Trump's most loyal propagandists, was shot while speaking at Utah
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Valley University. The killing was shocking, senseless, and immediately politicized
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by everyone on his Monday Night show, Kimmel tried to
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thread an impossible needle. He condemned the killing unequivocally, but
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also called out Republicans for their hypocrisy, the Maga gang
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desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk
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as anything other than one of them, and doing everything
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they can to score political points from it. Yes, it's
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horrible what happened, but you don't get to claim the
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moral high ground when you've spent years encouraging violence against
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your enemies. It was tough but fair commentary, the kind
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of thing that would have passed without much notice in
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normal times, but these weren't normal times. Within hours, the
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right wing media machine kicked into gear. Kimmel was mocking
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a murder victim. He was inciting violence, he was spreading
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lies about the killer's motivations. None of it was true,
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but truth had stopped mattering long ago. On Wednesday afternoon,
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Brendan Carr went on a conservative podcast and issued his threat, Look,
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we can do this the easy way or the hard way.
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These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take
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action on Kimmel, or you know there's going to be
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additional work for the FCC ahead. The message was clear,
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pull Kimmel or lose your licenses. Within hours, Next Star
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announced they would preempt Kimmel on all their ABC affiliates.
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The company was in the middle of a six point
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two billion dollar merger with Tegna that required FCC approval.
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They couldn't afford to antagonize. Carr Sinclair followed suit, also
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having pending business before the FCC. They demanded Kimmel apologize
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to Kirk's family and make a meaningful donation to Turning
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Point USA. By five pm Wednesday, Disney executives were in
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crisis mode. They were facing a rebellion from affiliates who
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carried their programming. Death threats were pouring in, Advertisers were nervous,
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and Brendan Carr was making it clear this was just
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the beginning. The meeting with Kimmel was tense. The executives
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tried to find a middle ground. Could he tone down
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tonight's monologue, make it less political, maybe even apologize. Kimmel refused.
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He'd prepared a blistering monologue calling out the censorship campaign.
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If anything, he wanted to go harder, and so at
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six forty seven pm on September seventeenth, twoenty twenty five,
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Disney made a choice that would define the second Trump era.
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They pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live Indefinitely, Act four, the Aftermath
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and the Future. The reaction was immediate and split entirely
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along political lines. Trump celebrated on Truth Social congratulations to
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ABC for finally having the courage to do what had
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to be done. Kimmel has zero talent and worse ratings
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than even Colbert. If that's possible. That leaves Jimmy and
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Seth two total losers on fake News NBC. Their ratings
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are also horrible. Do at NBC President DJT. The implication
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was clear, Fallon and Myers were Brendan Carr was even
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more explicit, telling Fox News this was not the last
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shoe to drop and praising Trump for creating a massive
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shift in the media ecosystem. When asked about targeting the
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view next, he said it would be worthwhile for the
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FCC to investigate whether they were violating equal time rules.
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The entertainment industry reacted with horror. David Letterman, speaking at
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the Atlantic Festival, was blunt, I feel bad about this
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because we all see where this is going. Correct it's
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managed media. It's no good, it's silly, it's ridiculous. Comedians
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rallied around Kimmel. Conan O'Brien tweeted, if you come for
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one of us, you come for all of us. John
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Stewart devoted an entire daily show to the censorship. Even
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Jay Leno, who'd largely stayed out of politics, issued a
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statement defending free speech. But the corporate response was telling.
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NBC remained silent about Trump's threat against Fallon and Myers.
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Other networks began scrutinizing their late night content more carefully.
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The chilling effect was immediate and obvious. Behind the scenes,
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the machinery of regulatory capture was working perfectly. Next Star's
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CEO Perry Sook, had been confident the merger would sail through.
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He donated to Trump's campaign and hired Trump connected lobbyists. Now,
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by sacrificing Kimmel, he'd proven his loyalty. Sinclair was playing
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the same game, using Kimmel's suspension to curry favor for
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their own deals. The message to every media company was clear,
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criticize Trump and face regulatory hell. Comply and get rewarded.
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As we record this on Friday, Jimmy Kimmel remains off
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the air. Sources inside Disney say there are ongoing negotiations
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about his return, but they're complicated. Kimmel refuses to apologize
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or tone down his content, Disney is terrified of further
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FCC retaliation, and Trump is making it clear through intermediaries
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that he expects Kimmel gone permanently. Epilogue, The Last Laugh.
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The silencing of Jimmy Kimmel represents something new and terrifying
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in American history. We've had thin skinned presidents before, we've
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had corporate cowardice before, but we've never had a systematic
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campaign to use government power to silence political comedy. What
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makes this particularly chilling is how easy it was. No
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laws were changed, no official censorship board was created. All
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it took was a few threats from an FCC chairman,
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and corporations fell in line, choosing their mergers and profits
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over the First Amendment. The Late Night landscape has already changed,
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though still on air are notably more cautious, their Trump
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