A sign is displayed outside the El Capitan Entertainment Centre in Hollywood where the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show will be recorded on the first night the show will return to the ABC lineup on September 23, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
President Donald Trump is reviving calls this week for Disney-owned ABC to pull comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air in yet another test for late night TV during the Republican president’s second term.
While it’s not the first time Kimmel has faced backlash over a show monologue — his show was briefly suspended in September after broadcast station owners threatened to disrupt the program following comments about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk — the renewed challenges now fall under freshly installed Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, who took the helm last month.
Trump and First Lady Melania Trump called on ABC to fire the late night host after he referred to the First Lady as an “expectant widow” during a comedy sketch last week, days before an alleged assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Melania Trump said in a post on X that Kimmel’s comments were “hateful and violent rhetoric” and “intended to divide our country.” Shortly after, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Kimmel’s comments amounted to a “call to violence” and were “far beyond the pale.”
In a subsequent monologue on Monday night, Kimmel addressed the backlash, saying the remark was “a joke about their age difference.” He added that it was “not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination. And they know that.”
White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung said in a post on X Tuesday that Kimmel should be “shunned” for “doubling down on that joke instead of doing the decent thing by apologizing.”
Representatives for Disney didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.
Mounting political pressure
The incident is the latest in a string of battles between Trump and legacy media — and late night TV in particular — that has left the industry on precarious footing.
Back in September, broadcast station owners Nexstar and Sinclair said they would preempt Kimmel’s show, airing other content instead during his time slot, after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr raised issue with Kimmel’s comments about Kirk.
Representatives for Nexstar and Sinclair declined to comment on the latest Kimmel comments.
Carr in September suggested broadcast station licenses were at risk of being revoked, spurring debate about First Amendment protections and the responsibility of national broadcasters like ABC to air generally acceptable content.
Disney returned Kimmel’s late night show to air a few days after the suspension, and Kimmel apologized for the comments in his first show back.
But the back and forth could serve as something of a precedent if the Trump administration keeps putting pressure on media firms.
On Tuesday, Semafor reported that the FCC was preparing a review of Disney’s broadcast licenses, but cited a source in saying the timing wasn’t related to Kimmel’s monologue. Representatives for the FCC and Disney didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on that report.
Last year, Paramount-owned CBS announced it would bring an end to “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” while the company awaited FCC approval for its merger with Skydance. The merger got the green light from regulators shortly after the announcement.
While Disney has said that it doesn’t have plans for mergers or acquisitions in the near term, it has had a few run ins with the Trump administration.
In December 2024, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s future presidential library in order to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by the President against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Last year, ABC News also cut ties with national correspondent Terry Moran after he said Trump and senior White House advisor Stephen Miller were “world-class” haters in a social media post.
