In the wake of ABC’s decision to preempt airings of Jimmy Kimmel Live! over host Jimmy Kimmel’s comments about the shooter of Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump took to his social media platform to praise the network’s move and call for the cancellations of Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, the hosts of Late Night With Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, respectively.
“Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” wrote Trump, who is on a state visit to England at the moment.
“Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT.”
The comments were echoed through the official White House handle on X (formerly Twitter), which posted a screengrab of the post along with an image of Trump.
ABC has not announced a formal cancellation of the late-night show, but instead indicated that it would be off the air indefinitely.
The move came swiftly after news that several ABC affiliates owned by Nexstar would be preempting the late-night talk show from its stations following Kimmel’s comments.
Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr took to X earlier on Wednesday to praise Nexstar for preempting the late-night talk show on its ABC affiliate networks in response to host Jimmy Kimmel’s comments about the death of Kirk: “I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing. Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community.”
The news came after Nexstar, which owns dozens of local ABC affiliates, announced its intention to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! episodes starting Wednesday night.
The comment Kimmel said that courted Carr’s outrage came on Tuesday’s episode, when Kimmel said, “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 and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
In response, Carr said, “Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it’s time for them to step up and say, ‘This garbage, to the extent that that’s what comes down the pipe in the future, isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities.’ But this sort of status quo is obviously not, not acceptable where we are.”
Kimmel was reportedly set to clarify his comments before the show was suspended.