“On Sunday, Erika Kirk forgave the man who shot her husband,” Jimmy Kimmel told his live studio audience on Tuesday night, his first show back after a six-day suspension following his musings on Charlie Kirk’s assassination. “She forgave him.”
“That is an example we should follow,” Kimmel continued, his voice cracking with emotion. “If you believe in the teachings of Jesus, as I do, there it was. That’s it. A selfless act of grace, forgiveness from a grieving widow that touched me deeply. And if there’s anything we can take from this tragedy, I hope it’s that.”
Kimmel met the strange, deeply troubling moment with grace, charm, and defiance, marrying his decades of experience in late show cane-twirling to his longtime principled advocacy for democratic norms. He did not apologize or hedge, but wisely connected his suspension to a larger pattern of the White House’s actions against people saying things it doesn’t like. “This show is not important,” he said. “What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”
Last week, President Donald Trump was asked about his thoughts on Jimmy Kimmel Live’s suspension.
“When you have a network and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump—that’s all they do,” he said. “They give me only bad publicity or press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”
He doubled down on Truth Social after Kimmel’s return, accusing the show of being “99% positive Democrat GARBAGE,” before hinting at, you guessed it, another lawsuit.
It is striking, here, that Trump’s words have nothing to do with Kirk or the terrible circumstances surrounding his murder. It seems that, as far as Trump is concerned, the problem with Kimmel was personal. And when you’re president, you have a lot of ways to make personal problems go away.
Maybe it’s fitting that Trump didn’t reference Kirk in his reflection on Kimmel’s suspension. After all, Kimmel’s only words about Kirk himself came from a social media post that was benign, even compassionate: “Instead of the angry finger-pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”
What actually landed Kimmel in hot water were his broader jabs at the MAGA movement itself. “We hit some new lows over the weekend,” he said in his opening monologue. “With the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anyone other than one of them, doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Kimmel made two claims here. The latter, that the “MAGA gang” is trying to score political points off Kirk’s death, seems undeniable. Kirk’s memorial service doubled as a bully pulpit for Vice President J.D. Vance, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Trump himself, among others. The White House’s own response to Kimmel’s words only underscores this point.
The other claim is dicier. Kimmel didn’t necessarily say that the young man accused of killing Kirk was MAGA, but one can make the inference. It’s a clumsy statement. Given how little is actually known about the motives behind the shooting and the sensitivity of the investigation, this was, at the very least, ill-advised. Unwise and inaccurate words are constitutionally protected, however.
Or, so one would think. The implied accusation in Kimmel’s monologue landed him on the radar of Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC cannot directly regulate network broadcasts like ABC, but it has significant pull over the local stations that carry network programming, in its ability to renew—or revoke—broadcasting licenses. So, when Carr called Kimmel’s words “some of the sickest conduct possible,” local affiliates paid attention.
Like Trump, Carr didn’t see the violation here as an insensitivity toward Kirk or his memory. The affront was a perceived smear on Trump and his movement. I think that should concern us all: A government official threatening to use the power of his agency to silence a voice that the president saw as insufficiently loyal.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on a podcast interview with Benny Johnson, going on to say that Disney could either “take action on Kimmel,” or else “there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” ABC and its parent company Disney chose the easy way.
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As managing editor of sojo.net, I have to take any threat to the First Amendment seriously. Our work rests on our constitutional right to criticize and challenge authorities. Freedom of speech is the lodestone on which the rest of our liberties rest. This might explain why a coalition made up of people like Sen. Ted Cruz R-Texas, and Joe Rogan joined folks like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and more than 400 Hollywood celebrities in criticizing Trump’s moves against Kimmel. The threat here is bigger than partisan politics.
And while that threat is clear, it’s not exactly new. Kimmel may have been the highest profile victim of this administration’s pressure campaign to silence its critics and perceived opponents, but he’s not the first.
Just a few days earlier, Trump brought a $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times, saying the paper “has engaged in a decades-long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole” (the lawsuit has since been tossed out). In August, he sacked Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after the bureau published an anemic jobs report. That same month, he fired the head of the National Security Agency for suggesting that his strikes on Iran only set the nation’s nuclear program back a few months. He is currently trying to fire Federal Reserve Board Member Lisa Cook for alleged “mortgage fraud.” And then there’s Rümeysa Öztürk, the Turkish national who was targeted for deportation after writing an article the administration didn’t like. Unlike Kimmel, these people didn’t even stand accused of saying anything insensitive. All they did was tell the truth.
And the more examples this administration makes of such people, the scarier it gets to speak up. Rolling Stone reports that “[m]ultiple execs” at ABC and Disney “felt that Kimmel had not actually said anything over the line … but the threat of Trump administration retaliation loomed.” According to one source at ABC: “They were pissing themselves all day.”
And if Disney, with all its money and power, is struggling to find its courage, where does that leave the rest of us?
I was thinking about this question when I turned to the Old Testament, which is replete with stories of people saying unpopular things to powerful people. We tend to think of prophets as future predictors, but they’re more likely to be divine forewarners, urging their nation to turn and repent. These messages tended to land prophets in very hot water, and it is notable, in the book of Daniel, that God does not provide for Daniel and his friends until things look well and truly hopeless. Daniel is not rescued from being thrown into a lion’s den. Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (the Hebrew names of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) are not prevented from getting dumped into the fiery furnace. In these and many other instances throughout the Old Testament—from the Israelites getting backed up against the Red Sea to Joseph getting thrown into an Egyptian prison—the moral courage of God’s people must last them well into their darkest hour.
And, no, I do not think we have reached our darkest hour here, but as we see with Daniel and friends, that is no excuse. We have seen politicians, political parties, universities, pastors, newspapers, pundits, corporations, and entire countries give into their fear of the Trump administration. That is not encouraging, but it doesn’t change our moral imperative. If we cannot act courageously when we have good reason to cower, then we are not being courageous at all.
The Bible is also pretty consistent in giving examples of how it often fell to the least likely, least powerful people to stand up for what is right: foreigners, sex workers, criminals, poor people, and unwed mothers found their spines when kings and soldiers could not. God, as ever, dwells on the margins.
Suspending Kimmel was not Disney’s first capitulation. Last December, Disney head Bob Iger settled what many lawyers considered to be a “very winnable” defamation suit with Trump to the tune of $16 million. When Puck entertainment reporter Kim Masters asked a Disney insider if they were surprised that Iger caved over Kimmel, she was told: “Surprised by what? Bend the knee once and you will be on all fours in no time.”
That’s the math of capitulation, but I think the same holds true for courage. God gives strength to the knees that don’t bend, like Aaron and Hur holding Moses’ arms up in Exodus 17. It has never been easy to stand for the marginalized. Sticking up for undocumented people who have suffered so much at the hands of Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement takes courage. Defending trans people who have been demonized in the wake of Kirk’s death takes courage. Continuing to teach about slavery and other dark parts of America’s history takes courage, too.
But courage multiplies with time. Disrupt the narrative of fear and, pretty soon, you’ve written a whole new story. Just look at Kimmel. Disney suspended him because they were scared of Trump. They reversed course and stood up to him because enough of us took a stand.
And if we can find the courage to take a stand for a late show host, who knows what else is possible?
Disrupt the narrative of fear and, pretty soon, you’ve written a whole new story.
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