One day after ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely due to remarks he made over Charlie Kirk’s murder, President Donald Trump is making new assertions. He commented on what networks are allegedly allowed and not allowed to do when it comes to covering his administration.
In his statements on Thursday, September 18, aboard Air Force One, Trump said that a large number of networks are “97% against” him and give him “wholly bad publicity,” adding, “I mean they’re getting a license. I believe that perhaps their license needs to be revoked.”
“When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do — if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years, or something — when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump,” he continued. “They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
But in the end, the president asserted that he will not have the authority to decide whether to cancel licensing. “Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, will have to make the decision. “Brendan Carr is exceptional, in my opinion. He’s patriotic. He is a fierce guy who loves his nation,” Trump said.
Trump chose 46-year-old Carr as the chair of the FCC. After being suspended, Kimmel issued a warning, saying his organization was “not done yet” with its adjustments to the “media ecosystem.”
“Our goal and our obligation here is to make sure that broadcasters are serving the public interest,” Carr said on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street. “And if there’s local TV stations that don’t think that running that programming does it, then they have every right under the law in their contracts to preempt it. And we’ll see how this plays out.”
Trump wanted Kimmel gone because he didn’t like getting made fun of….the ABC affiliates saw an opening with Kimmel’s Charlie Kirk “statement” and pulled the show because they need Trump’s ok for a merger….it was just billionaires doing favors for each other
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) September 18, 2025
In his monologue on Monday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Kimmel brought up Kirk, who was shot and died on September 10 at the age of 31 while lecturing at Utah Valley University.
“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,” Kimmel said on the show. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”
The monologue went on to show news footage of Trump veering off topic to talk about Kirk’s passing in favor of the new White House Ballroom’s development. Following Kimmel’s comments, Carr threatened action from the FCC.
Republicans spent the last 24 hours on cleanup that ABC didn’t pull Jimmy Kimmel because of intimidation and retribution from Trump only to have Trump say he ordered the hit because Kimmel hurt his little feelings.
Trump: “When you have a network and you have evening shows and…
— Marlene Robertson🇨🇦 (@marlene4719) September 18, 2025
“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend,” Kimmel also said, referring to the president. “This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish, okay?” Disney’s ABC announced later that day that Jimmy Kimmel Live! had been suspended indefinitely. ABC was further pressured by the FCC and the powerful TV corporation Nexstar, which declared it would replace Kimmel’s show with other programming on its stations.
During his state visit to the United Kingdom on Thursday, Trump publicly attacked Kimmel, 57, when he expressed his opinions about the late-night show’s pause and described it as a dismissal rather than a suspension.
