ABC announced that it is suspending Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show “indefinitely” due to comments Kimmel made during Monday’s monologue about the shooting death of Charlie Kirk.
The announcement, according to Variety, comes shortly after Nextstar, one of the largest television station owners in the U.S., said that it planned to pre-empt Kimmel’s show from its ABC-affiliated stations due to Kimmel’s comments.
“Nexstar’s owned and partner television stations affiliated with the ABC Television Network will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight’s show,” the statement said. “Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”
In his monologue on Monday, Kimmel said that the “MAGA gang” was trying to score political points in the wake of Kirk’s death.
“We had 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 with everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said.
“In between the finger pointing there was grieving. On Friday the White House flew the flags at half-staff which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.”
The show then cut to a reporter asking Trump how he was dealing with Kirk’s death and the president pivoting to talking about the new ballroom being built at the White House.
“He’s at the fourth stage of grief, construction,” Kimmel quipped. “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone they called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
Kirk was gunned down on Sept. 10 as he spoke with students at a Utah university. He died soon after. Prosecutors are alleging that Tyler Robinson shot Kirk in the neck with a bolt-action rifle from the roof of a nearby campus building.