Ex-Disney CEO Bob Iger responded to claims that ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel in September 2025 was politically motivated.
With all of the relatively recent non-drama drama involving the White House Correspondents Dinner, you could almost forget that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel‘s battles with the Trump Administration really took a dive into scary censorship territory back in September 2025. That’s when ABC announced that it had “pre-empted indefinitely” Kimmel, a move that came after Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr urged local network affiliates to remove Jimmy Kimmel Live! from their stations over Kimmel’s comments regarding the suspect who had been charged with killing conservative activist and advisor Charlie Kirk.
“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 during his monologue, the comment that was used to force Kimmel off the air. From there, Nexstar and Sinclair would do just that, announcing that the late-night show was removed from their stations, with Sinclair adding a list of concessions they would need from Kimmel for it to reconsider their decision. The severe backlash that both Disney and ABC faced came from every corner of the pop culture landscape, leading ABC to reinstate the show before the end of the month, with Nexstar and Sinclair quietly returning the late-night talk show to their stations.
During an interview with The Financial Times, ex-Disney CEO Bob Iger addressed the decision to shut down Kimmel’s late-night show, pushing back on claims that the move was politically motivated (though waiting until he stepped down from Disney to address the matter in this detail is definitely a choice). “That was not the case. We thought it was in bad taste,” Iger said. “We just wanted him to acknowledge that it was an ill-timed and probably inappropriate comment.” Kimmel wouldn’t apologize for the joke, though he would explain that it wasn’t focused on Kirk but on those who used his death to peddle a political agenda.
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
