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John Oliver defended Jimmy Kimmel in the latest episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, calling his suspension a “clear case of the government trying to censor speech.”
Oliver, 48, urged ABC and parent company Disney to “stand by Kimmel and his staff” amid what he characterized as politically motivated pressure to take Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air.
“There are ways you can encourage them to do that. You could exert pressure on them by canceling Disney+ or Hulu. Google searches on that have skyrocketed in the past few days,” Oliver added on his show on Sunday, September 21.
ABC announced on Wednesday, September 17, that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be “pre-empted indefinitely” following criticism over Kimmel’s remarks about Charlie Kirk’s accused murderer, Tyler Robinson, two days earlier. “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them,” Kimmel said during his monologue.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Brendan Carr called for Kimmel to be punished and suggested network station owners “push back” against ABC by saying they wouldn’t air Kimmel’s program. Two major owners of ABC affiliates around the U.S., Nexstar and Sinclair, confirmed on Wednesday they would pull Kimmel, prompting ABC’s decision to pull the program nationwide.
“ABC and its parent company, Disney, still have a chance to do the right thing here. I do get that the easier path for them right now is to keep him off the air and the administration off their back,” Oliver said on Sunday.
“Though, I will point out, that was the apparent argument for ABC paying Trump $15 million last year, and how did that work out for them?” he added, referring to a December 2024 settlement over a defamation lawsuit brought against ABC News by Trump.
Oliver went on to address Disney CEO Bob Iger directly, saying, “Giving the bully your lunch money doesn’t make him go away; it just makes him come back hungrier each time. They are never going to stop.”
“At some point, you’re going to have to try to draw a line. Why not draw it right here?” he added.
During Sunday’s episode, Oliver pointed out that Nexstar is seeking FCC approval for a proposed $6.2 billion merger with another media company, Tegna. “Nexstar badly needs FCC approval, so it’s hardly surprising that when Carr specifically said companies should pull Kimmel off the air or face consequences, it quickly complied,” he opined. “Basically, Brendan Carr said, ‘Jump,’ and Nexstar took his d**k out of their mouth just long enough to say, ‘How high exactly?’” (Nexstar, for its part, said on Thursday, September 18, “the decision to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! was made unilaterally by the senior executive team at Nexstar, and they had no communication with the FCC or any government agency prior to making that decision.”)
Oliver also defended Kimmel’s remarks that apparently led to his suspension. “The point is, Kimmel didn’t denigrate Charlie Kirk or make light of his killing,” he said. “The worst thing you can say is that he appears to have been wrong about the shooter’s ideology, which, OK, but he was also pointing out that many on the right seem desperate to weaponize Kirk’s death, an argument that’s aged pretty well given everything that’s happened to Kimmel since.”
“This Kimmel situation does feel like a turning point, and not because comedians are important, but because we are not,” Oliver later warned. “If the government can force a network to pull a late-night show off the air and do so in plain view, it can do a f**k of a lot worse.”
