Kimmel Says He Never Intended to ‘Make Light’ of Charlie Kirk’s Death

(Bloomberg) -- Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel took a conciliatory tone in his return to TV Tuesday night, choking up at several points and saying “it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.”

Back on the stage of the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show after a weeklong suspension, the longtime host was at times somber and emotional in remarks about the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. But he didn’t shy away from poking fun at President Donald Trump and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr in making an impassioned case for free speech.

Kimmel received a warm reception from an enthusiastic audience that interrupted his monologue several times with sustained applause. It was the first time Kimmel has spoken publicly since ABC parent Walt Disney Co. pulled the show off the air on Sept. 17, two days after the host said conservatives were trying to score political points off of Kirk’s murder. 

In a nod to the debate over his comments, Kimmel said his show wasn’t important, but “what is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”

Disney reinstated the program after negotiations between Kimmel and Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger and Dana Walden, co-chair of entertainment at the company. But two major TV station owners, Sinclair Inc. and Nexstar Media Group Inc., who had taken Kimmel’s show off the air last week after comments Carr made threatening broadcast licenses, were still preempting the program. The two groups own or operate ABC affiliates that reach about 23% of US households in major markets from Seattle to Portland, Oregon and Washington DC.

Kimmel said coercing “the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air — that’s not legal. That’s not American.” 

Kimmel pointed to comments Carr had made when he was an FCC commissioner under former Democratic President Joe Biden defending political satire as an important form of free speech. He said the chairman’s effort to push him off the air violated the US Constitution. He also questioned Carr’s intelligence for urging stations to cancel Kimmel’s show so publicly.

“Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, telling an American company, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way,’” Kimmel said Tuesday night, referring to remarks Carr made on the Benny Johnson podcast last week. “In addition to being a direct violation of the First Amendment, is not a particularly intelligent threat to make in public.”

Carr, 46, was appointed by Trump to lead the regulatory agency late last year and has been a staunch supporter of the president, using his position to take up Trump’s grievances against those in the media he sees as biased against him.

“Ted Cruz said he sounded like a mafioso,” Kimmel said. “Although, I don’t know, you want to hear a mob boss make a threat like that, you have to hide a microphone in a deli and park outside in a van with a tape recorder all night long. This genius said it on a podcast.”

Later in the show, in a surprise cameo, actor Robert De Niro played the role of the FCC chairman, echoing the characterization of Carr’s comments last week that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” which some have suggested sound like they were pulled from a gangster film. 

Kimmel said he disagreed with Disney for pulling his show but thanked the company for welcoming him back on air, noting that “unjustly, I think this puts them at risk.” The president, he said, “made it very clear he wants to see me, and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs.”

President Trump, in a social media post just minutes before Kimmel’s show aired, floated the prospect of unspecified future legal challenges against ABC over Kimmel’s return, calling him an arm of the Democratic Party.

“Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars.” Trump wrote. “This one sounds even more lucrative.”

After a lengthy standing ovation as he walked on, Kimmel thanked all the people who had shown him support over the past six days, but also “the people who don’t support my show or what I believe in but support the right for me to share those beliefs anyway.”

Addressing the controversy about his remarks last week over Kirk’s killer, Kimmel was visibly moved, saying he understood that to some his comments may have seemed “either ill-timed or unclear or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset.” 

Kimmel called Kirk’s killer “a sick person” and said the willingness of Kirk’s widow Erika to forgive the assassin was an “example we should follow.”

Kimmel’s suspension had become a national flashpoint, igniting passionate responses from Democrats and Republicans over free speech and the role of the media. On Tuesday night, a dozen or so news trucks were parked in front of the Los Angeles theater where Kimmel records his program, with crews waiting to interview guests as they left the venue. 

Leesa Bates and her husband Walter were on the last day of a vacation when they found out they’d be able to use the Jimmy Kimmel Live! tickets they’d scored weeks ago. Leesa said she was glad the host could return to the air.

“We felt free speech was being stifled,” she said.

The return of Jimmy Kimmel Live! was expected to draw big ratings for ABC. Kimmel said the president “tried his best to cancel me, instead he forced millions of people to watch this show. That backfired bigly.”

--With assistance from Jade Khatib and Molly Schuetz.

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