{"id":239206,"date":"2025-09-19T15:23:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T15:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/239206\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T15:23:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T15:23:13","slug":"late-night-hosts-jon-stewart-and-stephen-colbert-defend-jimmy-kimmel-and-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/239206\/","title":{"rendered":"Late night hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert defend Jimmy Kimmel and free speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart defended Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> and free speech during their Thursday night shows, after ABC indefinitely suspended his popular late-night show on Wednesday amid a controversy over recent comments made by the longtime host about the investigation into Charlie Kirk\u2019s suspected killer.<\/p>\n

\u201cJimmy, I stand with you and your staff 100%,\u201d Colbert told his audience at \u201cThe Late Show With Stephen Colbert.\u201d \u201cThis is blatant censorship,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cTonight, we are all Jimmy Kimmel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jon Stewart, who normally only hosts \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d on Mondays, made a special Thursday appearance, also tackling the topic of free speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may call it \u2018free speech\u2019 in Jolly Old England, but in America we have a little something called the First Amendment,\u201d Stewart said after showing a clip of a British journalist asking President Donald Trump about Kimmel\u2019s suspension during a news conference that was part of his state visit to the United Kingdom earlier this week.<\/p>\n

ABC, which is owned by Disney, made the abrupt decision to pull Kimmel\u2019s late-night talk show \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d on Wednesday evening following public pressure<\/a> from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, and ABC affiliates.<\/p>\n

Kimmel has not yet commented on the suspension. On Thursday, crowds gathered<\/a> outside the Disney studio in Burbank, California, to protest against the network pulling Kimmel\u2019s show off the air.<\/p>\n

Trump has since lauded ABC\u2019s decision to suspend Kimmel\u2019s show and said Thursday that networks\u2019 broadcast licenses could be revoked for airing negative information about him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won all seven swing states, popular vote, I won everything,\u201d Trump said, referring to the 2024 election. \u201cAnd they\u2019re 97% against, they give me wholly bad publicity,\u201d he added, without providing evidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, they\u2019re getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

On a set decorated with gold, Stewart satirically and repeatedly paid deference to Trump, calling him \u201clordship\u201d and \u201cfather.\u201d He intentionally avoided potential offensives, such as disagreeing with the president or any of his supporters and jokingly quieted his audience if they booed.<\/p>\n

Stewart, whose show is aired on Comedy Central, has been outspoken<\/a> about the decision by the network\u2019s parent company, Paramount, to cancel \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur great administration has laid out very clear rules on free speech. Now, some naysayers may argue that this administration\u2019s speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smokescreen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation, principle-less and coldly antithetical to any experiment in a constitutional republic governance. Some people would say that, not me, though. I think it\u2019s great,\u201d Stewart said through gritted teeth and a tight smile.<\/p>\n

NBC late-night host Seth Meyers took a similar, Trump-effusive approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always admired and respected Mr. Trump. I\u2019ve always believed he was a visionary, an innovator, a great president, an even better golfer, and if you\u2019ve ever seen me say anything negative about him, that\u2019s just AI,\u201d Meyers said Thursday.<\/p>\n

Another NBC late night host, Jimmy Fallon, commented Thursday that ABC\u2019s decision has left \u201ceveryone thinking WTF.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest with you all, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on, and no one does. But I do know Jimmy Kimmel, and he\u2019s a decent, funny and loving guy, and I hope he comes back,\u201d he said on \u201cThe Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, speaking aboard Air Force One while traveling back from the UK, said he would endorse moves by the Federal Communications Commission to pull licenses, and suggested networks should reapply for them periodically. He added later that not airing conservative views could be rationale for removing networks\u2019 licenses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something that should be talked about for licensing, too. When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that\u2019s all they do,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you go back, I guess they haven\u2019t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said, but when you go back and you take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They\u2019re licensed. They\u2019re not allowed to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump said he would leave the decision to Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman at the center of this week\u2019s Jimmy Kimmel controversy.<\/p>\n

After Kimmel\u2019s comments about Charlie Kirk\u2019s murder this week, Carr told right-wing podcaster<\/a> Benny Johnson that the late-night host\u2019s remarks constituted \u201cthe sickest conduct possible,\u201d and he suggested the FCC could move to revoke ABC affiliate licenses as a way of forcing Disney to punish Kimmel.<\/p>\n

CNN\u2019s Kevin Liptak, Brian Stelter, Tori B. Powell and Natasha Chen contributed reporting.<\/p>\n

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart defended Jimmy Kimmel and free speech during their Thursday night shows, after ABC…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":239207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[51396,185,19719,171,18320,29536,1029,11171,36809,49809,5005,13895,128069,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-239206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-brendan-carr","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-charlie-kirk","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-federal-communications-commission","13":"tag-free-speech","14":"tag-jimmy-fallon","15":"tag-jimmy-kimmel","16":"tag-jon-stewart","17":"tag-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","18":"tag-president-donald-trump","19":"tag-stephen-colbert","20":"tag-thursday-night-shows","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115231654195448483","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}