By Jorge Bonilla
Copyright newsbusters
BRIAN STELTER: But let’s back up and look at what Kimmel actually said on the program that has caused controversy. This is from Monday night in his Monday evening monologue, Kimmel suggested that the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk might have been a pro-trump Republican. He said, quote, “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.” He said in between the finger pointing, there was grieving. Kimmel was expressing what we’ve heard some other liberals say in recent days that the motives are unclear and that maybe the suspect in this case was a Republican or was some sort of far-right fringe figure. Of course, there has been a lot of discussion about that in recent days. There’s a lot of evidence pointing in other directions about the suspect, but Kimmel was on the air talking about this, making a very serious commentary amid his jokes in his monologue Monday night. Here’s where it became interesting earlier today. The FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, went on a far right webcast and condemned Kimmel and urged ABC to suspend him. He also talked about possible regulatory punishments of Disney because there are lots of different stations that have licenses with the FCC. Within the past hour. We’ve heard from a big owner of stations that have affiliations with ABC. A company called Nexstar saying that they were going to suspend Kimmel’s show on their stations. So, in other words, about two dozen stations were refusing to air Kimmel’s show tonight as a result of this controversy. And then following word that some of those stations were basically revolting against Kimmel, Disney, the parent company of ABC, decided to yank the show entirely. So that’s all we know at the moment. We know Kimmel will not be on the air tonight or for the foreseeable future, because the network says the show has been yanked off the air indefinitely.
JAKE TAPPER: Brian, just to take one issue- your interpretation of what Kimmel said, I think is the one that Brendan Carr had and the one that the individuals at Nexstar have, but what he said specifically was, quote, “the Maga Gang is 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.” That can be read in several ways. That could be heard in several ways. It could also be interpreted. It could also be argued, he’s saying that what the Maga Gang is doing is just trying to make sure that they don’t have any ownership of it, not necessarily that that this killer, this horrible person, was part of them. I mean, I just-
STELTER: I think you’re making a very important point. You’re making a very important point. And let’s take a little bit step further. This was all on Monday night. Nobody seemed to notice this yesterday, Jake. This all erupted in the past few hours when the Trump-aligned FCC chairman decided to point at it. Now I’ve heard from him in the past few minutes. Brendan Carr thanking Nexstar for doing the right thing by yanking the show. He has not yet commented on ABC, yanking the show altogether across the entire country. But let’s remember that when Stephen Colbert’s show was canceled over the summer, what did president trump say? He said, “next up will be an even less talented Jimmy Kimmel.” It is clear that pro-Trump allies have been trying to target ABC over Kimmel for several weeks now, and tonight they’ve prevailed.
TAPPER: Yeah, Brian Stelter. Thanks so much for that breaking news.
