On this week’s episode of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart celebrated the return of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after ABC pulled the late-night program from its schedule.
After taking a jab at Donald Trump‘s new claim that using Tylenol during pregnancy causes autism in children, Stewart announced to rapturous applause, “Young Jimmy Kimmel is coming back to television! I’ll tell you, Jimmy Kimmel is flying high like Advil today. Acetaminophen is like boom, Advil’s like, ‘What’s up, motherfuckers? You got a headache, where are you going to turn?’”
The late-night pundit facetiously congratulated his audience for launching a successful, although fraudulent, campaign to help bring Kimmel back.
“The campaign that you all launched, pretending that you were going to cancel Hulu while secretly racing through four seasons of ‘Only Murders in the Building,’ really worked,” he said. “Congratulations!”
Stewart then tackled the reason Kimmel was pulled off the air. He joked that, to his knowledge, it “had nothing to do with the Trump administration and their explicit FCC threat that they could remove the show the easy way or the hard way.”
The show then cut to a clip of a Fox News correspondent echoing the same opinion. She said, “My gosh, this had nothing to do with Donald Trump not agreeing with anything Jimmy Kimmel said or not.”
“I mean, gee willickers,” Stewart said. “All my days. I mean, I don’t know why people would think that. We just randomly remove one show a week!”
Cutting back to Fox News, the correspondent added, “If Donald Trump wanted to take everyone off the air who had criticisms for him, there would basically only be a handful of individuals left on television.”
“That is funny, but it also may be a cause for self-reflection?” Stewart asked. “‘Hey, if everybody on TV is criticizing me, except for, like, four people, and one of them is my daughter-in-law, am I the drama?’”
Disney and ABC revealed Monday that they are putting Kimmel back on the air after preempting his program on Sept. 17. Upon the announcement, Disney said in a statement, “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
ABC pulled Kimmel from its schedule after Nexstar Media and Sinclair, two of the nation’s largest TV station owners, vowed to preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for the host’s on-air statements about the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Those announcements were made shortly after FCC chair Brendan Carr seemed to suggest broadcasters should take action against Kimmel for his commentary.
Sinclair revealed Monday that its ABC stations will still preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” starting Tuesday, and that negotiations for the show’s return remain ongoing.
Kimmel’s comeback, set for Tuesday night, was approved by Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden. Terms of his return are still unclear, including whether or not Kimmel must apologize for his comments on Kirk.
