ABC’s decision to silence Jimmy Kimmel was a calculated play in a media landscape increasingly dictated by President Donald Trump, author Michael Wolff argues.
Speaking on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast, Wolff likened ABC’s indefinite cut of Jimmy Kimmel Live! to a recurring ritual in the Trump era: “the reflexive reaction, the knee-jerk reaction that’s just serious, unthought out, knuckle-headed stuff.”
“So therefore they immediately came out and said yes we’re not going to carry the Kimmel show,” said Wolff, a media expert and Trump biographer.
Disney-owned ABC followed suit not long after. Wolff told host Joanna Coles the decision would have come straight from longtime Disney CEO Bob Iger.
“You have to step back and say, here is Bob Iger, the billionaire CEO of the most powerful entertainment company in the world, immediately, with hardly a second thought, cowering before the desires of the Trump administration,” Wolff said.
Coles wondered if Iger was simply making a “pragmatic business decision,” noting that he wouldn’t want to lose Nexstar and Sinclair, another ABC affiliate that came out swinging against Kimmel.
“Well, I think it’s the same thing, six of one, half dozen of the other,” Wolff countered. “I mean, [Iger] realizes that the ire of Donald Trump will be bad for business. And so therefore ‘we submit to that.’”
When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast in a statement: “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s–t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
Multiple executives who participated in last-minute damage control meetings on Wednesday initially supported Kimmel and didn’t think his comments had crossed a line, Rolling Stone reported. But the threat of retaliation from the Trump administration reportedly rattled them.
The decision to cut Kimmel, who is well-liked among Hollywood’s “creative community,” according to Coles, will come back to bite Iger and other executives, Wolff argued.
“I would say that this is probably … an unforced error that will cost Bob Iger,” he said, adding that it will “likely … cost him his job.”
Wolff called Kimmel’s silencing a “reflection of how afraid people are of Donald Trump,” noting that it wasn’t the first time ABC “folded” in a confrontation with the 79-year-old president.
Trump reached a $16 million settlement with ABC in December after he sued for defamation over remarks made on air by star anchor George Stephanopoulos.
In July, Paramount paid the same amount to settle Trump’s lawsuit over the editing of a Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes. The FCC signed off on Paramount’s merger with Skydance Media just weeks later.
Now, Wolff argued, the Trump administration has begun using Kirk’s assassination as the “stated rationale” to “crack down on the media and on free speech, or as he says, ‘leftist speech’.”
When asked about Kimmel’s indefinite leave Thursday, Trump did not address the host’s remarks on Kirk that had sparked the controversy, focusing instead on how networks licensed by the FCC should not be allowed to be overly critical of him.
“When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do—if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years, or something—when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump,” he said. “They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
His comments echo Carr’s repeated claims Thursday that with a broadcasting license “comes a unique obligation to operate in the public interest,” which appears to be a striking reversal on his own stance in 2019.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Disney, ABC, and Nexstar for comment.