CNN's John Berman pushed back on a conservative guest's defense of ABC caving to pressure from President Donald Trump and pulling late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air.

The president has been threatening to revoke broadcast licenses for the network's affiliates for months over Kimmel, who mocked him on a nightly basis, and parent company Disney yanked him indefinitely after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr criticized his coverage of Charlie Kirk's assassination, which conservative pundit Scott Jennings told "CNN News Central" was justified.

"Where's the joke?" Jennings said. "I mean, Jimmy Kimmel went on TV the other night, he wasn't telling any jokes. He was telling the American people a bunch of lies. I'm not certain it was in the public interest or the public good to be telling the American people a bunch of lies. I'm not certain it was in the public interest or the public good to do so. His show had largely become a propaganda show, it's not a comedy show, and so businesses that put things on the air have to make decisions about content all the time, and in this particular case, my view is the content had gotten to the point where the people who have to air it were hearing from their, I'm sure, advertisers and their consumers. There are consequences to that sort of thing."

Berman pointed out that Kimmel showed a video clip of the president's reaction to a question about Kirk's fatal shooting, to which he replied with a rambling discourse on the construction of a White House ballroom.

"The joke came, I mean, it was a windup to a joke about President Trump's reaction, commenting on the construction that was going on when he was asked about Charlie Kirk," Berman said. "That was the actual joke."

Trump and his conservative allies characterized the shooter as left-wing before a suspect was identified and proposed measures to crack down on their political enemies before and after his arrest, but Kimmel suggested the shooter was part of the "MAGA gang."

"Was it a joke to lie about the shooter?" Jennings said.

Berman read Kimmel's quote to say the joke was a bit more nuanced than Jennings and the Trump administration had characterized it.

"What he said, let me just say, I'm just going to read it out loud what he said about this," Berman said. "He said, 'We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize the kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.' So if you read that literally, he was talking about the reaction to the killing right there."

Jennings attempted to protest, but Berman turned to panelist Bakari Sellers to ask about Kamala Harris revealing that her first choice for running mate was Pete Buttigieg, and Jennings gamely engaged in that topic by criticizing vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.

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