WASHINGTON ‒ President Donald Trump said Jimmy Kimmel should have been pulled "a long time ago," rejecting Democrats' outcries about the state of free speech in the United States after ABC indefinitely pulled the comedian’s late-night television show amid pressure from the Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission chairman.

Trump addressed ABC indefinitely suspending Kimmel’s for the first time publicly during a Sept.18 joint news conference alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as he concluded a three-day state visit to the United Kingdom.

"Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings, more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk," Trump said in response to a British reporter’s question on whether free speech is more "under attack" in the U.S. or England after Kimmel’s ouster.

"Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago," Trump added. "You can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent."

Kimmel's ratings are second among late-night hosts after CBS's Stephen Colbert.

ABC pulled "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" off air on Sept. 17 shortly after Nexstar Media Group said it would stop airing the show on its 32 ABC affiliates because of "offensive and insensitive" remarks Kimmel made about Kirk, who was shot and killed Sept. 10 by an assassin.

Before the decisions were announced, FCC chairman Brendan Carr threatened to take action against ABC and its local affiliates if it continued to air Kimmel’s television show.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Carr said in an appearance on conservative commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast. "There's actions that we can take on licensed broadcasters."

Carr added that it is "past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, 'We’re not going to Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we, licensed broadcaster, on running the possibility of fines or license revocations from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.'"

The comment from Kimmel that apparently attracted scrutiny from the FCC's Carr came during an opening monologue during the comedian’s Monday, Sept. 15 show.

"We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than other than one of them," Kimmel said, which some have interpreted as Kimmel falsely alleging that the suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was a MAGA Trump supporter.

Kimmel is a longtime critic of Trump and has financially supported Democratic candidates, including former President Joe Biden, who Kimmel co-hosted a Hollywood fundraiser for in 2024.

In an initial reaction to Kimmel's indefinite pulling on Wednesday night, Trump cheered ABC for "finally having the courage to do what had to be done" in a late-night Truth Social post that also called for NBC to cancel the late-night shows of comedians Seth Myers and Jimmy Fallon. "Do it NBC!!!" Trump wrote.

Democrats and other Trump critics quickly slammed ABC’s decision to pull Kimmel and accused the Trump administration of targeting free speech by pressuring television networks and their affiliates.

"This is a massive, history making abuse of your power," Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said in an X post directed at Carr. "It will define your legacy and one day you will come to regret punishing free speech and trying to destroy democracy."

Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump claims Jimmy Kimmel was yanked over 'bad ratings,' rejects free speech concerns

Reporting by Joey Garrison, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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