Late-night television may be under attack, but its hosts are sticking together. On Wednesday evening, ABC announced that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s long-running late-night series Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air following comments Kimmel made about the murder of Charlie Kirk and pressure from FCC chair Brendan Carr. One day after Kimmel’s immediate and indefinite suspension, late-night hosts, including Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Seth Meyers, took to their desks and spoke out about the blatant attack on free speech.
Colbert knows a thing or two about being silenced by a network. Earlier this summer, Paramount abruptly announced that it was cancelling his Emmy-winning CBS late-night show, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, after Colbert’s contract expires in May. The decision came as Paramount, CBS’s parent company, was waiting for government approval for an $8 billion merger with media conglomerate SkyDance. At the time, Kimmel and the other late-night hosts rallied around Colbert, appearing together on his show and calling out CBS and Paramount for potentially kowtowing to President Donald Trump, who had made his ire for Colbert and his comedy well-known.
Now it was time for Colbert to return the favor. “Tonight, we are all Jimmy Kimmel,” said Colbert to open his monologue. “Yesterday, after threats from the FCC chair, ABC yanked Kimmel off the air indefinitely. That is blatant censorship,” said Colbert. He then reminded the audience about Trump’s decision in his first week of his presidency to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. “Sure, seems harmless, but with an autocrat you cannot give an inch,” said Colbert, to loud cheers from the studio audience. “And if ABC thinks this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive. And clearly they never read the children’s book, If You Give A Mouse a Kimmel.”
Colbert than addressed Kimmel directly, saying he stands with the comedian and his staff amid the suspension, before joking that the brouhaha surrounding Kimmel has overshadowed The Late Show’s recent Emmy win for outstanding talk series. “You couldn’t let me enjoy this for like one week? Come on,” said Colbert, who was holding his Emmy.
