President Donald Trump said Thursday that Jimmy Kimmel should have been fired “a long time ago” after the late-night host’s show was shelved indefinitely on Wednesday.
Trump weighed in on ABC’s decision to indefinitely preempt Kimmel’s show, Jimmy Kimmel Tonight, after the 57-year-old host’s comments earlier this week about the assassination of Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk.
“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 during a press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the Chequers Estate on Thursday afternoon.
“Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago. So you know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent,” he added.
In a monologue earlier this week, Kimmel falsely claimed that a Trump supporter murdered Kirk.
“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 one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” he said.
Prominent Democrats, like former President Barack Obama, have rushed to defend Kimmel after his show was suspended.
“After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” Obama wrote in a post on X Thursday morning, sharing a Vox op-ed claiming Kimmel’s show was preempted because of pressure from the Trump administration.
While Obama and others are asserting that Kimmel was subject to “cancel culture,” many, including Barstool Sports Founder Dave Portnoy, are saying that Kimmel is merely facing consequences for his actions.
“With Kimmel getting canned I’m seeing lots of people talking about the hypocrisy of cancel culture. To me Cancel culture is when people go out of their way to dig up old tweets, videos etc looking for dirt on somebody they don’t like in an effort to get them fired,” Portnoy wrote in a post on X Wednesday night.
“Like if Kimmel got canceled for shit he did on the Man Show that would be cancel culture. But when a person says something that a ton of people find offensive, rude, dumb in real time and then that person is punished for it that’s not cancel culture. That is consequences for your actions,” he added.
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