Jimmy Kimmel’s show is gone. So is Stephen Colbert’s. And if President Donald Trump has his way, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon will be next. In the MAGA establishment’s ongoing censorship campaign against Trump’s critics, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” became its latest victim when ABC announced Wednesday that it was pulling the show “indefinitely.” The network’s abrupt announcement followed an outcry ...

Jimmy Kimmel speaks onstage during the 96th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on March 10, 2024.

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Jimmy Kimmel’s show is gone. So is Stephen Colbert’s. And if President Donald Trump has his way, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon will be next.

In the MAGA establishment’s ongoing censorship campaign against Trump’s critics, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” became its latest victim when ABC announced Wednesday that it was pulling the show “indefinitely.” The network’s abrupt announcement followed an outcry from Trump’s supporters that the show’s host — a longtime critic of the president — had inaccurately described the possible political motivations of the suspect, Tyler Robinson, in last week’s killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

The network’s announcement came hours after Brendan Carr, the Trump-nominated chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, targeted Kimmel on a right-wing podcast and suggested the FCC could take action against ABC because of remarks made by the host. He said Kimmel’s comments were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people,” and that the FCC was “going to have remedies that we can look at.”

“Frankly, when you see stuff like this — I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he told the podcast’s host, Benny Johnson. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

The alleged lies cited by Kimmel in his Monday night monologue? That MAGA was trying to paint Robinson as “anything other than one of them.”

“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,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was, uh, grieving on Friday — the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.”

Kimmel then cut to a clip showing Trump taking questions from reporters, and when the president was asked how he was holding up, he said, “I think very good, and by the way, right there where you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House.” Trump went on to discuss the plans for the ballroom and said the results will “be a beauty.”

The monologue wasn’t Kimmel’s best work, but it certainly didn’t rise to a level so dangerous that the show needed to be yanked. Yet in today’s environment, where fear of retribution from the White House is driving programming decisions, it was enough to spook ABC into pulling a late-night franchise that’s endured for decades.

The FCC unsurprisingly did not apply the same standards to an outburst Monday by Greg Gutfeld, Fox News’ conservative answer to network television’s thinning herd of late-night hosts. Gutfeld cursed on air, demeaned the loss of life from another assassination earlier this year and cited information that was incorrect to back his tirade.

On Fox’s show “The Five,” Gutfeld asserted that political violence in the U.S. was only going one way — from left to right — during a conversation with co-host Jessica Tarlov. When she pushed back on his argument by bringing up the June assassination of the Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, Gutfeld exploded.

“What is interesting here is, why is only this happening on the left and not the right?” he asked. “That’s all we need to know.”

“You wanna talk about Melissa Hortman?” he shouted at her. “Did you know her name before it happened? None of us did. None of us were spending every single day talking about Mrs. Hortman — I never heard of her until after she died.”

“So, it doesn’t matter?” Tarlov asked.

“Don’t play that bulls— with me!” Gutfeld fumed. “You know what I’m talking … What I’m saying is there was no demonization, amplification about that woman before she died. It was a specific crime against her by somebody who knew her.”

No evidence has been publicly presented that the alleged killer of the Hortmans, Vance Boelter, knew the couple. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Boelter “had a list of possible targets,” and investigators have suggested that the suspect’s right-wing political views played a role in the attacks.

Carr’s assail of Kimmel is the latest attack against the media by Trump and his administration. Trump sued ABC last year in a case that the network paid $15 million to settle. On Monday, the president filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and four of its reporters.

In July, CBS announced it would not be renewing the storied network franchise, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” claiming that the show’s cancellation was a financial decision. But the timing suggested the network was pandering to Trump in order to grease the wheels for a merger between its parent company, Paramount, and Skydance Media. The merger was awaiting the FCC’s approval. A few weeks after CBS agreed to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” the merger was approved.

Ratings for late-night television have been slipping over the last decade due to a number of factors, including the decline of linear TV as a whole and changing viewing habits with the advent of streaming and online engagement. In the 1990s, for example, Johnny Carson’s final episode in 1992 drew 50 million viewers. Letterman averaged around 7.8 million viewers in the same year. In the second quarter of 2025, “ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” topped the 11:35 p.m. hour with an average of 2.417 million viewers. “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” came in second with an average of 1.772 million viewers. NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” finished third with an average of 1.188 million viewers.

On Wednesday, Trump posted a celebratory comment about Kimmel’s show being pulled: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump wrote. “Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT”

But the true loser here isn’t Trump’s critics or his enemy, the left. It’s freedom of speech.

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(Lorraine Ali is news and culture critic of the Los Angeles Times.)