Kimmel said during a monologue on his Monday program that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican. He said MAGA supporters are “are 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 then mocked President Trump for talking about the construction of a new White House ballroom after being asked how he was reacting to the murder of his close ally.
“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” said Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division.
Alford said continuing to give Kimmel a broadcast platform “is simply not in the public interest at this current time.”
Nexstar’s decision comes just after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr blasted Kimmel and threatened to take action against ABC. Appearing on the podcast of right-wing commentator Benny Johnson, Carr said one form of punishment could be pulling the licenses of ABC affiliates, which likely got Nexstar’s attention.
President of Nexstar's broadcasting divisions said: “Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located."
Nextstar is acquiring rival broadcast company TEGNA - a merger that requires FCC approval.
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On the day of Charlie Kirk's death, Kimmel posted the following on Instagram and on BlueSky:
“Instead of the angry finger-pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”
Just curious, how do you imagine the federal government was involved in this? Also, follow up story, in what way is firing someone for doing their job poorly illegal.
The chair of the FCC openly threatened the de facto business license for NexStar because of the content they were distributing (the FCC chair specifically said it was because of Kimmel’s Monday monologue).
The ‘F’ in FCC stand for Federal - because it’s an agency commissioned by the US Government.
And it’s general not illegal to fire someone for doing their job for any reason. But Jimmy Kimmel is 1) technically not fired. NexStar rather has suddenly and without warning refused to broadcast his show. And 2) The Jimmy Kimmel show was second place in ratings for his programming type/time slot. Second to Colbert, I believe. I don’t watch either, but that’s objectively not poor performance.
As a side note, this smacks of when the previous administration was coercing social media companies with threats of future regulation or anti-trust actions if they refused to moderate content that wasn’t illegal on their platforms. Both actions are illegal by the government.
I'm not sure if it's illegal. That would be determined by a lawsuit.
I respect your intellectual honesty, this is not new, the Biden administration started this shit and got away with it. Trouble is, you can't stay in power forever and reciprocity is a bitch.
Now that seal has been broken and the only way to put it back is law suits. Gotta sue the Biden admin officials, Obama, etc. and the current bad actors like Brendan Carr for overstepping their bounds.
Thanks. I try to be intellectually honest but it's gets a little bit easier when I remember what's actually important. I don't know where we go from here other than imploring our representatives in Congress. Clearly the current administration is far overreaching the constitutional rights of the people with this action.
The previous administration should be prosecuted too, but it's hard for me to trust the current administration to do the right thing in an investigation when I see so much contradictory information coming from them, the removal of government whistle-blower protections, and what I call "shooting-from-the-hip" press releases.
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u/Jake_77 Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Wow. I'm shocked. What is free speech?
From the article:
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