{"id":759689,"date":"2026-06-25T06:51:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T06:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/759689\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T06:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T06:51:12","slug":"bob-iger-defends-jimmy-kimmel-suspension-over-charlie-kirk-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/759689\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Iger Defends Jimmy Kimmel Suspension Over Charlie Kirk Comment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBob Iger<\/a>, who recently stepped down as CEO of Disney, is defending the company\u2019s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> back in September over his comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n

\n\tPublicly addressing the debacle for the the first time in an interview with the Financial Times<\/a>, Iger denied the widespread speculation that Disney pulled \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live\u201d to capitulate to the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat was not the case,\u201d Iger said. \u201cWe thought it was in bad taste.\u201d The retired executive also explained that Kimmel was asked to apologize for his remarks: \u201cWe just wanted him to acknowledge that it was an ill-timed and probably inappropriate comment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA right-wing activist and ally to Donald Trump, Kirk was shot and killed at age 31<\/a> on Sept. 10, 2025 while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. Five days later, on-air during his late-night ABC show, Kimmel said that \u201cthe MAGA gang\u201d was \u201cdesperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.\u201d In response, Trump\u2019s FCC chairman Brendan Carr to threatened regulatory pressure<\/a>: \u201cWe can do this the easy way or the hard way,\u201d he said on a podcast. \u201cThese companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there\u2019s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNexstar and Sinclair, companies that own a combined one-quarter of ABC\u2019s affiliate channels, swiftly vowed that they would not air Kimmel\u2019s show, and ABC followed suit, suspending production on \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live\u201d indefinitely<\/a>. The show ended up returning after five days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bob Iger, who recently stepped down as CEO of Disney, is defending the company\u2019s decision to suspend Jimmy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[53882,49,48,75,4592,348],"class_list":["post-759689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bob-iger","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-jimmy-kimmel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}