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When Jimmy Kimmel taped his back-to-work monologue Tuesday night, he predicted that the restoration of his show would “unfortunately and unjustly” put ABC at risk of additional pressure from the government.
One hour before the monologue aired, President Trump proved him right, posting a blustery new legal threat against ABC on Truth Social.
Trump’s message swerved between dismissive — Kimmel’s “audience is GONE,” he claimed — and intimidating. He claimed Kimmel “puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE. He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do.”
ABC has not responded to CNN’s request for comment about Trump’s post, which lacked any clear legal basis.
This latest legal threat may come and go, but it is another crystal-clear example of the president using his government power to cajole a privately owned media company into changing its content.
In this case, it’s for a very specific reason: The president can’t stand being criticized night after night.
As Kimmel noted on the air, the president has also called for NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon. Kimmel urged viewers to speak up on Fallon’s behalf if there is “any hint” of action against his rival.
On Wednesday morning, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reacted to Trump’s newest missive against ABC by saying, “This is a test of democracy.”
That threat, Schumer said on MSNBC, “is what dictatorships do. That is what autocracies do.”
Trump wants anyone he “doesn’t agree with he wants to shut up,” Schumer added. “That’s a dagger to the heart of America.”
Trump’s post also highlighted how last December’s Disney settlement has emboldened him to make further demands of media companies. “Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars,” the president wrote. “This one sounds even more lucrative.”
The president’s tone is revealing. “They gave me” $16 million sounds so casual, when in fact ABC’s payout was anything but.
The company decided to settle Trump’s defamation lawsuit against ABC News to avoid the legal discovery process and an unpredictable trial, not out of the goodness of Mickey Mouse’s heart. Numerous critics, including some inside ABC, now look back at that settlement with regret, believing it kicked off a wave of media capitulation to the president.
In any case, Trump’s latest threat is a clear indication that he intends to punish ABC for allowing Kimmel to return to the air.
It also once again contradicts the popular MAGA media claim that Trump and Brendan Carr had nothing to do with Kimmel’s benching. As Justin Amash, the former GOP congressman, said on X, the president’s words “torpedoed every White House surrogate who claimed the administration wasn’t attempting to coerce Disney/ABC.”
Kimmel geared up his audience for this continued grudge match last night. He assailed Trump’s “un-American” attacks on free speech and borrowed a line from the late great comedian Jack Paar, the second host of “The Tonight Show,” who quit hosting the show for nearly a month in 1960 over a dispute with NBC’s censors. When Paar returned to work, he opened by saying, “As I was saying before I was interrupted…”
And that’s exactly how Kimmel opened last night, as well.
“By borrowing Paar’s comeback, Kimmel placed his own suspension in the lineage of late-night defiance,” late-night TV analyst Jed Rosenzweig wrote in a column for his website LateNighter. It was a calculated echo of late-night history by Kimmel: “Rather than treating his absence as punishment, he reframed it as an interruption — a pause in the conversation with his audience that he now controls again.”
Much to Trump’s chagrin, Kimmel got the last laugh — for now.