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\n Jimmy Kimmel will be back on ABC tonight \u2014 but not in every market.\n <\/p>\n
\n With Sinclair refusing to air Kimmel\u2019s show on its ABC-affiliated stations, and Nexstar not yet commenting on its plans, this free speech tug-of-war is far from over.\n <\/p>\n
\n And as CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper told Seth Meyers on Monday night, \u201cit doesn\u2019t end\u201d with Kimmel.\n <\/p>\n
\n MAGA media commentators are raging against ABC\u2019s parent Disney, with some influential pundits publicly pressing the Trump administration to take action against the company, calling to mind FCC chair Brendan Carr\u2019s \u201cWe can do this the easy way or the hard way\u201d line from last week.\n <\/p>\n
\n Any such action would stretch well beyond the usual bounds of government regulation, but President Trump has been crossing those lines ever since returning to the Oval Office, as Disney CEO Bob Iger well knows.\n <\/p>\n
\n That\u2019s why I am keeping a close eye on the simmering MAGA anger about ABC as Kimmel returns to the airwaves. The anger is palpable on sites like X, where Fox News contributor and The Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway told her fans last night that \u201cDISNEY LOATHES YOU.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Hemingway\u2019s posts showed how pro-Trump media figures have adopted a very different interpretation of Kimmel\u2019s September 15 monologue than other viewers. Kimmel\u2019s \u201cmalicious lie\u201d was \u201cdesigned to protect left-wing violence and further harm Americans and our values,\u201d Hemingway wrote.\n <\/p>\n
\n Kimmel actually said the MAGA movement was trying to score political points by trying to prove that the suspect accused of killing Charlie Kirk was not a Trump supporter. Then the host ridiculed one of Trump\u2019s comments in the wake of Kirk\u2019s murder.\n <\/p>\n
\n Conservative media watchdogs clipped the moment from ABC\u2019s air and publicized it, leading Carr to publicly condemn Kimmel and invoke the FCC\u2019s power over local station licenses. We all know what happened next. ABC\u2019s decision to sideline Kimmel was a momentary triumph for the right-wing activists who want to win cultural as well as political victories during Trump\u2019s term.\n <\/p>\n
\n Kimmel\u2019s return is thus a rebuke to those same activists \u2014 while also, in the words of PEN America, a \u201cvindication for free speech.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson, who egged on Carr last week, wrote on X that Kirk\u2019s Turning Point USA organization \u201cviews Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s false claims about Charlie Kirk\u2019s assassin as an open and vicious attack on the organization and its activists.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Shortly after ABC announced Kimmel\u2019s comeback, OutKick founder and Trump ally Clay Travis said on Fox that the government should flex its muscles to Disney.\n <\/p>\n
\n Noting ESPN\u2019s pending deal with the NFL, Travis said, \u201cI think the Trump administration needs to look aggressively at that potential acquisition of the NFL Network and say, \u2018Wait a minute, is Disney\/ABC really trying to speak to all of America? If they won\u2019t do it on a late-night show, will they do it with sports? I think those are real questions that deserve to be asked.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The NFL deal requires the Trump DOJ\u2019s sign-off, but that\u2019s supposed to be an antitrust matter, not a review of whether ABC is \u201ctrying to speak to all of America.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n However, for pro-Trump influencers who have resented the liberal bent of late-night TV for years, and despised Kimmel for just as long, the use of government power to punish perceived enemies is not something to be condemned; it\u2019s something to be exploited.\n <\/p>\n
\n Ryan Faughnder of the Los Angeles Times said it best this morning: \u201cDisney wanted to be done with politics. But politics wasn\u2019t done with Disney. It never is.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n That\u2019s what Jake Tapper said during a visit to \u201cLate Night with Seth Meyers\u201d Monday night.\n <\/p>\n
\n Tapper called last week\u2019s domino effect \u201cthe most direct infringement by the government on free speech that I\u2019ve seen in my lifetime.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019ll see what happens when they come for Comcast,\u201d NBC\u2019s parent, \u201cand we\u2019ll see what happens when they come for Warner Bros. Discovery,\u201d CNN\u2019s parent, Tapper said to Meyers. \u201cMaybe you and I will be drawing comic books.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Nexstar was the first station group to come out publicly against Kimmel last Wednesday. Nexstar is also the best example of a media company that feels compelled to curry favor with Trump right now, as it needs the FCC to approve its pending merger with Tegna.\n <\/p>\n
\n So will Nexstar air Kimmel\u2019s return on Tuesday night? That\u2019s to be announced.\n <\/p>\n
\n Nexstar\u2019s local ABC-affiliated stations are in the dark; some of the company\u2019s local newsrooms struggled to figure out how to cover ABC\u2019s announcement yesterday, since they didn\u2019t know if their own stations were going to air the show or not.\n <\/p>\n
\n More broadly, I view this moment as yet another example of the slow unspooling of broadcast TV, which is becoming less and less \u201cbroad,\u201d and another example of the red-blue divide, which is fracturing seemingly everything, even TV schedules.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link Jimmy Kimmel will be back on ABC tonight \u2014 but not in every market.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-33200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}