Trump had celebrated Kimmel\u2019s removal, calling it \u201cgreat news for America\u201d.<\/p>\n
Opponents saw it as the latest step in creeping Government control of free speech – an article of faith for many Americans, as well as a right enshrined in the country\u2019s constitution.<\/p>\n
Some on the right were also uneasy, including people who regularly count themselves as Trump allies, like Ted Cruz, the conservative senator from Texas, and firebrand broadcaster Tucker Carlson.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Trump again complained about negative media coverage of him, which he said he thought was \u201cillegal\u201d.<\/p>\n
FCC threat<\/p>\n
The Kimmel episode came a week after Kirk, a close Trump ally, was shot dead\u00a0on a Utah university campus, setting off a bitter battle over responsibility in deeply polarised America, with conservatives – including Trump – blaming \u201cthe radical left\u201d.<\/p>\n
Authorities have charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson and have not indicated they are looking for anyone else.<\/p>\n
In his show-opening monologue last Monday, Kimmel said \u201cthe MAGA gang\u201d was \u201cdesperately trying to characterise this kid… as anything other than one of them\u201d.<\/p>\n
He then showed footage of Trump pivoting from a question about how he had been affected by Kirk\u2019s death to boasting about the new ballroom he is building at the White House, prompting laughter from the studio audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish,\u201d Kimmel said.<\/p>\n
Two days later, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr threatened the licenses of ABC affiliates that broadcast Kimmel\u2019s show.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s past time these [affiliates] themselves push back… and say, \u2018Listen, we\u2019re not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we\u2019re running the possibility of license revocation from the FCC,\u2019\u201d he told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson.<\/p>\n
Hours later, Nexstar, one of the country\u2019s biggest owners of ABC affiliate stations, announced it would be removing the show from its stations.<\/p>\n
Nexstar is in the middle of a multi-billion-dollar merger with a rival that will require FCC approval.<\/p>\n
ABC then followed suit, pulling the show nationwide.<\/p>\n
Hollywood stars<\/p>\n
Before Disney\u2019s about-face, a constellation of Hollywood stars signed an open letter calling the decision to pull the show \u201ca dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation [that is] unconstitutional and un-American.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Government is threatening private companies and individuals that the President disagrees with. We can\u2019t let this threat to our freedom of speech go unanswered,\u201d said the letter by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).<\/p>\n
Signatories to the letter included Marvel star Pedro Pascal, Tom Hanks, Jennifer Aniston, Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump had celebrated Kimmel\u2019s removal, calling it \u201cgreat news for America\u201d. Opponents saw it as the latest step…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[34506,74,696,1863,34507,2398,156,71,266,1736,18152,29401,685,8526,111,139,69,26525,1527,1305,11227,1961,18937,61,686,5977,1533],"class_list":["post-37477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-abruptly","tag-after","tag-announced","tag-back","tag-broadcasters","tag-disney","tag-entertainment","tag-from","tag-government","tag-jimmy","tag-kimmel","tag-kimmels","tag-last","tag-latenight","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pulled","tag-return","tag-show","tag-talk","tag-this","tag-threatened","tag-to","tag-week","tag-which","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}