Jimmy Kimmel Defends Free Speech as 'One Thing We Can Agree On'

The comedian returned to ABC last night and struck a defiant yet patriotic tone

On Tuesday the world did not end, but Jimmy Kimmel Live! did return to ABC.

Nearly a week after he was suspended “indefinitely” by Disney for a joke about Republicans’ response to Charlie Kirk’s murder, Kimmel was back on the airwaves in most of the country.

In a widely anticipated monologue that was by turns tearful and defiant, he took aim at Donald Trump and Brendan Carr, the MAGA loyalist serving as chair of the Federal Communications Commission, and passionately defended the First Amendment.

Kimmel’s triumphant return came with a large asterisk: as he noted in his monologue, affiliates owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar are continuing to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live! in about 20% of the country.

The show did not air on ABC affiliates in cities including New Orleans, Nashville, Portland, Oreg. and St. Louis, and—fittingly enough — Washington D.C.

Ratings for the linear broadcast have not yet been released, but as of Wednesday morning Kimmel’s 28-minute monologue had already been viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube (more than 5 times the average nightly audience for JKL).

The entire saga may go down as the most glaring example yet of the Streisand Effect: by trying to silence Kimmel, Trump and his ilk only gave the comedian much, much more attention.

The monologue capped off what has been a remarkable evolution for the former host of The Man Show who has, over last decade, become more outspoken about issues including gun safety and health care.

Kimmel was keenly aware that he would be speaking to a massive audience, and rose to the occasion admirably. The host struck a delicate balancing act, directing his anger at politicians looking to pit Americans against each other, while emphasizing the beliefs that unite a majority of the public—especially free speech, which he embraced as a patriotic value.

“I barely paid attention in school. But one thing I did learn from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern is that a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American,” he said. “Maybe the silver lining from this is we found one thing we can agree on, and maybe we’ll even find another one.”

He praised Erika Kirk for forgiving the man suspected of killing her husband, calling it “a selfless act of grace forgiveness from a grieving widow that touched me deeply.”

And while he stopped short of apologizing for the joke that got him in hot water, Kimmel clarified the point he was trying to make: “It’s important to me as a human and that you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” he said, his voice breaking. (It’s worth noting that Kimmel has four children, including a grown son about Kirk’s age.)

He thanked Disney for putting this show back on the air, despite the inherent risk of such a decision.

“The President of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs,” he said.

“Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”

He reminded viewers that Trump was able to push Stephen Colbert out at CBS, and that he has repeatedly urged NBC to get rid of Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, “and the hundreds of Americans who work for their shows, who don’t make millions of dollars.”

“I hope that if that happens, or if there’s even any hint of that happening, you will be 10 times as loud as you were this week,” he said.

Kimmel also urged his viewers to pay attention to the administration’s attacks on the free press, including a proposed Pentagon policy requiring journalists to sign a pledge not to report information that hasn’t been explicitly authorized, even if it is unclassified.

“I know that’s not as interesting as muzzling a comedian, but it’s so important to have a free press, and it is nuts that we aren’t paying more attention to it,” he said.

Arguably, the highlight of the episode came in the second half of the monologue, when Kimmel rang up “Brendan Carr” to have a discussion about free speech. The FCC chief was played by surprise guest Robert DeNiro, in a sendup of the foul-mouthed gangster roles for which he is legendary.

DeNiro informed the comedian that free speech “ain’t free no more,” especially if you’ve got critical things to say about Trump.

“If you want to say something nice about the president’s beautiful, thick yellow hair, how he can do his makeup better than any broad — that’s free if you want,” he said. “But if you want to do a joke like, ‘He’s so fat he needs two seats on the Epstein jet,’ that’s gonna cost you.”

Predictably, the president was not pleased about the end of Kimmel’s suspension. “I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back,” he wrote on Truth social. (Kimmel does not work for ABC News. But why would the president know something like that?)

Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The Contrarian