‘Systematic Destruction of Free Speech’: Top Democrats Seethe Over ABC’s Kimmel Suspension
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ABC’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live! sparked a storm of condemnation from top Democrats, who accuse Republicans of engaging in the “systematic destruction of free speech,” using outrage over the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk as a pretext.”
The MAGA backlash followed Jimmy Kimmel’s Monday monologue, in which he said the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
After FCC chairman Brendan Carr urged “individual licensed stations” to “step up” in an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson, Nexstar announced it would preempt Kimmel before ABC announced the show would be pulled indefinitely.
Reacting to the news, Democratic figures cast the decision as political capitulation and an attack on free speech.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned that the suspension should alarm all Americans and declared that the issue “must go to court.”
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) issued perhaps the sharpest warning in a video posted to X, calling the move a “red alert moment.”
“If you don’t raise your voices right now about the assault on free speech… there may be no democracy to save a year from now,” he said.
California Governor Gavin Newsom called the move a “coordinated” and “dangerous” assault on the First Amendment, charging that “The @GOP does not believe in free speech. They are censoring you in real time.”
Tommy Vietor, a former Obama aide and Pod Save America host, called the suspension “absurd,” insisting that if Kimmel “made a factual error, he should correct it,” but “suspending or canceling the show is a wild overreaction.”
The controversy comes just two months after CBS cancelled Stephen Colbert’s late-night program. Then, as now, Democrats warned that it looked like a programming decision that risked sliding into a political purge.
