Photo: Randy Holmes/Disney/Getty Images
Nearly a week after Jimmy Kimmel Live! was taken off the air, its host opened on Tuesday night with a joke. The show began with a montage of news clips reminding the audience of Kimmel’s abrupt suspension from ABC following a comment after the death of Charlie Kirk, with several news hosts from other stations calling his comeback a “huge moment in American history” and “one of the most pivotal moments in broadcast history.” The camera then cut to Kimmel and his sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez dressed in a monkey suit and a banana suit, respectively. “Maybe we should change,” the two said to each other before the opening credits rolled.
Kimmel entered the stage in Hollywood to a standing ovation and minute-long applause for his monologue. “Anyway, as I was saying before I was interrupted,” Kimmel said to open the show. He then joked that his program was “preempting your regularly-scheduled encore episode of Celebrity Family Feud to bring you this special report — I am happy to be here tonight.”
Kimmel had been off the air for nearly a week as his show was put in the center of a culture war maelstrom following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The matter began on September 15 when Kimmel said in his monologue that the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them” and trying to “score political points from it.” On September 17, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr said on a podcast that Kimmel should be off the air and that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Nexstar, a major owner of local network stations, then pulled Kimmel’s program from dozens of markets across the U.S. hours after Carr’s comment. Before the day ended, ABC announced they were suspending Kimmel “indefinitely.”
Kimmel was emotional as he addressed the matter or Kirk’s death. “It was never my intention to make fun of a murder of a young man,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.” He said that his comments were received as “either ill-timed or unclear or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset.” He then addressed the controversy over the Trump administration’s apparent effort to silence him. “This show is not important,” he said. “What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”
From there, Kimmel got to the jokes. FCC commissioner Carr was the “most embarrassing car the Republicans have embraced since this one.” Producers then put up a picture of a cybertruck with gold “Trump” lettering. He said that Trump “might have to release the Epstein files to distract us from this now.” Kimmel added that ABC-owner Disney asked him to read a statement after the company reinstated him under pressure. He pulled out a piece of paper and read to his audience how to reactivate their Disney and Hulu accounts.
Kimmel addressed the president directly, saying that President Trump “made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he cannot take a joke.” Earlier in the night, it appeared that Trump proved his point. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that the late-night host was “yet another arm of the DNC.” He then suggested he would sue ABC again, citing his defamation case which the network settled last December. “Let’s see how we do,” Trump wrote. “Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars.”
Kimmel was obviously going to go hard against the Trump administration in his first show back — and even brought special guests to join him. He said he had Carr on the line, then the screen cut to noted Trump-hater Robert De Niro. The actor spoke briefly pretending to the be the FCC chair, then said he had to go because “a couple cases of Tylenol fell off a truck and now I got to figure out how to put autism in them,” referencing the administration’s unusual public health presser on Monday. Kimmel then highlighted some of the greatest hits from Trump’s anti-Tylenol screed:
