trump Tried to Silence Kimmel—America Roared Back

Inside the Outrage-Fueled Victory That Proved Free Speech Still Matters

Free Speech is Everything, and Jimmy Kimmel is BACK

After being alarmed as I watched institution after institution bend and break relatively easily to the authoritarian whims of trump’s toddler tyrant, I was thrilled to see Disney finally reverse a cowardly decision to suspend Kimmel’s show in an attempt to stay in Dictator trump’s good graces.

Kimmel’s highly anticipated, triumphant return to late-night last night followed a firestorm of criticism from both left and right sides of the political spectrum, after FCC Chair Brendan Carr did his mafioso impression of a free speech censor: “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

It turns out that Jimmy ended up doing it the easy way, because universal outrage forced Disney’s hand to return him to late-night, after a badly misinterpreted joke about MAGA trying to assign blame for Charlie Kirk’s killer gave Carr the justification he thought he needed to can Kimmel.

A surprising coalition of free speech defenders stepped up and let their voices be heard. The rank-and-file of The Resistance led the way, of course, with a viral boycott of Disney, Hulu, ESPN, and other Disney products that spread like wildfire. This likely did the most significant damage.

There were also 400 celebrities who signed a letter organized by the ACLU, including Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, and Jennifer Aniston, speaking out against “government threats to our freedom of speech.” But the most surprising were members of the right—everyone from Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens to Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz (!)—who criticized the government censorship of Kimmel.

His monologue was predictably emotional, as this wasn’t his first controversy, nor was it his first time offering a heartfelt mea culpa to his audience. Despite the harsh and undeserved criticism of Kimmel’s talent (or lack thereof) from trump, Kimmel wears his heart on his sleeve. His humor is sharp and biting, especially when he tears into trump, but he isn’t afraid to show his vulnerability.

Kimmel warmly thanked all the people who stepped up to support him, and his voice cracked with emotion when he said, “It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man... nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what was obviously a deeply disturbed individual.”

By now, of course, the unforgiving faux-rage cycle of right-wing media madness will find some fault with Kimmel’s monologue, whether they think he wasn’t contrite enough or interpret his tone as unserious. They are truly exhausting.

UPDATE: I started writing this late Tuesday night, with Jimmy’s monologue in mind, so we hadn’t yet heard feedback from the right-wing. Sure enough, my prediction was correct: Turning Point USA, Kirk’s propaganda organization, felt he didn’t go far enough and thought he should have apologized more, as apparently his sincere and tearful mea culpa was insufficient.

If you look at the clip in question, the one that caused his temporary ouster at ABC, it was innocuous at best: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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.”

That. Was. It.

If you search Twitter for “Jimmy Kimmel monologue,” you’ll find dozens of posts asking, “That was it? What was so offensive?” Indeed, as far as offensive jokes go, Kimmel’s wouldn’t have even made the top 100. In fact, many of trump’s Truth Social posts are way more offensive... and the First Amendment gives him the right to be that offensive, ironically.

Regardless of what Kimmel said, he didn’t deserve to have the government weigh in and apply pressure to have him removed, likely because trump-le-thinks-kin’s goal is to remove all those pesky comedians who are so good at highlighting how ridiculous he is. In fact, he’s already indicated in writing that Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon are next. But to do that would go against the core American principle, the one that truly makes us great as a nation:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That’s all trump is, really—a walking, talking diaper full of grievances about how he’s mistreated, and he thinks that gives him the right to silence his critics. “When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit trump…” he whined to reporters. “They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”

But that’s where he’s wrong, as he is about a great many things. They are allowed to do that, and a President should know that. In fact, it’s been a decades-long tradition for late-night comedians and comedy shows to crack wise about the goof-ups of the President. Soldiers died to defend that right.

Many of us take for granted how awesome it is to be able to say “Fuck trump” or wear T-shirts saying it, or even those dumb T-shirts that said “Let’s Go Brandon,” without having to worry about masked men rolling up in unmarked vans and taking you to places unknown because of your expression (that is actually happening to other people in this increasingly fascist nation, but that’s another story).

You couldn’t get away with cursing the leader of North Korea, Russia, or a bunch of other places on Earth that don’t have it as good as we do.

If we lost that right—and it is fathomable in the backdrop of an overly sensitive, fragile-ego dictator being unchecked by Congress, the Supreme Court, and even the “titans of industry,” the billion-dollar corporations we swore weren’t afraid of anyone because they had such long money.

I was truly disappointed to see how easily they folded. We sometimes talk about how tough it would be to sue a major corporation because they have money to keep you tied up in court for years. It would behoove them to remember that the money we pay them for their products, content, and services is what gives them that long legal money that they should be using to help defend our rights.

And if they have difficulty remembering, all it would take is a highly incensed and motivated populace to remind them by exercising their rights as consumers to cancel subscriptions in droves and share their small but mighty acts of defiance with family and friends. As we learned with this episode, boycotts work. It only took about three days of uproar and cancellations to move the needle.

And there it is, folks—the secret sauce to pulling America out of this authoritarian ditch: good old-fashioned angry defiance and protest. Relentless. Determined. Unyielding.

Boycotts. Phone calls. Protest marches. Calls to our members of Congress. Every act of civil disobedience that does not involve violence is at our disposal, and we must make use of it because trump and his acolytes are not shy about enacting Project 2025 out in the open and stealing our freedoms.

This win is only one small battle victory in the overall fight to push back and preserve our rights, and we can’t stop fighting now.

This is not a drill: Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are canaries in this unclean coal mine we’re in, and while we were able to resuscitate Kimmel through sheer force of will, we have to keep the pressure up... because I plan to keep saying “fuck trump” until he’s out of office, and I don’t want to have to say it from inside a prison cell.

Writing about battles like Jimmy Kimmel’s comeback and the broader fight for free speech takes time and passion. If you value this kind of fearless commentary, a paid subscription can help ensure I keep producing content that cuts through the noise. Your support fuels more stories like this one, amplifying our collective voice against authoritarianism.

Do you believe that the right to free speech is unlimited? Should there be limitations on it, and is there any instance where the government would be justified in curbing or even censoring it? If so, what or who would that be?