Howard Stern weighed in on Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension from his ABC late-night show following a threat from Donald Trump‘s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr.
“I don’t know what their plan is, but it looks like they might be firing [him],” Stern, referring to ABC and Kimmel, said on his SiriusXM show on Monday. “And then I read sometimes that they’re not gonna fire him. I don’t know. I have spoken to Jimmy. I didn’t ask him these questions, I just asked him how he was doing personally.”
Stern added, “I just know when the government begins to interfere, when the government says, I’m not pleased with you, so we’re gonna orchestrate a way to silence you. It’s the wrong direction for our country. And I should know. I’ve been involved in something like this and immediately ABC is put in the same position and it’s unfortunate that ABC even has to be in this position. They shouldn’t have to be in this position. I feel for them too, in this. But that someone’s gotta step up and be fucking saying, ‘Hey, enough, we’re not gonna bow.’”
Stern also said that he canceled his Disney+ subscription.
“immediately it might sound stupid, but the thing I did this morning, I’m canceling my Disney+. I’m trying to say with the pocketbook that I do not support what they’re doing with Jimmy.”
Stern is the new comedian/talk figure to come to Kimmel’s defense. ABC has not said what it plans to do, other than that Kimmel’s show would be taken off the air “indefinitely.” A week ago, the late-night host had said during his monologue, “We had 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 with everything they can to score political points from it.”
That generated a furor on the right, with Carr chiming in Wednesday on Benny Johnson’s podcast. Carr said, “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Hours later, station group Nexstar said it was pulling the show from its ABC affiliates “for the foreseeable future.” Soon after, ABC announced the suspension.
Stern’s platform, SiriusXM, falls outside the FCC’s oversight. But when he was on broadcast radio, he had a long history of battles, and fines, for running afoul of the agency’s indecency rules.
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