Jimmy Fallon and America’s late-night hosts rally around Jimmy Kimmel after suspension

The American late-night hosts have rallied behind Jimmy Kimmel after his suspension following his comments about Charlie Kirk’s death.

Broadcaster ABC announced Jimmy Kimmel Live! had been pulled ‘indefinitely’ following comments made by the presenter about the assassination of right-wing influencer Kirk.

Since then, the likes of Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon and former host David Letterman have all shared words of support for Kimmel.

In his opening monologue, Fallon joked he had woken up to messages from his dad saying, ‘Sorry they cancelled your show’.

He added: ‘To be honest with you all, I don’t know what is going on. And no one does. But I do know Jimmy Kimmel and he is a decent, funny and loving guy, and I hope he comes back.’

Meanwhile, fellow late-night host Seth Meyers managed to find the humour in his own fears of cancellation, kicking off his show by saying: ‘[Trump’s] administration is pursuing a crackdown on free speech. Completely unrelated, I just want to say before we get started here that I’ve always admired and respected Mr Trump.’

To laughter from the audience, Meyers continued: ‘I’ve always believed he was – no, no, no – a visionary, an innovator, a great president, an even better golfer. And if you’ve ever seen me say anything negative about him, that’s just AI.’

On Jon Stewart’s show, he mockingly referred to himself as a ‘patriotically obedient host’, having stepped in to present ‘the all-new, government-approved Daily Show’ on a weekday he doesn’t normally do so.

Meanwhile, earlier in the day, Letterman had spoken to Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic Festival in New York and called the suspension a ‘misery’ and part of a ‘world of someone who’s an authoritarian, maybe a dictatorship’, reports the Daily Mail.

‘It’s ridiculous. You can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office, that’s just not how this works,’ he said on Thursday.

Giving an update on Kimmel, Letterman – who previously hosted Late Night – said he was ‘sitting up in bed taking nourishment. He’s going to be fine’.

Beating up on these people, rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately, in the name of comedy, not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency, let alone the dreaded FCC,’ he said, in reference to the independent agency of the US government that regulates the media.

Conservative activist Kirk was fatally shot last week while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem.

The 31-year-old had been credited with energising the Republican youth movement and helping Donald Trump win the 2024 election, with the accused shooter Tyler Robinson, 22, making his first court appearance this week.

On Monday’s episode of the show – which Kimmel has hosted since 2003 – Kimmel said the following about Kirk’s alleged killer: ‘We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it

Letterman observed that his show lived through six Presidents, and despite them ripping into those governments ‘mercilessly’ he was never pulled from air.

According to Trump, Kimmel was actually suspended because he is ‘not a talented individual.’

He said in Thursday afternoon’s press conference with Prime Minister Keir Starmer: ‘Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk.’

He continued: ‘And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person and he had bad ratings and they should have fired him a long time ago, so you can call that free speech or not, he was fired for lack of talent.’

Taking to social media, Trump also said: ‘Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible.

‘That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC.’

Contrary to Trump’s claim, the news of the show being pulled off the air came after Nexstar Media, one of the biggest owners of TV stations in the United States, said it would not broadcast the show after Kimmel’s comments about Kirk.

Meanwhile, Hollywood stars and famous faces have rushed to support Kimmel.