Jimmy Kimmel made a triumphant return to television (in most, but not all, cities) on Tuesday night, devoting his monologue to his short but shocking removal from the air. The comedian tackled the uproar head-on, directly naming Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission Chair who had instigated Kimmel’s censorship. In a later segment, he took aim at Carr in a sketch where Robert De Niro played an unnamed FCC Chair occupying Carr’s office.
In his opening remarks, Kimmel impressed upon the value of free speech, saying that he had met comedians and talk show hosts from totalitarian countries who had told him that they could “get thrown in prison for making fun of those in power.” The freedom of speech, Kimmel said, was “something I’m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen [Colbert] off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air. That’s not legal. That’s not American. That is un-American and it is so dangerous.”
“Should the government be allowed to regulate which podcasts the cell phone companies and Wi-Fi providers are allowed to let you download?”
Kimmel also took aim at the broad authority that Carr has claimed through the FCC by making an analogy to non-traditional media. “Should the government be allowed to regulate which podcasts the cell phone companies and Wi-Fi providers are allowed to let you download, to make sure they serve the public interest?” he asked rhetorically.
“10 years ago, this sounded crazy,” said Kimmel. “Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, telling an American company, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ and that ‘These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.’”
“In addition to being a direct violation of the First Amendment, it’s not a particularly intelligent threat to make in public,” Kimmel said. “Ted Cruz said he sounded like a mafioso. Although, I don’t know. If you want to hear a mob boss make a threat like that, you have to hide a microphone in a deli and park outside in a van with a tape recorder all night long. This genius said it on a podcast.”
Kimmel thanked his viewers for protesting, as well as various comedians and talk show hosts who had reached out to support him during his suspension. He also thanked right-wing commentators and politicians who he said had gone out of their way to criticize Kimmel’s censorship despite having opposing viewpoints, specifically naming Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), and others. He also emotionally praised Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, for her “selfless act of grace” in forgiving the shooter who had killed her husband.
“Maybe the silver lining from this is we found one thing we can agree on and maybe we’ll even find another one. Maybe we can get a little bit closer together. We do agree on a lot of things,” said Kimmel, before going on to cheekily list a series of politicized topics. “We agree on keeping our children safe from guns, on reproductive rights for women, social security, affordable health care, pediatric cancer research. These are all things that most Americans support.” The audience, which had responded loudly and enthusiastically throughout the monologue, did not appear to understand this joke.
Kimmel very briefly took aim at the Disney Corporation with another joke. “A lot of people have been asking me if there are conditions for my return to the air, and there is one. Disney has asked me to read the following statement, and, uh I’ve agreed to do it,” he said, before taking out a piece of paper from inside his jacket and pretending to read aloud, “‘To reactivate your Disney Plus and Hulu account, open the Disney Plus app on your smart TV or TV connected device.’”
“The president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs.”
But he then went on to thank Disney for bringing him back on the air because “unfortunately and I think unjustly, this puts them at risk. The president of the United States 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 can’t take a joke. He was somehow able to squeeze Colbert out of CBS. Then he turned his sights on me and now he’s openly rooting for NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers and the hundreds of Americans who work for their shows who don’t make millions of dollars. And I hope that if that happens or if there’s even any hint of that happening, you will be 10 times as loud as you were this week. We have to speak out against this because he’s not stopping.”
“And it’s not just comedy,” Kimmel went on to say, even as his studio audience’s applause made him mostly inaudible. “He’s gunning for our journalists, too,” he said, explaining a new Pentagon press policy in the works. “They want to pick and choose what the news is. I know that’s not as interesting as muzzling a comedian, but it’s so important to have a free press, and it is nuts that we aren’t paying more attention to it.”
After the first commercial break, the show returned with an “interview” with “Brendan Carr,” from FCC headquarters in Washington. But instead of the actual Carr, Kimmel “interviewed” Robert De Niro playing an unnamed mafioso who was now the head of the FCC, having been appointed by “Sir Trump” to make menacing phone calls to the likes of Whoopi Goldberg and more.
“Maybe you’re the wrong guy to talk to, but it seems like the FCC is using mob tactics to suppress free speech,” said Kimmel in the sketch.
“What [BLEEP] did you just say to me?” De Niro replied in character.
“I didn’t mean any offense,” Kimmel replied nervously. “You know, you can’t curse or we’ll get fined by the FCC.”
“I am the [BLEEP] FCC,” said De Niro. “I can [BLEEP] say whatever the [BLEEP] I want.” The faux FCC Chair then made a series of comical threats, pressuring Kimmel not to criticize or mock President Trump. Speech that referred to Trump’s “beautiful thick yellow hair” was free, but “if you want to do a joke like he’s so fat he needs two seats on the Epstein jet” Kimmel would have to lose “a couple fingers, maybe a tooth.”
De Niro closed the sketch saying, “Good luck with you. And I’ll be watching you, Kimmel. Maybe not on ABC. That’s up to you.”
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