By Dawn Chmielewski and Jonathan Allen
(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated the suspension of talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves, inflaming a debate over whether Trump and Republicans are infringing free speech as they sought to punish some critics of murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Trump, speaking during a state visit to Britain on Thursday, said Kimmel had been punished for "saying a horrible thing" about Kirk, a close political ally of the president who is credited with building support for Trump among young conservative voters.
The broadcaster ABC announced on Wednesday that it was yanking "Jimmy Kimmel Live" indefinitely. Kimmel's suspension was condemned as capitulation to unconstitutional government pressure by writers, performers, former U.S. President Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has used his office and the courts to attack unflattering speech about him that he considers to be defamatory or false.
Kimmel's suspension came after two major owners of local TV stations had said they would stop broadcasting his celebrity-filled late-night show, and the nation's top communications regulator threatened to investigate Kimmel's commentary about Kirk.
Kimmel, a comedian who frequently lampoons Trump, said during his nine-minute opening monologue on Monday that allies of Kirk were using his assassination last week to "score political points". Kirk, 31, was shot onstage at a university in Utah on September 10, where he was holding one of his frequent public debates with students over his political views in an event organized by his advocacy group, Turning Point USA.
"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 do everything they can to score political points from it," Kimmel said, using an abbreviation of Trump's slogan: Make America Great Again.
Kimmel, who tapes his show in Los Angeles, also mocked Trump's responses to Kirk's death: "This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish."
Trump, who hosted the TV show "The Apprentice" before becoming president, said that Kimmel was not talented, had bad ratings, and "said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk."
"So, you know, you can call that free speech or not," Trump said, stood alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. "He was fired for lack of talent." ABC has not said that it has fired Kimmel, who did not respond to a request for comment.
In the week since Kirk's murder, Kimmel is the most famous American to face professional blowback for making comments condemned by conservatives as disrespectful of Kirk, alongside media figures, academic workers, teachers and corporate employees.
A 22-year-old technical college student and videogame-enthusiast from Utah was charged with Kirk's murder on Tuesday.
Prominent Democrats said Trump and his Republican Party were mounting an assault on free speech rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. Republicans have said they are fighting against "hate speech" that can spiral into violence, and accuse some Kirk critics of trying to justify his murder.
Obama, who was succeeded by Trump in 2017, said media companies must not capitulate to government coercion or censorship.
"After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn't like," Obama said in a statement.
Writers' and actors' labor unions said the move amounted to an unconstitutional attack on the right to disagree.
"Silencing us impoverishes the whole world," the Writers Guild of America said in a statement.
PEN America condemned what it called "an act of government-instigated censorship against satire and comedy" in a statement by Summer Lopez, who runs the advocacy group's free expression programs.
FREE SPEECH, PUBLIC INTEREST
Kirk's death spurred an outpouring of grief among fans and some critics alike, who saw him as a staunch advocate for public debate and conservative values. Others have challenged or derided Kirk's support for right-wing politics and Christian nationalism and derogatory comments he has made about immigrants, Black people, leftists and transgender people.
Long before Kirk's murder, Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull licenses from television stations, pressured broadcasters to stop airing content he finds objectionable and tried to control what universities, which he says are overrun by Marxists, can research and teach. He has also trained his ire on print media, filing a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times.
Hours before Kimmel's suspension, Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, urged local broadcasters to stop airing the show.
ABC, owned by Walt Disney, pulled the show after Nexstar, which owns 32 of ABC's local TV affiliates, said it would stop airing the show following Kimmel's monologue. Sinclair Broadcast Group, another major owner of local TV stations, said it was suspending broadcasts of the show until Kimmel apologizes to the Kirk family.
Shares of Disney traded down nearly 1% after the market opened on Thursday, suggesting investors did not think the suspension would damage the company's financial prospects.
"This is a very significant moment, because local broadcasters are now pushing back on national programmers for the first time that I can think of in modern history," Carr, the FCC chairman, said in an interview with CNBC. He said the FCC would defend the principle that licensed broadcasters must act in the "public interest."
U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer demanded that Trump fire Carr, calling him "one of the greatest threats to free speech America has ever seen."
Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned to the U.S., complained that he had read somewhere that television networks "were 97% against me" and only gave him bad publicity.
"I would think maybe their license should be taken away," Trump said. "It will be up to Brendan Carr."
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles and Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Chequers, England, Dave Shepardson and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; writing by David Gaffen and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Alistair Bell)
