In a matter of days, Jimmy Kimmel has emerged as a singular adversary of the American right, after anger over his comment that the “MAGA gang” was looking to “score political points” from the fatal shooting of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk led ABC to pull his late-night show indefinitely.
The network’s decision has led to polarized reactions: glee from Kimmel’s critics and outcry over censorship concerns from his supporters. It is a remarkable chapter for a comedian whose early career mocked social progressivism and traded in the crude humor that resembles much of the so-called manosphere that has emerged in podcasts and streaming.
A performer on national TV for more than two decades, Kimmel has evolved from a satirist who delighted in political incorrectness to a dependable M.C. palatable enough to host the Oscars and the Emmys. On “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” he has used the late-night forum to regularly skewer the sitting administration and weigh in on the culture wars that now find him at their center.
Here are key moments from Kimmel’s TV career so far.
1999-2003
‘The Man Show’
After co-hosting a Comedy Central game show, Kimmel rose to fame on the sketch comedy series “The Man Show,” a raunchy satire of machismo that often seemed to be only half-joking. The show’s first episode opened with an elaborate metaphor that served as its mission statement. Alongside the co-host Adam Carolla, Kimmel called the program “a dam to stop the river of estrogen that is drowning us in political correctness.” Kimmel hosted the show until 2003, when Joe Rogan, the comedian turned era-defining podcaster, became one of the hosts to take his place for its final two seasons. In 2020, Kimmel apologized for wearing blackface on the show to portray celebrities that included Karl Malone and Oprah Winfrey.
2003
Welcome to Late Night
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” debuted on Jan. 26, 2003 — scheduled after the Super Bowl to give the newbie an opening viewership bump. In an interview with Howard Stern ahead of his debut, Kimmel acknowledged the pressure of launching a challenger to the late-night shows of David Letterman and Jay Leno: “I think I have to do well fairly quickly,” he said. He opened with nods to the 18-to-34-year-old men ABC was chasing with his selection. After gloating about his winning bets on the game, he introduced a guest co-host, Snoop Dogg, as “the reason there are 10 network censors here with their fingers sweating nervously on the five-second delay button.”
2005-2017
‘Live!’ Comes Into Its Own
Kimmel developed a number of long-running bits, the hallmark of any good late-night show. In the segment known as “Mean Tweets,” celebrities read aloud social media posts from their haters. In “Lie Witness News,” Kimmel’s staff interviews people about fabricated events (like President Trump’s appointment of a “Die Hard” character to the cabinet). Perhaps Kimmel’s most famous bit is a playful feud with Matt Damon, which culminated with Sarah Silverman, Kimmel’s girlfriend at the time, weighing in with an Emmy-winning song.
2017
Politics Becomes Personal
More than a decade into his show, Kimmel began wading deeper into political debates, sometimes in starkly personal terms. In 2017, Kimmel’s newborn son, Billy, underwent emergency open-heart surgery, and the host went on air to urge against any health care reform that would deny coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. In an interview with The Times that year, Kimmel said ABC had never stepped in to tell him what he could and couldn’t say about politics. “They had more concerns about my beard,” he joked.
In 2018, Kimmel had a public dispute with Sean Hannity, in which the Fox News host called him a “despicable disgrace” for making fun of Melania Trump’s Slovenian accent. Kimmel later apologized, saying in a statement that “the level of vitriol from all sides (mine and me included) does nothing good for anyone and, in fact, is harmful to our country.” In 2021, a feud erupted between him and Aaron Rodgers, the N.F.L. star, over the player’s Covid-19 vaccination status; it spiraled over a period of years.
2017, 2018, 2023, 2024
Dependable Oscars Host
Kimmel eventually ascended to the role of inoffensive awards show host. He had a couple of years of practice at the Emmys before he was asked to host the Academy Awards in 2017. “This is my first time here,” he said in his opening monologue, “and the way you people go through hosts, it’s probably my last time here.” He was wrong — he hosted three more times, delivering plenty of flattery and barbs to the stars assembled.
2024
Lamenting Trump’s Second Term
When Trump won his second term, Kimmel joked that he was certain he was on the president’s “list of enemies,” delivering an emotional speech in which he left no ambiguity about his political position. “It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go, for health care, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech,” he said.
2025
A Sudden Suspension
In Kimmel’s monologue on Monday night, the host jabbed at the right’s response to the assassination of Kirk, saying that the “MAGA gang” was “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.” Conservative activists — and the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr — assailed his comments, accusing Kimmel of misrepresenting the suspect’s political views. Before Kimmel had a chance to respond on his Wednesday telecast, his show was suspended.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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