President Donald Trump is hinting that he plans to wreak even more havoc at TV networks after Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was suspended “indefinitely.”
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that “97 percent” of the networks are against him and that they may need to have their license stripped.
“They’re getting a license,” Trump said. “I think maybe their license should be taken away.”
He continued: “When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do—if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years, or something—when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
Trump, 79, suggested he will cancel licenses for individual stations. Networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox are not licensed directly, but they each affiliate with local stations that do hold Federal Communications Commission licenses.
Kimmel was suspended on Wednesday after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, told a conservative YouTuber that ABC would face retribution if it did not punish Kimmel over the remarks he made about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “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.”
Hours later, Jimmy Kimmel Live! was pulled off the air for the foreseeable future.
Trump praised Carr on Thursday as he flew home from a two-day trip to the United Kingdom.
“I think Brendan Carr is doing a great job,” he said.
The president celebrated Kimmel’s suspension on Thursday and encouraged NBC News to part ways with their late-night hosts, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon.
“Their ratings are also horrible,” he said. “Do it NBC!!!”
Kimmel, 57, has not yet addressed his suspension. Critics of ABC have said that his remarks about Kirk—who was fatally shot in the neck last week—did not cross the line. Rolling Stone reported that some executives at the network felt similarly, but still decided to punish the late-night host over fears of retribution from the White House.
The segment that landed Kimmel in hot water began with him speculating about the political leanings of Kirk’s alleged gunman, Tyler Robinson.
“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 doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.”
The show then cut to a clip of Trump being asked how he was “holding up” after Kirk’s murder, to which the president responded: “I think very good, and by the way, right there where you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House… It’s going to be a beauty.”
Kimmel then returned on camera and said, “Yes, he’s at the fourth stage of grief, construction. Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody he called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
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