Jimmy Kimmel broke his silence on Tuesday night in an emotional return to ABC’s airwaves, by turns defiant, joking and somber as he addressed the controversy that temporarily sidelined his late-night show and set off a national debate over free speech.
His voice breaking at times, Mr. Kimmel said he understood why his comments last week about the suspected shooter of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk seemed “ill-timed, or unclear, or maybe both.” He added, “It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.”
But Mr. Kimmel also had harsh words for President Trump and the government regulator who suggested that the Trump administration would punish ABC because of his remarks, saying that “a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American.”
“This show is not important,” Mr. Kimmel said in his opening monologue. “What’s important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”
Executives at Disney, ABC’s parent company, pulled “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air last week, shortly after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, suggested that his agency could take action against the network.
On Tuesday, Mr. Kimmel said he disagreed with Disney’s decision to pull his show. But he also credited the company, where he has worked for 22 years, for defending his right to poke fun at the powerful.
“Unfortunately, and I think unjustly, this puts them at risk,” Mr. Kimmel said. “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.”
During his monologue, which was frequently interrupted by a cheering crowd, Mr. Kimmel thanked several Republican officials, including Senators Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, who had expressed misgivings about the F.C.C. pressuring ABC. “I want to thank the people who don’t support my show and what I believe, but support my right to share those beliefs anyway,” he said.
Tearing up, he also praised Erika Kirk, Mr. Kirk’s widow, who at a public memorial on Sunday said that she forgave the person accused of murdering her husband. “It touched me deeply,” Mr. Kimmel said, his voice hoarse. “If there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that, and not this.”
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Later, in a surprise cameo, the actor Robert De Niro appeared as a mob boss who has taken over the F.C.C. Mr. De Niro starred in “Goodfellas,” the mafia film that Mr. Cruz invoked last week in criticizing Mr. Carr’s remarks.
Mr. Kimmel’s return to the airwaves on Tuesday was one of the most anticipated episodes of late-night television in years. Even President Trump weighed in before it began.
“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back,” he complained in a social media post, roughly an hour before Mr. Kimmel’s show was set to air. Mr. Trump suggested that he might sue ABC over its reinstatement of Mr. Kimmel — “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” he wrote — and cited a $16 million payment that the network made last year to settle a previous defamation lawsuit that he filed against ABC News.
Not everyone in the country was able to watch the return of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Two large station groups, Nexstar and Sinclair, pre-empted the episode from the ABC affiliates they own — and said they would continue to do so going forward. Those two station groups represent a little more than 20 percent of ABC’s national reach combined.
At one of those stations, in Nashville, a local anchor announced a one-hour news special during Mr. Kimmel’s usual time slot. “Over the next 60 minutes we’ll explore all the people and places that make this community unique,” the anchor said.
Disney owns and operates the local affiliates in some of the country’s largest markets, including in the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago metropolitan areas, all of which did air the episode. Other local television owners, including Hearst and Gray Media, also aired “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” as normal.
Mr. Kimmel’s abrupt and unlikely role as a martyr for the First Amendment was apparent outside the host’s Hollywood Boulevard studio on Tuesday in the hours before his taping began. About a dozen supporters gathered with supportive placards, including a man in head-to-toe patriotic garb brandishing a large sign that read “Liberty.”
“Today, free speech won,” said Gregg Donovan, 65, of Santa Monica, Calif., who held a sign reading “Welcome Back Jimmy.” “I’m happy for Jimmy and wanted to welcome him back. Hollywood missed him.”
The longtime ABC star was sidelined on Sept. 17, just hours after Mr. Carr criticized Mr. Kimmel. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Mr. Carr said in suggesting the F.C.C. could take action against ABC and Disney.
Mr. Kimmel had originally planned to address the imbroglio in his opening monologue on Sept. 17, but Disney’s leadership decided to pull his show “indefinitely” instead. Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, and Dana Walden, the company’s head of television, were concerned that if his planned remarks aired that night he would risk inflaming the situation even further.
The suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” quickly turned into a flashpoint about free speech in America. Liberals, and even some conservatives, said that the pressure Mr. Carr applied to ABC represented a chilling suppression of the First Amendment. Mr. Carr tried to minimize his role this week, saying that Disney had made “a business decision,” and that accusations of suppression of free speech were part of “a campaign of projection and distortion.”
On Sept. 15, Mr. Kimmel used his opening monologue to say 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.”
It took about a day for his comments to gain steam on social media but, once it did, conservatives pounced. They said Mr. Kimmel had mischaracterized the political beliefs of Tyler Robinson, the accused shooter. Mr. Carr said that his comments were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people.”
Prosecutors have said that Mr. Robinson objected to Mr. Kirk’s “hatred,” but the authorities have not said which of Mr. Kirk’s views Mr. Robinson had found hateful. Mr. Robinson’s mother said that her son had recently shifted to the political left.
Mr. Kimmel’s show usually draws a nightly audience of 1.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
Television executives are anticipating that its viewership — even without a few dozen local stations — will be significantly higher on Tuesday.
Kathy Hopkins, who was a member of the audience, said that the atmosphere inside the studio had been emotional, and that Mr. Kimmel at times fought back tears, but that he also stood his ground.
“He didn’t bend the knee and become subservient and say, ‘OK, I’m a shadow of Jimmy, now,’” Ms. Hopkins said. “There was lots of love and a lot of gravity in there. We were all just thrilled to have him back.”
Emmanuel Morgan contributed reporting from Los Angeles. Emmett Lindner contributed from New York.
John Koblin covers the television industry for The Times.
Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016.
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