The lights came up Tuesday night on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” and there he was: Jimmy Kimmel, returning to his late-night desk after nearly a week of being off the air.
The longtime ABC star had been sidelined after remarks he made on Sept. 15 about the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Mr. Kimmel’s defiant, joke-filled opening monologue addressing the controversy earned immediate praise from some of his supporters.
“What a brilliant monologue from Jimmy Kimmel,” the actor and comedian Ben Stiller wrote on social media.
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a Democrat and frequent Trump critic, said: “Welcome back Jimmy Kimmel!”
Some commentators on the right accused Mr. Kimmel of faking his getting choked up as he discussed Mr. Kirk’s death, while others did not believe he was sufficiently apologetic.
Mr. Kimmel’s remarks on Mr. Kirk sparked a storm of criticism and a pointed warning from Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The result was a network suddenly caught between its late-night host and Washington power, forced to balance free speech with corporate caution.
Disney executives, wary of inflaming tensions, decided to suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” before the host could deliver his planned rebuttal on Sept. 17. The pause, indefinite at the time, quickly turned into a cultural flashpoint: Was this a prudent business move? Or was it suppression of speech?
Shortly before the show aired, President Trump, in a post on Truth Social, criticized ABC for putting Mr. Kimmel back on the air and threatened legal action against the network.
“Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE,” he wrote.
At the core of the uproar were Mr. Kimmel’s comments suggesting that “the MAGA gang” was scrambling to reframe the motives of Mr. Kirk’s assassin. Conservatives pushed back, saying the comedian had distorted facts about the accused. Prosecutors, for their part, have said only that the gunman objected to Mr. Kirk’s “hatred,” without specifying which statements he found hateful. His mother said he had recently moved to the political left.
Meanwhile, anticipation built. On a normal night, Mr. Kimmel draws about 1.6 million viewers. But television executives expected far more on Tuesday, even with affiliates owned by Nexstar and Sinclair, which together account for about a fifth of ABC’s national reach, deciding to pre-empt the program.
Mark Walker is an investigative reporter for The Times focused on transportation. He is based in Washington.
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