Jake Tapper offered his take Wednesday on why ABC so suddenly turned against Jimmy Kimmel.
Kimmel’s show was pulled by ABC indefinitely after the late-night host angered MAGAworld in his Tuesday monologue over the assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
In response to the news, Tapper urged viewers to “follow the money” in a video posted on X, arguing that the financial motivations of Nexstar, a media company which runs ABC-affiliated stations across the United States, are the key to understanding the situation.
“In August, Nexstar, the largest owner of TV stations in the country, announced that they wanted to purchase their rival, Tegna, for more than $6 billion,” Tapper said.
Tapper explained how this purchase would “violate” current FCC rules. However, the Trump-appointed FCC chair Brendan Carr announced in May that he “would be willing to entertain” changing those rules.
Tapper then showed a clip of Carr early on Wednesday where he criticized Kimmel’s comments and called on local TV stations to, as Tapper put it, “reject the Jimmy Kimmel show.”
BREAKING: The FCC Chairman is threatening immediate action against Jimmy Kimmel, ABC, and Disney for deliberately misleading the public by claiming Charlie Kirk’s assassin was a MAGA Conservative.Chairman Brendan Carr calls Kimmel’s malicious lies are “truly sick” and says they… pic.twitter.com/mGhtGMPReI
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 17, 2025
Tapper noted that Nexstar’s preempting of Jimmy Kimmel Live! was announced “within hours” of the public call to action from Carr, a man who’ll decide whether or not Nexstar’s merger with Tegna will be approved.
“So while there are no doubt people who are legitimately offended by what Kimmel said and no doubt tensions are high and feelings are fraught, there is also a lot of money to be made,” Tapper said.
He concluded, “And there are also a lot of people who want to endear themselves to the FCC commissioner and President Trump.”
Jake Tapper is a long-time friend of Jimmy Kimmel off-screen, and has appeared on Kimmel’s show for countless interviews over the year.
In addition to defending Kimmel, Tapper in July condemned CBS’s cancelation of late-night host Stephen Colbert.
Tapper speculated in his July 18 show that Colbert was only fired so that CBS’s parent company Paramount could endear itself to President Trump.
“Paramount’s Sherry Redstone waits for the Trump administration’s blessing for a lucrative merger with a company called Skydance,” Tapper explained, “A merger previously hung up by a substantively very weak lawsuit from Trump against CBS.”
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