David Letterman, the longtime late-night host, sharply criticized ABC’s move to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show after pressure from the Trump administration, calling the decision “a misery” and “ridiculous” during a panel he attended on Thursday.
Speaking at The Atlantic Festival on Thursday afternoon in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Letterman told Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic: “We all see where this is going, correct? It’s managed media.”
“You can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian, a criminal administration in the Oval Office,” Mr. Letterman said. “That’s just not how this works.”
Mr. Letterman joked that he had been “smart enough to cancel myself.”
ABC announced on Wednesday evening that it was pulling Mr. Kimmel’s late night show “indefinitely” after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, criticized remarks Mr. Kimmel had made on the show about the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Mr. Carr suggested that his regulatory agency might take action against ABC affiliates. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the F.C.C. ahead,” he said.
Mr. Carr joined a growing chorus of conservatives who had accused Mr. Kimmel of misrepresenting the political beliefs of Mr. Kirk’s assassin, Tyler Robinson, during his show on Monday. On the program, Mr. Kimmel had accused Mr. Trump’s supporters of “desperately trying” to paint Mr. Robinson “as anything other than one of them.” Utah officials have said that Mr. Robinson had recently appeared to shift leftward in his views.
The indefinite suspension of the show drew the ire of liberals, who have accused the network of censorship and of bowing to political pressure from the Trump administration.
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