Howard Stern is so furious about his longtime friend Jimmy Kimmel being taken off the air by ABC he’s canceling his subscription to network parent company Disney+ in protest.
“You can’t support this kind of a move,” the shock jock told his listeners Monday. “I don’t care whether you like Jimmy [Kimmel] or not. It’s about freedom of speech. If ABC wanted to fire Jimmy because they didn’t like him, or he had low ratings… They didn’t want to fire him, they’re being pressured by the United States government.”
“We can’t have that,” he added. “Not if we’re going to have a democracy.”
ABC made the shock decision to cancel Kimmel on Wednesday after the veteran late-night comic accused “the MAGA gang” of “desperately trying to characterize” Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating far right activist Charlie Kirk the week before, as “anything other than one of them.”
Kimmel’s comments came amid intense public speculation about Robinson’s possible motives for the shooting, with right-wing voices insisting he ascribes to a “violent transgender ideology” and left-wing commentators pointing out he comes from a MAGA-voting family.
Stern, a close enough friend of Kimmel’s to have described him as “almost family” in the past, said Monday that he, along with co-host Robin Quivers, would be canceling his subscription to Disney+ as an act of protest against ABC’s parent company.
He’s not alone in slamming the move, which has drawn condemnation not only from Kimmel’s fellow late-night show hosts Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Bill Maher, but from across the political divide and even from of MAGA’s otherwise most die-hard supporters.
Kimmel’s suspension came after Federal Communications Commission chief Brendan Carr reportedly threatened to take action against ABC for supposedly allowing Kimmel to mislead viewers about Robinson’s political leanings.
“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said,” Sen. Ted Cruz said over the weekend on his podcast, Verdict With Ted Cruz. “I am thrilled that he was fired. But let me tell you, if the government gets in the business of saying, ‘we don’t like what you, the media, have said, we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives.”
Stern also called out Trump’s odd comments shortly after his friend Kirk’s murder. Asked by a reporter how he was “holding up,” the president replied, “I think very good,” before launching into a spiel about how the planned White House ballroom was “going to be a beauty” and an “absolutely magnificent structure.”
“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend,” Kimmel added of President Trump’s reaction to Kirk’s killing. “This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK?”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Disney+ and ABC for comment on this story.
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