Howard Stern is taking a victory lap.
The shock jock is lauding himself for Disney’s dramatic decision Monday to bring back Jimmy Kimmel Live! after ABC “indefinitely” suspended the show over comments Kimmel made about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Stern furiously told his listeners on Monday he was canceling his subscription to network parent company Disney+ in protest.
“[ABC] didn’t want to fire him, they’re being pressured by the United States government,” Stern said on his SiriusXM show, calling it a violation of free speech.
Just hours later, the company announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would return to its regular time slot Tuesday—before Stern even had time to cancel his subscription, he said.
The shock jock opened his Tuesday show by jokingly declaring he “solved another problem.”
Turning to co-host Robin Quivers, he quipped: “What should we fix today, Robin? Global warming? I’m on a roll.”
Stern, a longtime friend of Jimmy Kimmel’s, said he spoke to the comedian on Monday but doesn’t know what he has in the works for his comeback show on Tuesday night.
“I just told him that I was very happy that this thing was resolved,” Stern said. He applauded Disney’s decision to reinstate the show as “doing the right thing.”
The decision to bring Kimmel back on air came amid a growing firestorm over free speech and the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive pressure campaign against Kimmel and ABC.
Hours before Kimmel’s suspension, Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, accused the host of intentionally playing into a “narrative” that Tyler Robinson, Kirk’s alleged assassin, was a “MAGA or Republican-motivated person.” He then openly threatened action against the broadcaster.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Later last week, Carr went on to gleefully suggest investigating The View, another long-term Trump target.
But Kimmel’s comments, which came during last Monday night’s monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, did not feature Kimmel “explicitly” characterizing Robinson as MAGA or Republican.
Kimmel actually said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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.”
Stern, for his part, has long been at odds with the FCC. The shock jock was fined and accused of violating the agency’s decency rules multiple times before moving to SiriusXM, which falls outside the commission’s jurisdiction.
The post Howard Stern Takes Full Credit for Jimmy Kimmel’s Return appeared first on The Daily Beast.
