Photo: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

There are many, many important questions to ask about ABC’s indefinite “suspension” of its late-night show that’s hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, which is being celebrated in MAGA-land as an important landmark on the road to a purged and intimidated entertainment industry. It draws attention to the FCC as an instrument for state-sponsored censorship and the dubious ethics of media moguls eager to curry favor with the Trump administration and avoid trouble. And it challenges progressives and free-speech advocates to find more effective ways to fight back than hand-wringing.

But before we go too far down the road toward this incident’s future implications, it’s important to stop and note exactly what Kimmel was silenced for saying. Here were his comments from Monday evening:

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. In between the finger-pointing, there was, uh, grieving on Friday − the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.

Here is the @JimmyKimmel clip on Charlie Kirk that provoked the ire of the Trump administration: pic.twitter.com/b3qAW0ZDUm

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) September 18, 2025

At this point, Kimmel showed a clip of Trump being asked about his personal reaction to the loss of Kirk, wherein the president immediately shifted to boast about the progress of his White House ballroom addition. The comic continued:

Yes, he’s at the fourth stage of grief: construction. Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend; this is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK? And it didn’t just happen once.

By way of context, Kimmel had said this about the assassination itself during an earlier show:

Instead of the angry finger-pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.

Some conservatives, and perhaps even Carr (it’s hard to say about him, since his screed about Kimmel on a far-right podcast that triggered this crisis was quite inarticulate), assumed Kimmel was asserting the killer was in fact part of the “MAGA gang.” That’s an arguable but uncharitable interpretation of his words, which you’d think he would have been given the opportunity to clarify.

But to be clear, Jimmy Kimmel did not disrespect Charlie Kirk, or in any way celebrate his murder or encourage the idea that he somehow deserved death. He mocked the president, which is a time-honored tradition of late-night TV and, more important, deplored the MAGA effort to “score political points” by blaming “the left” for an individual’s crime. That may have been what got Kimmel sacked: He challenged the narrative established by Trump himself the night of the assassination holding his political opponents broadly responsible for what happened in Orem, Utah.

It’s a bit ironic that the attribution of ideological motives for the assassination is mostly based on public comments by Utah governor Spencer Cox, who has also said very emphatically:

We need moral clarity right now. I hear all the time that words are violence. Words are not violence. Violence is violence. There is one person responsible for what happened here, and that person is now in custody.

Another Republican voice disputing Trumpworld’s collective responsibility effort is one of the most partisan men on the planet, former presidential adviser Karl Rove, writing in The Wall Street Journal:

[T]here has been a disturbing and growing undercurrent in our national conversation and on the internet, a pronounced emphasis on “they” and “them.” Charlie would be alive but for “them.” “They” killed him. “They” are responsible for his death. “They” must be made to pay.

No. Charlie Kirk wasn’t killed by “them.” “They” didn’t pull the trigger. One person did, apparently a young man driven by impulse and a terrible hate. If there were a “they” involved, law enforcement would find “them” and the justice system would hold “them” accountable. But “he” and “him” are the correct pronouns for this horrendous act….

Using Charlie’s murder to justify retaliation against political rivals is wrong and dangerous. It will further divide and embitter our country. No good thing will come of it.

Will the president’s friends call for the silencing of Karl Rove and Spencer Cox as well as Jimmy Kimmel? Probably not, because they are on the right “team.” But the objection to collective responsibility remains salient even as the White House mulls different punishments for those on the wrong “team.” This needs to stop.

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