Jimmy Kimmel returned to late-night television Tuesday after a summer break, using the milestone 4,000th episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to address his ongoing dispute with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr.
“We’ve done 4,000 of these. Which is, it’s a lot of shows,” Kimmel told viewers. “According to the White House, it’s too many shows.”
Kimmel then turned his attention directly to Carr, referencing the show’s brief suspension last year and the regulatory pressure that followed.
“There are those who said we would never last this long. There are even those who used the regulatory might of the FCC to unconstitutionally try to make sure we didn’t last this long. But we did it the hard way, Brendan. And we are still here,” Kimmel said.
The comment appeared to be a callback to remarks Carr made in September 2025, when he warned ABC and its parent company Disney that the FCC could take action over statements Kimmel made about the man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025.
At the time, Carr accused Kimmel of playing into a false narrative that Kirk’s suspected killer had conservative ties. “In some quarters, there’s a very concerted effort to try to lie to the American people about the nature … of one of the most significant newsworthy public interest acts that we’ve seen in a long time,” Carr said, adding that Kimmel appeared to be pushing the idea that the shooter was “somehow a MAGA or a Republican-motivated person.”
Carr also suggested consequences could follow if Disney and ABC did not respond. “Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” he said.
Kimmel was briefly pulled off the air last year following his remarks about the suspect, Tyler Robinson. In September 2025, Kimmel had 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.”
Former Disney CEO Bob Iger later defended the network’s decision to suspend the show, saying the company viewed the comments as “in bad taste.” In an interview with the Financial Times published in June, Iger said the move was not made to appease the Trump administration but stemmed from the network’s own objections to what Kimmel had said. “That was not the case,” Iger said. “We thought it was in bad taste.” Iger added that Kimmel had been asked to apologize: “We just wanted him to acknowledge that it was an ill-timed and probably inappropriate comment.”
The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kimmel’s latest remarks. White House spokesman Davis Ingle offered a sharply worded statement, calling Kimmel “a no-talent loser who has be-clowned himself with tanking ratings and by spewing disgusting lies to his dwindling audience.”
Kimmel also used Tuesday’s episode to criticize President Trump, joking that the two of them shared something in common over the summer. “You know, Donald Trump and I have one thing in common: We both accomplished nothing all summer long,” he said, pointing to inflation, the president’s approval ratings and the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz. “At this point, Blockbuster Video has a better chance of reopening than the Strait of Hormuz,” Kimmel said.
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