Legendary late-night host David Letterman has weighed in on the events that led ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel.
“This is misery,” Letterman said when asked about Kimmel’s suspension, speaking at The Atlantic Festival 2025 Thursday in New York. “I feel bad about this,” he continued. “We see where this is all going, correct? It’s managed media. And it’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. And you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.”
“In the world of somebody who is an authoritarian, maybe a dictatorship, sooner or later, everyone is going to be touched,” said Letterman.
Letterman also said, “The institution of the president of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show.” Kimmel’s removal from late-night TV, he said, “was predicted by our president right after Stephen Colbert got walked off, so you’re telling me this isn’t premeditated at some level?”
Letterman, who spent more than three decades as a late-night TV host, said Kimmel had texted him Thursday morning. “He’s up in bed, taking nourishment. He’s going to be fine,” Letterman said, prompting laughter from the audience.
On Wednesday, ABC suspended Kimmel’s late-night show “indefinitely.” That came after FCC chairman Brendan Carr just hours earlier threatened ABC and its affiliates if they didn’t “take action” on Kimmel over what he perceived as objectionable comments about Charlie Kirk’s killer. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on a conservative podcast. “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.” Shortly thereafter, two big TV station groups that operate ABC affiliates — Nexstar Media and Sinclair, both of which are subject to FCC oversight — said they would not air “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for the foreseeable future. ABC then announced Kimmel’s suspension.
Regarding Carr’s comment that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Letterman said, “Who is hiring these goons — Mario Puzo?”, referring to the author of “The Godfather.” Letterman said when he was on TV, he never got pressure from a presidential administration, the FCC or any other government agency about his on-air commentary.
“Beating up on [past U.S. presidents], rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately, in the name of comedy, not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency, let alone the dreaded FCC,” Letterman said.
Others who have criticized Kimmel’s suspension include Barack Obama, Wanda Sykes, Ben Stiller, Jean Smart and more, while conservative figures like President Donald Trump have celebrated the move.
Letterman was interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, who called him the “godfather” of late night. Letterman’s late-night TV career started in 1982 with the debut of NBC’s “Late Night” and continued with CBS’s “The Late Show” from 1993-2015. Since then, he has hosted a talk series for Netflix, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.”
“Ten years ago, I was smart enough to cancel myself,” Letterman quipped.
Goldberg posited that today, despite Trump’s attacks on the press, “we still have a free media,” to which Letterman responded, “Do we?”
In July, after CBS announced that it was canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Letterman slammed the network’s action as “pure cowardice.” “They did not do the correct thing. They did not handle Stephen Colbert — the face of that network — in the way he deserves to have been handled,” Letterman said in a video shared to YouTube. He also expressed skepticism about CBS’s stated reason for axing the show was “purely” a financial decision.
At The Atlantic Festival, Letterman said about Colbert’s cancellation, “That was rude, that was inexcusable. The man deserves a great deal of credit… and to be manipulated like that because the Ellison family didn’t want to trouble Donald Trump with this move, so they got rid of him — not only got rid of him, got rid of the whole franchise. You’re not going to have to worry about anything, Larry, it’s all gone, it’s fine, goodnight.” (Skydance Media, whose $8 billion deal for Paramount Global largely backed by Larry Ellison closed last month, said its executives were not involved in the “Late Show” cancelation.)
As of this writing, the only comment from Disney or ABC on the Kimmel situation was an ABC spokesperson’s statement Wednesday: “’Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ will be pre-empted indefinitely.” Kimmel has not commented.
Pictured above: Jimmy Kimmel and David Letterman at a Netflix event May 23, 2019, in L.A.