Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension was completely ignored on Thursday’s episode of The View, the morning after ABC announced that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air indefinitely.
The panel’s silence on the issue drew significant blowback on social media, where viewers indicated they were baffled that the day’s biggest political story—about a figure whose show airs on the same network as theirs—was left untouched.
Kimmel was suspended after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, threatened retribution against ABC during an interview with conservative YouTuber Benny Johnson. He said action would be taken if ABC did not punish Kimmel over the remarks he made about the assassination of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said Wednesday. “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.”
The View, known for not holding back from discussing the day’s hot-button political news, is often critical of President Donald Trump and his administration’s attacks on the media. However, sources told the Daily Beast in May that Disney and ABC News ordered the hosts—Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin—to tone down their anti-Trump rhetoric.
MAGA briefly celebrated over the summer when an unfounded rumor spread that The View had been abruptly canceled after Behar peeved Trump by asserting on air that he was jealous of former President Barack Obama. That scuffle with the White House, which included Trump calling Behar an “irrelevant loser,” led Carr to warn on Fox News that there would be “consequences” for the show—though he stopped short of saying what those might be.
Instead of discussing the administration’s muzzling of Kimmel, the show opened Thursday by discussing FBI Director Kash Patel’s bizarre appearance on Capitol Hill as its “Hot Topic.” It then pivoted to topics like breakups, relationships, Jeffrey Epstein, and sit-downs with NFL legend Terry Bradshaw and actor Eugene Levy. Kimmel went unmentioned for the full hour.
“I bet the ladies of The View was given orders not to discuss Jimmy Kimmel today,” speculated one viewer on X.
Another wrote, “The fact that they are not opening the show with talking about @ABC cancelling Jimmy Kimmel by caving to fascism is very telling.”
It is unclear if The View’s decision not to discuss Kimmel was an order from up top or not.
Kimmel’s suspension has been widely criticized as being an overreaction by ABC, which has been accused of kowtowing to the demands of the Trump administration in fear of retaliation.
The comments in question, made by Kimmel Monday night, did not “explicitly” label Kirk’s assassin a MAGA Republican, despite what Carr and others have said publicly.
“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,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was 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.”
The show then cut to a clip of Trump being asked how he was “holding up” after Kirk’s murder, to which the president responded: “I think very good, and by the way, right there where you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House... It’s going to be a beauty.”
Kimmel then returned on camera and said, “Yes, he’s at the fourth stage of grief, construction. Demolition, construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody he called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
Sources told Rolling Stone that ABC executives were “p---ing themselves” after the segment received blowback from some of the top names in MAGA. The report stated that multiple executives believed Kimmel “had not actually said anything over the line.” Still, the network pulled Kimmel from the air due to fears that the FCC would revoke its broadcasting license.
