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This week, ABC abruptly suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s show indefinitely.
Ostensibly, this craven move was due to his statements in the aftermath of far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk’s death.
Few seem to take more delight at this development than disgraced comedian Roseanne Barr.
ABC fired her back in 2018. Some are equating the Disney-owned network’s choices in both instances.
The Jimmy Kimmel firing is setting off alarm bells
As we noted when CBS canceled Stephen Colbert’s show, one of the key indicators of a free society is whether you can make fun of a country’s leader without consequence.
Many believe that Jimmy Kimmel’s years of poking fun at Donald Trump — for his embarrassing moments, for his many crimes, and for his scandals — is the true motive behind the silencing of his show.
If you watch Kimmel’s comments in full, it’s difficult to believe that his statements about Kirk are the problem.
TV station operators like Nextar Media Group and the infamous Sinclair Broadcast Group were unsurprisingly quick to push for reprisal against Kimmel.
Most alarmingly, Donald Trump’s hand-picked head of the FCC mused openly about revoking ABC’s broadcasting license over the imagined offense over Kimmel’s words.
From what we can tell, Kimmel ignited this firestorm by acknowledging:
“The Maga gang are 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.”
How does this compare to ABC firing Roseanne Barr?
In May 2018, Roseanne Barr tweeted: “Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes had a baby = VJ.”
The “VJ” referred to Valerie Jarrett, who had been a senior advisor to President Obama. (Just a reminder, for full context, that Donald Trump occupied the White House at this time)
Barr insisted that she had not intended her tweet to be racist, but merely political.
She also very memorably blamed Ambien, inviting pushback from everyone from pharmaceutical companies to the general public. ABC fired her and replaced the Roseanne revival with The Connors, featuring most of the original cast.
“Yeah imagine an administration putting pressure on a television channel to fire a comedian they didn’t like,” Roseanne Barr tweeted on Wednesday, September 17. (Again, Trump was in office in 2018)
We have to acknowledge that Barr has a history of posting (or otherwise sharing) unsubstantiated or false claims.
She has even retweeted QAnon conspiracy theorists like Liz Crokin, who once blamed a surfing injury on Hillary Clinton practicing sorcery against her.
However, even Barr pushes back at the idea that her firing is similar to Kimmel’s suspension.
Unfortunately, it’s not because she’s come to her senses. It’s because her idea of reality appears to be heavily skewed.
Firing after a racism scandal is not the same as suspending a show to appease a despot
Interestingly, Roseanne Barr predicts that Jimmy Kimmel will “get an entire PR tour.”
That would be nice. We certainly wish him and his team well, as they are the victims of authoritarian overreach that threatens to destroy our very society.
We are not even ten months into the erosion of sacred American rights and freedoms.
It’s a little odd for Barr to make this prediction. After all, she got her very own Cancel This! comedy special on Fox Nation in 2023.
Roseanne claims her being kicked off her show was the same as Jimmy Kimmel being cancelled. No Roseanne, that show ran for 7 seasons without you, and I don’t think Jimmy Kimmel ever dressed up as Hitler baking cookies or called a black woman “Planet of the Apes” pic.twitter.com/ahEbu0cDAP
— TheRealThelmaJohnson (@TheRealThelmaJ1) September 18, 2025
Unlike in 2018, this move by ABC is not simply a business decision.
Jimmy Kimmel did not actually say anything incendiary. He has been compassionate in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, regardless of what the late podcaster stood for.
Rather, large businesses are collaborating with the Trump administration to silence his critics. And, as with Colbert and CBS, it’s working. Whatever pretext, it’s working.
At some point, America will be able to begin the long, difficult road of rebuilding. Things may get worse before that work can begin.
At that time, our society can take a hard look and determine which companies merely bowed down to government pressure out of fear, and which were willing collaborators with an authoritarian agenda.