John Oliver addresses the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel on "Last Week Tonight."
John Oliver appears on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on Sept. 15, 2025.

John Oliver is speaking out against Jimmy Kimmel's suspension with a personal appeal to the CEO of Disney.

Oliver devoted the main story of the Sept. 21 episode of HBO's "Last Week Tonight" to Kimmel being suspended at ABC following FCC pressure over comments he made after the killing of Charlie Kirk.

The Emmy-winning comedian slammed the "pretext that's been used to" suspend Kimmel as "laughably weak," noting Kimmel didn't "denigrate Charlie Kirk or make light of his killing" on his show. But Oliver argued that "some are now willing to weaponize Kirk's death to do things they've been wanting to do for years," including going after "their remaining critics in the media."

On his Sept. 15 show, Kimmel said that the "MAGA gang" was "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." Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, criticized Kimmel over the comments and threatened ABC to take action. Carr argued Kimmel misled viewers about the political affiliation of Tyler Robinson, the suspect charged with murdering Kirk.

On Sept. 17, Nexstar Media Group Inc. said it would stop airing Kimmel's show on its ABC affiliates, and ABC soon after announced that "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" would be suspended indefinitely.

Oliver noted he was a guest on Kimmel's show the night the host made his controversial comment, but he "didn't even register" it as something offensive.

"The worst thing you can say is that he appears to have been wrong about the shooter's ideology, which, OK," Oliver said. "But he was also pointing out that many on the right seem desperate to weaponize Kirk's death, an argument that's aged pretty well given, you know, everything that's happened to Kimmel since."

Oliver went on to call Kimmel's suspension a "pretty clear case of the government pressuring companies to censor speech," pointing to the statements Carr made publicly.

"Kimmel is by no means the first casualty in Trump's attacks on free speech," Oliver said. "He's just the latest canary in the coal mine – a mine that, at this point, now seems more dead canary than coal."

But Oliver said Kimmel's suspension "does feel like a turning point" because "if the government can force a network to pull a late-night show off the air, and do so in plain view," it can do "a lot" worse.

Because Kimmel has not been fired and remains suspended, Oliver urged ABC to "do the right thing" by bringing "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" back.

"They need to stand by Kimmel and his staff," Oliver said, telling viewers they can "encourage them to do that" by canceling their Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions. The comedian, who voiced Zazu in Disney's 2019 blockbuster "The Lion King," closed by addressing Disney CEO Bob Iger, telling him, "Giving the bully your lunch money doesn't make him go away. It just makes him come back hungrier each time.

"At some point, you are going to have to draw a line," he said. "So I'd argue, why not draw it right here?"

Kimmel has been receiving widespread support throughout the entertainment industry amid his suspension, including from all of the major late-night hosts. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher have all delivered monologues on their shows in recent days standing by Kimmel and criticizing ABC for suspending him.

Radio host Howard Stern, who is a longtime friend of Kimmel, also slammed the suspension on his show on Monday, Sept. 22. Stern said he will be canceling his Disney+ subscription in protest.

"You can't support this kind of a move," he said. "I don't care whether you like Jimmy or not. It's about freedom of speech. If ABC wanted to fire Jimmy because they didn't like him, or he had low ratings – they didn't want to fire him. They're being pressured by the United States government. We can't have that, not if we're going to have a democracy."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: John Oliver slams 'laughably weak' reasoning for suspending Jimmy Kimmel

Reporting by Brendan Morrow, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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