In a moment that perfectly encapsulates the current state of celebrity politics, Jimmy Kimmel admitted this week that he told his young son — without evidence — that President Donald Trump was responsible for his temporary suspension from Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
Let that sink in.
On Thursday’s episode of the podcast We Can Do Hard Things, Kimmel and his wife, Molly McNearney, who also happens to be the executive producer and co-head writer of the show, recounted the surreal moment. Their child, trying to make sense of why dad was suddenly off the air, asked an innocent question: Did the president do this?
Without hesitation — and without proof — both parents said yes.
“We actually both said yes at the exact same time,” McNearney said. “We said yes. He did.”
The narrative was clear: Blame Trump. Not the network. Not corporate caution. Not the content of the monologue. Just Trump.
It’s worth remembering what led to the suspension. On Sept. 15, Kimmel delivered a monologue in which he implied that the (alleged) assassin of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was connected to the MAGA movement. That inflammatory, baseless connection triggered backlash from multiple broadcast partners, including Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting, who pulled the show from their schedules.
Two days later, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
And yet, there’s zero evidence — none — that President Trump or his administration ordered or influenced the suspension. The Federal Communications Commission’s Brendan Carr did publicly call out the monologue and criticize ABC for airing it, but Carr is an independent commissioner — not a mouthpiece for the White House, and certainly not someone who issues orders to Disney, ABC’s parent company.
Disney itself took responsibility for the decision. Their public statement said the suspension was made to avoid “further inflaming a tense situation” and was the result of internal conversations. No mention of Trump. No political pressure. No conspiracy. Just a media company hitting pause during a volatile news cycle.
Yet somehow, Kimmel and McNearney still managed to fold this incident into their ongoing Trump obsession. The real damage here isn’t even the lie—it’s the normalization of blaming everything on a political figure without evidence, and worse, passing that paranoia on to your child.
For a man who routinely rails against “misinformation,” Kimmel seems remarkably comfortable spreading it within his own household. And from a network that has insisted on upholding journalistic standards in the age of “fake news,” it’s striking that their late-night star felt no compulsion to walk back a completely unsupported claim — even after Disney cleared up the record.
