Jimmy Kimmel trolled Donald Trump as he teased a late night crossover with Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers during his show taping in Brooklyn.
The beleaguered talk show host posted a photo of the three Trump-hating comics to Instagram with the caption: ‘Hi Donald!’
Kimmel’s ABC late night show Jimmy Kimmel Live! is making its annual trip to the east coast for a week of tapings, one that includes Kimmel and Colbert appearing on one another’s shows Tuesday night.
Meyers – who hosted a podcast with the pair during the WGA strike – also joined in, posting his own photo to social media with the soon-to-be canceled Colbert and Kimmel.
Kimmel’s late night show returned to screens on Tuesday with record-breaking ratings, after he was suspended for five days over remarks he made about Charlie Kirk‘s assassination.
As many as 6.5million people tuned to Kimmel on Tuesday, which was a three times the show’s usual audience and the biggest in over a decade.
But by Thursday, Kimmel averaged 2.3million – a shocking 64 percent drop since the show’s return episode, Fox News reported.
Notably, Kimmel lost 73 percent of the viewers in the coveted demographic of adults aged 25-54, getting just 465,000.
Jimmy Kimmel trolled Donald Trump as he teased a late night crossover with Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers during his show taping in Brooklyn
Typically, Kimmel gets about 1.8 million viewers each night on television. The numbers released by ABC do not include viewership from streaming services.
While Kimmel returned to TV on Tuesday, it was not until Friday that Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group brought Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show back to their local TV stations, ending a dayslong TV blackout for dozens of cities across the U.S.
Kimmel’s late-night ABC show was yanked off air by Disney after he stated that Kirk’s killer was a Trump supporter. In reality, the assassin was a liberal who seethed with hatred at Kirk over his conservative, Christian ethics, prosecutors allege.
The suspension lasted less than a week, while the affiliate blackout stood for just over a week.
A top broadcasting executive for the Sinclair organization says that the host‘s fate ultimately lies in Disney’s hands.
Rob Weisbord, who serves as Sinclair’s chief operating officer and president of Local Media, was asked about the future of Kimmel’s ABC late night program Tuesday on the red carpet at New York City‘s Ziegfeld Ballroom.
Weisbord told Daily Mail that the network’s parent company Disney will ultimately decide on if Jimmy Kimmel Live! will continue long-term, after Kimmel was suspended earlier this month over comments he made about the reaction to the tragic killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in a monologue.
‘I think that’s a Disney decision, that’s not an affiliate decision,’ said Weisbord, who was among those being honored at the Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame.
The beleaguered talk show host posted a photo of the three Trump-hating comics to Instagram with the caption: ‘Hi Donald!’
Meyers – who hosted a podcast with the pair during the WGA strike – also joined in, posting his own photo to social media
Weisbord continued, ‘We leave it at the hands of Disney and Disney corporate to make those decisions’ about Kimmel.
The TV executive answered a number of questions about the controversy surrounding Kimmel that has dominated national headlines the last few weeks.
‘I look at everything as a moment in time – we’ve had great discussions with Disney and we’ve passed that moment and we move forward,’ Weisbord said.
Weisbord said ‘it’s all about healing the country and really not being desensitized to murders and assassinations.’
Kimmel’s offending remarks came on his September 15 broadcast as he commented on the fallout of Kirk’s assassination on a Utah college campus at the hands of a 22-year-old suspect.
Kimmel said, ‘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.’
ABC subsequently suspended him, and affiliates including the Maryland-based Sinclair asked for an apology and donation to the late Kirk’s advocacy group, Turning Point USA.
A top broadcasting executive for the Sinclair organization says that Jimmy Kimmel’s fate ultimately lies in Disney’s hands
Las week, Kimmel gave a tearful 20-minute monologue in which he claimed he ‘never intended to make light of’ the MAGA icon’s death – and then proceeded to lash out at Donald Trump over censorship.
Kimmel acknowledged his employer of more than 20 years was taking an enormous risk in putting him back on TV.
‘Unfortunately, and I think unjustly, this puts them at risk,’ he said. ‘The president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from their job.
‘Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.’
Kimmel broke down when discussing what he said about the assassination of Kirk – but he never once said he was sorry.
‘I have no illusions about changing anyone’s mind, but I do want to make something clear, because it’s important to me as a human and that is, you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,’ Kimmel said, his voice breaking.
‘I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.’
Kimmel singled out FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, saying his conduct was ‘not legal’ and ‘un-American’ after the chairman threatened to go after late night comics.
He then branded Carr’s threat against Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers as not only ‘a direct violation of the first amendment’ but also ‘not a particularly intelligent threat.’
