Bob Iger is offering his first public comments on ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, defending the decision as a matter of taste and timing—not politics.
In a new interview with The Financial Times, the former Disney CEO—who was reported to have made the final call to “indefinitely” pull Kimmel off the air last September—said critics misunderstood the decision, which was made amid a firestorm over Kimmel’s comments about the reaction to Charlie Kirk’s killing.
“That was not the case,” Iger said of the perception that the move was politically motivated. “We thought it was in bad taste.”
According to Iger, Kimmel was asked to apologize, though he framed the request more as a call for acknowledgment than a full public mea culpa.
“We just wanted him to acknowledge that it was an ill-timed and probably inappropriate comment,” Iger said.
Kimmel, notably, did not apologize. When he returned to the air, he instead said he never intended to make light of Kirk’s murder or blame any group for the killing.
Iger’s comments amount to his first public attempt to put his own frame around a weeklong crisis that quickly became much larger than Kimmel’s original monologue. What Iger now describes as a question of bad timing and bad taste was interpreted by many critics at the time as a test of whether Disney would stand behind one of the country’s most prominent political comedians in the face of pressure from the Trump administration, station groups, and conservative media.
The comment that triggered the backlash was not aimed at Kirk, nor was it an expression of sympathy for his accused killer. Kimmel was criticizing what he saw as an effort by Trump-aligned conservatives to turn the killing into a political weapon.
“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 his Sept. 15 monologue.
The remark was seized on by conservatives, including FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who said in a podcast appearance that broadcasters could handle the matter “the easy way or the hard way.” After Nexstar and Sinclair said they would pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! from their ABC affiliates, the network announced that Kimmel’s show would be preempted indefinitely.
The suspension drew immediate backlash from Hollywood unions, civil-liberties groups, late-night hosts, Democratic officials and some Republicans, many of whom framed the move as a capitulation to government pressure. As the pressure grew, talks continued behind the scenes among Iger, Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden, Kimmel and his team.
For a time it wasn’t clear whether Kimmel would ever return to the air, but amid bruising criticism and growing calls to boycott the company, Disney relented. Deadline‘s Dominic Patten reported at the time that the final sign-off came from Iger and Walden after a flurry of calls, texts and paperwork with Kimmel’s team. Asked what restrictions, if any, had been placed on Kimmel, one source told Patten: “Jimmy will say what Jimmy wants to say.”
That is more or less what happened.
Kimmel’s return monologue was emotional, defiant and pointedly critical of the pressure campaign that had taken him off the air. He clarified that he had not meant to trivialize Kirk’s death, but he also took direct aim at Carr, Trump and the broader effort to punish comedians and media companies for critical commentary.
“Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke,” Kimmel said in the monologue. “He was somehow able to squeeze Colbert out of CBS. Then he turned his sights on me.”
Kimmel’s return also delivered the kind of audience late night almost never sees anymore. According to Nielsen Live+3 day ratings previously reported by LateNighter, the Sept. 23 broadcast drew 8.6 million viewers to ABC, making it the highest-rated episode in the history of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. In adults 18–49, the episode rose to 1.5 million viewers, while its 32% share of the total audience was a late-night number not seen since Johnny Carson’s final episodes of The Tonight Show more than 30 years ago.
Iger’s new comments don’t reopen the Kimmel saga so much as offer his own explanation for one of the messiest episodes of his final stretch atop Disney. To Iger, the suspension was not a political retreat, but a judgment call over timing and taste.
Whether viewers, critics and the rest of Hollywood remember it that way is another matter.
