Jimmy Fallon joined in on the political fireworks, the day after his pal Jimmy Kimmel was pulled from ABC.
Fallon, who tends to shy away from too much political material, opened his show by saying, “The big story is that Jimmy Kimmel was suspended by ABC after pressure from the FCC leaving everyone thinking WTF.”
“A lot of people are worried that we won’t keep saying what we want to say, or that we’ll be censored, but I’m going to cover the President’s trip to the UK, just like I normally would,” said Fallon before launching into a bit where the punchlines of his jokes were changed by a voiceover.
“President Trump just wrapped up his three day trip to the UK, and he looked incredibly handsome… His tie was exactly the right length and his face looked like a color that exists in nature, and his hair looked better than Conrad’s from The Summer I Turned Pretty,” he joked.
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“Anyway, to sum it up, President Trump is making America great again by restoring our national reputation, reinvigorating our economy and rebuilding our military. I hereby nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize,” he added. “See, we can still say what we want.”
Fallon joked that he woke up to “100 text messages from my dad saying, ‘I’m sorry they canceled your show’.”
He also had a heartfelt message for Kimmel, who is he is close friends with. Kimmel appeared on Fallon’s NBC gameshow Password last year and the two have swapped shows before as part of an April Fools’ Day prank.
“To be honest with you all, I don’t know what’s going on, no one does. But I do know Jimmy Kimmel, and he is a decent, funny, and loving guy. I hope he comes back.”
Fallon’s comments come 24 hours after ABC indefinitely preempted Jimmy Kimmel Live! following a furor around Kimmel’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s killer.
On Monday, 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 with everything they can to score political points from it.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr subsequently called Kimmel’s comments “some of the sickest conduct possible”.
This was soon followed by local station Nexstar saying it would “preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future” as it “strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk”.
Moments later, Disney made its own decision to pause the show.