“Tonight, we are all Jimmy Kimmel,” said Stephen Colbert as he opened The Late Show.
The comedian said he stood with the ABC host and his staff after Kimmel’s show was put on pause following comments about the killer of Charlie Kirk.
He called ABC’s move to “yank” Kimmel off the air indefinitely “blatant censorship”. It always starts small. Remember, in week one of his presidency, call it Gulf of America. Sure, seems harmless, but with an autocrat, you cannot give an inch. If ABC thinks that this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naïve.”
He did joke that the Kimmel news overshadowed his recent Emmy win. “You couldn’t let me enjoy this for like one week?” he asked, holding up his Emmy.
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Colbert spent much of the first half of the show discussing the Kimmel situation and with it he brought back one of his best known bits from The Colbert Report: The Word.
“Don’t ever complain, no matter what the President does, even if he sends the army to your hometown, just shut up and take it,” he said, in character.
Colbert had previously featured the segment from his Comedy Central show on his CBS show, one that caused consternation back in the day because the two networks were not yet part of the same corporation.
The Late Show host couldn’t quite work out what Kimmel said that was so inflammatory. “Given the FCC response, I was expecting something more provocative. That’s like hearing that Playboy has a racy new center folder, and finding out it’s just Jimmy Kimmel,” he said.
He said shutting down this type of political speech represents a “serious threat to our freedoms”, one that would previously have upset FCC chair Brendan Carr, who used to be all about free speech.
Then, he made a gag about his own cancelation coming days after he called Paramount’s settlement with President Trump a “big fat bribe”. “A company apparently capitulating to the whims of the President, in order to ensure their merger goes through. Has that ever happened before?,” he said. “Oh, I’m being told not to answer that question.
He highlighted the fact that much like David Ellison’s Skydance trying to get its deal with Paramount over the line, Disney is in the process of acquiring the NFL Network.
“Everything is about corporate relationships. It’s hard to keep track, but remember, ABC is owned by Disney, which also owns Pixar, which is trying to merge with Twizzlers pull and peel they make the material that Lockheed Martin uses for the O rings for their Triton to missiles that the Defense Department commissions with the cash it got from its leverage buyout of Claire’s,” he joked.
Colbert signed off by joking that the late-night hosts may resurrect their podcast that they started during the writers strike, but calling it Fired Force 5.