Jon Stewart Speaks Out After ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ Is Restored

Jon Stewart is reacting to news that Jimmy Kimmel Live! is returning to the air.

After discussing President Donald Trump’s press conference on Monday, Sept. 22, in which he and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tied mothers using Tylenol during pregnancy to autism, the comedian, 62, celebrated Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension coming to an end.

“I’ll tell you, Jimmy Kimmel’s flying high like Advil today,” Stewart said, before praising online campaigns to cancel Disney+ and Hulu to show support for Kimmel.

“I want to say this seriously, that campaign that you all launched, pretending that you were going to cancel Hulu while secretly racing through four seasons of Only Murders in the Building, that really worked. Congratulations.”

“Wasn’t it interesting to try and figure out all the tentacles Disney has in your daily life?” Stewart joked. “It’s one thing to swear off cruises, but The Avengers? Nah.”

On Monday, Sept. 22, the Walt Disney Company announced that the show would resume on Tuesday, Sept. 23.

“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” the statement read, referring to comments Jimmy Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk‘s assassination.

“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”

On Sept. 15, Kimmel, 57, discussed the death of the right-wing commentator, who founded Turning Point USA and was fatally shot on Sept. 10 while at a speaking event at Utah Valley University. 

“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 — who previously offered his condolences to Kirk’s family on social media — said in his opening monologue. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

“On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this,” he continued, before a clip played of President Donald Trump partially addressing reporters’ questions about how he was coping with ally Kirk’s death.

Two days later, an ABC spokesperson confirmed to PEOPLE that Jimmy Kimmel Live! was put on pause indefinitely.

The network’s decision followed Nexstar Media’s decision to preempt airings of the program. Nexstar Media is the largest local broadcast and digital media company in the U.S. that owns more than 200 television stations in 116 markets.

Nexstar said in a statement to PEOPLE that its “owned and partner television stations affiliated with the ABC Television Network will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future, beginning with tonight’s show.”

The statement added that the company “strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”

Nexstar recently announced plans to acquire rival broadcast company Tegna for $6.2 billion, a massive deal that would further consolidate the local television landscape and put Nexstar in 80% of America’s TV-owning households, according to a press release. The acquisition will require final approval from the Trump-controlled Federal Communications Commission.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr was quick to praise Nexstar for putting pressure on ABC to remove Kimmel. “It is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values,” Carr wrote on X.

Stewart responded to ABC’s decision in the Sept. 18 episode of The Daily Show, which he and the writers reimagined the entire episode to what they believed a “government-approved” Daily Show would be like.

At one point, Stewart addressed Trump’s comments claiming that Kimmel was fired for “lack of talent.”

“You may call it free speech in jolly old England, but in America, we have a little thing called the first amendment, and let me tell you how it works,” Stewart began, before explaining what a “talent-o-meter” is. He described it as a device on the president’s desk that lets him know when a performer’s TQ — “talent quotient, measured mostly by niceness to the president” — goes below a certain level.

“At which point, the FCC must be notified to threaten the acquisition prospects for billion-dollar mergers of network affiliates,” Stewart went on to say. “These affiliates are then asked to give ultimatums to even larger mega corporation that controls the flow of state-approved content. Or the FCC can just choose to threaten those licenses directly. It’s basic science.”

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He further quipped: “I don’t know who this… this… Johnny Drimmel Live ABC character is. But the point is, our great administration has laid out very clear rules on free speech.”

“Now, some naysayers may argue that this administration’s speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smokescreen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation, principle-less and coldly antithetical to any experiment in a constitutional republic governance. Some people would say that,” Stewart concluded, nervously noting, “Not me, though… I think it’s great.”