Trump Claims Licensed Networks Are ‘Not Allowed’ to Rail on Him

President Donald Trump is making new claims about what networks supposedly can and cannot do when it comes to covering his administration, one day after Jimmy Kimmel Live! was indefinitely taken off the air by ABC over comments he made about Charlie Kirk’s death.

In remarks on Air Force One on Thursday, Sept. 18, Trump insisted that many networks are “97% against” him and give him “wholly bad publicity,” adding, “I mean they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”

“When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do — if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years, or something — when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump,” he continued.

“They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”

The president ultimately claimed that the decision over whether to revoke licensing will not be up to him, though. “It will be up to [Federal Communications Commission Chair] Brendan Carr. I think Brendan Carr is outstanding. He’s a patriot. He loves our country, and he’s a tough guy.”

Carr, 46, is the FCC chair appointed by Trump. In the wake of Kimmel’s suspension, he warned that his agency was “not done yet” making changes to the “media ecosystem.”

“Our goal and our obligation here is to make sure that broadcasters are serving the public interest,” Carr said on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street. “And if there’s local TV stations that don’t think that running that programming does it, then they have every right under the law in their contracts to preempt it. And we’ll see how this plays out.”

Carr told CNBC that he believes the United States is “in the midst of a massive shift in dynamics in the media ecosystem for lots of reasons, again, including the permission structure that President Trump’s election has provided. And I would simply say we’re not done yet with seeing the consequences of that.”

Kimmel mentioned Kirk, who was shot and killed during a speaking event at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10 at age 31, in his monologue during Monday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! broadcast.

“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 on the show. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

The monologue continued by cutting to news clips of Trump sidetracking conversations about Kirk’s death to instead discuss the construction of the new White House Ballroom. “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend,” Kimmel said, referring to the president. “This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish, okay?”

Following Kimmel’s comments, Carr threatened retaliation from the FCC.

Appearing on Benny Johnson’s podcast on Wednesday, the chairman said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Later that day, it was revealed that Disney’s ABC had pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely. In addition to FCC pressure, the powerful TV company Nexstar announced it would replace Kimmel’s show with other programming on its stations, further forcing ABC’s hand.

Nexstar — which is in the midst of a massive acquisition that will require approval from the Trump administration — is the largest local broadcast and digital media company in the U.S., owning more than 200 television stations in 116 markets.

Trump publicly railed against Kimmel, 57, amid his state visit to the United Kingdom on Thursday, when he shared his thoughts about the late-night show’s hiatus and characterized it as a firing rather than a suspension.

“Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else and he said a horrible thing about a great man named Charlie Kirk,” the president, who has been celebratory about the network’s decision, said. “Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person, he had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago.”

“You can call that free speech or not,” he continued. “He was fired for lack of talent.”

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The uncertainty over Kimmel’s future comes amid the comedian’s continued feud with Trump, who suggested that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be the next late-night casualty after CBS canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in July.

Prior to Trump’s comments, Kimmel had repeatedly hinted at ending his long-running show. He told the Los Angeles Times in February 2024 that the three-year contract he signed in 2022 would probably be his last, joking, “I hate to even say it, because everyone’s laughing at me now — each time I think that, and then it turns out to be not the case.”

“I still have a little more than two years left on my contract, and that seems pretty good,” he added at the time. “That seems like enough.”