Trump pressure on the media mounting

President Donald Trump’s pressure on media companies is mounting.

On Wednesday, the Walt Disney Company pulled “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air “indefinitely” from its ABC network after the host made comments linking the alleged killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

The move is drawing comparisons to CBS’s cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” in July and raising questions about the protection of free speech in a Trump-era broadcast environment.

“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 during a monologue that aired Tuesday night.

“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, teeing up a clip of Trump on the White House lawn.

Trump was asked how he was holding up in the wake of Kirk’s death, to which he answered, “I think very good,” before pivoting to point out that construction had started on the new $200 million ballroom project.

“He’s at the fourth stage of grief: construction,” Kimmel joked. “Demolition. Construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish. OK? And it didn’t just happen once.”

Kimmel has not been fired, but Disney heads wanted to speak with the host about what he should say when he goes back on the air, according to people familiar with the situation.

Trump weighed in on the matter Thursday, saying, “They should have fired him a long time ago. … He was fired for a lack of talent.”

Kimmel, ABC and Disney are the latest target of Trump’s scrutiny of media companies, which has intensified during his second term marked by high-profile defamation lawsuits, the defunding of public broadcasters and regulatory interference from the Federal Communications Commission.

“An inexcusable act of political violence by one disturbed individual must never be exploited as justification for broader censorship and control,” Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic FCC commissioner, wrote in a social media post Wednesday. “This Administration is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression.”

Gomez has been outspoken about the FCC and Trump’s interactions with media companies. In late July, when the government agency approved the merger of Paramount and Skydance, she wrote a statement of dissent, saying she was troubled by Paramount’s recent payment to settle a suit brought by Trump against Paramount-owned CBS over a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The Paramount payout and this reckless approval have emboldened those who believe the government can — and should-abuse its power to extract financial and ideological concessions, demand favored treatment, and secure positive media coverage,” she wrote at the time.

It’s not the first instance of Trump interfering with media mergers. He tried to block AT&T’s $85 billion merger with Time Warner in 2017 unless it sold off CNN. Ultimately, the deal went through in mid-2018.

The suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” came amid statements from FCC Chair Brendan Carr that suggested ABC’s broadcast license was at risk because of the remarks.

In a podcast interview Wednesday, before ABC’s announcement, Carr said the FCC was “going to have remedies that we can look at” with regard to Kimmel’s comments.

“Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “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.”

In August, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that ABC and NBC should lose their broadcast licenses for what he called “unfair coverage of Republicans and/or Conservatives.”

“Crooked ‘journalism’ should not be rewarded, it should be terminated,” Trump said in the post.

Notably, Disney needs regulatory approval for a deal that would see the NFL buy 10% of ESPN in exchange for NFL Media assets.

Carr told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Thursday that Kimmel appeared to “mislead” the American public about facts regarding Charlie Kirk’s killing in the days leading up to his show’s suspension.

“The issue that arose here, where lots and lots of people were upset, was not a joke,” Carr said.

“It was not making fun,” Carr said. “It was appearing to directly mislead the American public about a significant fact that probably one of the most significant political events we’ve had in a long time, for the most significant political assassination we’ve seen in a long time.”

The show’s suspension also came after Nexstar Media Group said its ABC-affiliated stations would preempt Kimmel’s show “for the foreseeable future” beginning Wednesday.

Nexstar is seeking FCC approval for its planned $6.2 billion merger with Tegna. About 10% of the approximately 225 ABC affiliate stations are owned by Nexstar. Tegna owns about 5% of ABC’s affiliate stations.

Sinclair, which owns around 40 ABC affiliate stations, also indefinitely preempted “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” It said it would not lift that suspension until it had a formal discussion with ABC about the network’s “commitment to professionalism and accountability” and called on Kimmel to issue a direct apology to Kirk’s family.

Sinclair said in August it is exploring merger options for its broadcast stations, though it hasn’t yet reached a deal.

A lawsuit against ABC News was settled in December 2024, in which the network agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library after Trump claimed anchor George Stephanopoulos made an inaccurate on-air assertion that the then-president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump had been found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming Carroll.

Trump is currently suing The New York Times over articles and a book published during the 2024 campaign and The Wall Street Journal for a story that connected him to Jeffrey Epstein.

Additionally, Trump has barred specific reporters and whole news organizations from pooled press events for not using preferred terminology or for being critical of Trump.

The Associated Press is currently restricted from access to White House spaces like the Oval Office and Air Force One because it would not adopt the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And former CNN reporter Jim Acosta had his credentials stripped back in 2018 after clashing with Trump. The ban was later overturned.

— CNBC’s Alex Sherman, Luke Fountain and Dan Mangan contributed to this report.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC. Versant would become the new parent company of CNBC upon Comcast’s planned spinoff of Versant.