On Thursday night, Jon Stewart performed crisis hosting duties on “The Daily Show.” Although he usually anchors only on Mondays, he was pressed into emergency Thursday service as a result of the free speech controversy raging around ABC’s decision to suspend indefinitely the late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
At one point in the show, Stewart joked with guest Nobel Peace Prize-winning author Maria Ressa that for President Donald Trump, “free speech is speech that supports the president.” Kimmel’s dismissal, which followed comments he made in his monologue about the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, points to the flip side of Stewart’s surmise: speech that criticizes the president and his movement will be penalized by the government. Soon enough, it will be prohibited altogether; our civil liberties will have been executive-ordered into oblivion.
Kimmel’s dismissal points to the flip side of Stewart’s surmise: speech that criticizes the president and his MAGA movement will be penalized by the government.
ABC made the decision to deplatform “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after Nexstar Media Group announced it would no longer carry the show on its “owned and partner television stations.” (Sinclair Broadcast Group soon followed suit.) Nexstar’s rationale centered around its objections “to comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk.”
Though as The Washington Post’s Lili Loofbourow noted about the comedian’s monologues, “Kimmel’s target wasn’t Charlie Kirk!,” but the MAGA movement. ABC was also possibly compelled to sack Kimmel because FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened to revoke the licenses of its broadcasting stations, thereby operationalizing his own chapter from the Project 2025 playbook.
Not content with Kimmel’s removal, Carr vowed more changes to “the media ecosystem” (or more precisely, any life form in that ecosystem which criticizes Trump). The president, for his part, took a victory lap on Truth Social and hinted at coming punishments for his detractors. Meanwhile, many in MAGA exulted on X (though some figures on the right notably did not).
In the era of MAGA rule, everything escalates every day — so much so that we tend to forget previous tipping points which have destabilized our long-standing free speech norms. Remember when The Associated Press was barred from an Oval Office news conference because it wouldn’t refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America? That was bad. But things have gotten so much worse.
Thursday night’s "Daily Show" broadcast imagined comedy in an era where First Amendment liberties have deteriorated even further. The episode billed itself as the “All new, government-approved Daily Show with your patriotically obedient host John Stewart.” Broadcasting against a Gilded Age backdrop, suggestive of Trump’s preferred White House decor, Stewart played the role of a frightened entertainer shilling for state-owned media. It reminded me of the storied Monty Python troupe’s recurring fear that at any moment during their broadcasts — especially during bits about cannibalism — the queen of England might be tuning in.
Promising his audience “a fun, hilarious, administration compliant show,” the mock-terrified Stewart implored his audience not to laugh at The Leader, lest they arouse all that gilded rage. Instead, Stewart intoned, “somebody’s national guard should invade this place [i.e., New York City]. Am I right?”
Comedically, the episode was uneven. Funny at times, less so at other moments. Civically, it was incredibly brave. If I’ve learned anything in my years of researching global controversies triggered by satire, it is that humorists tend to be courageous to the point of stupidity. When confronted with controversy, most will, for better or for worse, sooner double down than back down.
Bassem Youssef in Egypt (who staged a wildly popular Arabic version of "The Daily Show") somehow managed to infuriate three consecutive illiberal regimes and was rewarded with exile in 2014 (he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2019). The Zimbabwean comedian Samantha Kureya spoofed her government and was abducted and beaten by a paramilitary group in 2019. This past year, comedian Kunal Kamra so incensed India’s ruling party that the night club where he performed was attacked by party supporters. They all dusted themselves and kept rinsing their targets. I’ve charted such tales of comedy and valor (and stupidity) the world over. Those who jest for a living possess a resolve that media conglomerates, major law firms and elite universities seem to lack.
CNN reported Thursday night that ABC, seeking a way out of the mess it created, wanted Kimmel to “cool down the temperature” of his anti-Trump provocations. Good luck with that! If MAGA escalates everything every day, then it is equally true that humorists, by nature, rarely retreat — a dialectic that should inspire both our awe for the comedians and anxiety about what comes next. Then again, even if comedians do relent, nothing assures that the administration won’t punish them anyway.