David Letterman briefly spoke with Jimmy Kimmel after his late night show was “indefinitely” pulled from ABC.
“I have heard from Jimmy. He was nice enough to text me this morning,” Letterman, 78, said at the Atlantic Festival in New York City on Thursday, September 18. “He’s sitting up in bed taking nourishment. He’s going to be fine.”
Luxury Handbag Shopping confirmed on Wednesday, September 17, that ABC pulled Kimmel’s eponymous Jimmy Kimmel Live! from their TV slate.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be preempted indefinitely,” a spokesperson for the network told Us.
Kimmel, 57, did not immediately address the show’s pause, which took place after he discussed the death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in his Monday, September, 15, monologue. (Kirk, who was 31, was shot and killed last week during a speaking engagement in Utah.)
“So what? We all make mistakes,” Letterman said on Thursday, when asked about Kimmel’s remarks. “By the way, the condition of the United States of America has not been perfect from the time I was born to this very day, and before that. We know that. The goal is not perfection. Mistakes are going to be made. Hopefully, it will improve.”
He added, “I’m not exactly in full-mind understanding of what Jimmy said, what he was trying to say, and what mistake was made.”
Letterman, who hosted The Late Show for a decade ahead of Stephen Colbert’s own run on the CBS program, noted that Kimmel’s suspension was “misery.”
“In the world of somebody who’s an authoritarian, maybe a dictatorship, sooner or later everyone is going to be touched. But this is me, for 30 years, I did this for a living,” Letterman said. “I feel bad about this because we all see where this is going, correct? It’s managed media, and it’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. You can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.”
ABC has not further explained its reasoning for pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! from its programming slate, with even the show’s staffers left wondering about the its future.
A source exclusively told Us that Kimmel’s crew was “initially told that the suspension was just going to be for the rest of this week.”
The chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, meanwhile, called for Kimmel’s suspension after his comments about Kirk.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on The Benny Show. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Letterman, for his part, took an opposing stance.
“But the other thing is, the FCC. This guy, Brendan Carr, [says,] ‘We can do things the easy way, we can do things the hard way,’” he said. “Who is hiring these goons? Mario Puzo? The FCC: we’re not happy until you’re not happy, for God’s sakes.”
