White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared on Kayleigh McEnany’s new Fox News program Saturday in America to discuss former President Barack Obama’s remarks on the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live.
“After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” Obama posted to X on Thursday.
“This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent — and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it,” he added.
But in remarks to McEnany, Leavitt said Obama’s statement wreaks of cluelessness. “With all due respect to former President Obama, he has no idea what he’s talking about,” Leavitt asserted. “The decision to fire Jimmy Kimmel and to cancel his show came from executives at ABC.”
Leavitt assured viewers that ABC’s decision to suspend Kimmel was not influenced by the White House and that President Donald Trump did not pressure the network to take this action.
“And how do I know that, Kayleigh?” she asked. “Because I was with the President when this news broke in the United Kingdom.” The press secretary claimed that she was the one who broke the news to Trump during their U.K. visit, and that at the time, the president “had no idea this was happening.”
“It was a decision that was made by ABC because Jimmy Kimmel chose to knowingly lie to his audience on his program about the death of a highly respected man when our country is in a state of mourning. That was a decision that he made, and he is now facing a consequence for that decision and for that lie,” she argued.
Disney, the parent company of ABC, confirmed to Fox News Digital on Wednesday that Jimmy Kimmel Live, produced in Los Angeles, has been suspended “indefinitely.”
Nexstar Media Group, which owns hundreds of stations nationwide, announced it would preempt the program on its ABC affiliates “for the foreseeable future,” citing Kimmel’s remarks about Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin. Sinclair Broadcast Group also said it would drop the show from its lineup.
