Comedian Jimmy Kimmel hit out at Donald Trump’s “anti-American” threats to free speech as he returned to his late-night show, declaring that it was never his intention to “make light of the murder” of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
In his first show on Tuesday following a six-day suspension by broadcast network ABC, Kimmel said that he understood his remarks in a monologue last week “felt either ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both”, following Kirk’s assassination on a college campus in Utah this month.
But he also struck a defiant tone, saying that “a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American”.