Disney is under siege from all sides.
At 48 hours of his decision to get the Night Host Jimmy Kimmel from the air indefinitely, the ABC’s parent company has been found again in the center of a bitter political battle. The company now faces protests outside their studies, celebrities that threaten to break the ties and political pressure of Republicans and Democrats.
The elimination of Kimmel occurred on Wednesday after he commented on the murder of Charlie Kirk. ABC’s decision has further amplified a debate on freedom of expression that began immediately after Kirk’s murder, and some on the left claim that the people on the right were participating in the “culture of cancellation” that once they said they hated. Others on the right sought the elimination of Kimmel as “culture of consequence.”
A Disney spokesman did not respond immediately to a comment request on Friday.
The setback has been fast. Damon Lindelof, creator of “Lost” of ABC, said in an Instagram post on Thursday that he would not work with the company if Kimmel’s suspension was not built. The Emmy winning showrunner has a long -standing relationship with the study, after having worked with them in “Lost” for six seasons from 2004 to 2010.
Tatiana Maslany, who starred in “She-Hulk: Lawyer’s lawyer” of Marvel, who issued his first and only season at Disney+ in 2022, published a call to his followers on Instagram to “cancel his @disneyplus @hulu @espn subscriptions.”
Many of those in the Trump camp, including Trump himself, are not going back. Trump published a Kimmel clip on Thursday at the Academy awards reading Trump’s real -time criticism on his host, he added: “He made a total ridiculous of himself, his wife and his agent begged him not to do so, while he proved to be one of the worst hosts in the history of the Academy Awards.”
Some other well -followed media personalities saw Disney’s movement as a reasonable response to what Kimmel said. Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports who has sometimes been critical of Trump, published in X that the suspension was not an example of cancellation culture.
“That is consequences for your actions,” he wrote.
Vice President JD Vance, on Friday afternoon, offered a new chin in Kimmel and minimized the concerns of freedom of expression.
“Jimmy Kimmel was not funny, his qualifications were in the bathroom and his advertisers were disgusting,” Vance published in X. “Also the belly of the outstanding ‘freedom of expression’ after the drums, no one no one.”
The news that Kimmel’s program would be retired from the waves was Wednesday night, two days after the night host criticized some for how they responded to Kirk’s murder. The text messages of the suspect Tyler Robinson, launched on Tuesday by the authorities, supposedly said he went to Kirk because Robinson “had enough hatred.”
“The Maga gang [is] Trying desperately to characterize this child who murdered Charlie Kirk as more than one of them and doing everything possible to score political points, “Kimmel said during Monday’s broadcast.
The movement to avoid “indefinitely” the Kimmel show occurred hours after the president of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, threatened to “take measures” against Disney and ABC for comments, including threats to get the licenses from ABC affiliates.
Nexstar Media Group Inc., which has more than 200 stations in the United States and is waiting for the approval of the FCC for an acquisition of $ 6.2 billion of the smallest rival television company Tegna, said he was attracting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” In the predictable future, starting Wednesday night.
Since then, many actors, writers and comedians have expressed and continue to express their support for Kimmel. Outside Disney studios in Burbank, California, hundreds of people participated on Thursday in a protest led by the Guild of writers of America and coorganized with the Burbank group against the ice.
On Friday, Michael Eisner, the former Disney CEO, seemed to criticize his former company.
“Where has all the leadership gone? If it is not for the university presidents, the management partners of the law firm and the corporate executive directors who face the thugs, who will take a step forward for the first amendment?” Eisner wrote about X, qualifying the actions of Carr “another example of intimidation out of control.”
In a series of publications on X, Carr has maintained that the decision arose from the local stations that made “programming decisions” that respond “that respond to the local communities they serve”, something that states that the Kimmel program was not doing.
“The announcers have long preserved the right not to issue national programs that believe they are inconsistent with the public interest, including the values of their local communities,” Carr wrote in another publication.
Carr’s role in Kimmel’s elimination has also caused some concern to the right.
Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, became Friday among the highest profile conservatives in denouncing Carr’s comments, saying in his podcast that what Kimmel said it was wrong, but also that what Carr was doing was “incredibly dangerous”, in particular, threatening the transmission licenses of ABC affiliations (which Trump has also threatened).
“I like Brendan Carr. He is a good guy. He is the president of the FCC. Work in close collaboration with him, but what he said is dangerous as hell,” Cruz added.
Some voices on the right in the comedy community have broken partisan lines to criticize what they say is an attack on freedom of expression.
In an Instagram, Podcaster and Comedian post Tim Dillon said Kimmel should still be in the air and called his suspension “a politically motivated work.”
“Anyone who worries about the ability to speak freely to make a living must be disturbed by this,” Dillon said.
The screenshots of the Instagram stories published by comedians Andrew Schulz and Sam Morril also seemed to reject the Kimmel suspension.
“Epstein’s list will not be released, but Jimmy Kimmel will be?” Morril wrote.
Many of Kimmel’s nighttime fellow have also reached their defense, with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, whose program was recently canceled, Trump made fun of Trump on Thursday night in relation to Kimmel’s suspension.
In recent years, Disney has been dragged into a series of politically loaded battles and demands. In 2024, the company established litigation with the governor of Florida Ron Desantis that began after the bill “Don’t Say Gay” of the State opposed.
In 2025, Disney and his subsidiary Lucasfilm, which is behind the “Star Wars” franchise, resolved a lawsuit with actor Gina Carano after she said she was unfairly finished from the television series “Mandalorian” for expressing right -wing opinions on social networks. In some of his publications, made in previous years, Carano had compared modern political divisions with the Holocaust and made fun of the people who carried masks during the pandemic. In a statement after reaching the agreement, Lucasfilm said: “With this conclusion, we hope to identify opportunities to work together with Mrs. Carano in the near future.”
More recently, Disney’s ABC News also resolved a demand for defamation with Trump, paying $ 15 million to its future Museum or Presidential Foundation.
Disney CEO Bob Iger has counteracted the narration that Disney has leaned towards any of the ideologies of political parties.
In 2023, he said that the company’s films had focused too much on “messages” when they should focus on entertaining, an effort to improve the quality of Disney movies. The following year, Iger said his main mission for the company was to entertain versus focus on the “Woke Agenda.”
“I like to entertain if you can infuse it with positive messages and have a good impact on the world. Fantastic. But that should not be the goal. When I returned, what I really tried to do is return to our roots,” he said.
In addition to Lindelof and Maslany calls to reject Disney and their products, other Disney boycott calls have leaked online in recent days, although it is not clear how generalized it has been or if it will have a lasting effect on the company.
Several celebrities, including Lance Bass, member of the NSYNC band, and the “Transparent” star Amy Landecker, has shared screenshots on social networks that show her cancellations of her subscriptions affiliated with Disney.
As the message won traction on the last day at social media sites, Google Trends showed an increase in searches for the terms “Cancel Disney Plus” and “Boicott Disney”, since the posters declared that they left the transmission platforms.
Bill Simmons, a popular podcast presenter and Kimmel’s friend who also used to work at “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”, He said in a podcast published on early Friday that he thought there was a good possibility that the program was canceled, but that setback against Kimmel’s suspension had made him a reconsider.
“What changed in the last more than 24 hours is that there was such land,” Simmons said. “This was felt as if this became at the moment. If we stayed and let something like this happen, what follows? Where are we going?”
