Joe Rogan is no fan of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show being briefly suspended at ABC, warning that speech suppression can cut both ways.
“I definitely don’t think that the government should be involved, ever, in dictating what a comedian can or cannot say in a monologue,” Rogan said during Tuesday’s episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “That’s f–king crazy.”
He added: “If people on the right are like ‘Yeah, go get them,’ oh my god you’re crazy. You’re crazy for supporting this because this will be used on you. You don’t think that the globalist lizard people who run the world are sitting here going ‘Great, what do we got three years, we’ll wait this out. Let them say the government should be involved in censoring people’s speech.’”
Kimmel was suspended by ABC and his show “Jimmy Kimmel Live” was pulled from the network last week over comments made about Charlie Kirk’s assassin. The network announced Monday that the show would be returning to airwaves on Tuesday.
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” Disney said in a statement. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
The decision comes after four days of talks between Disney leadership and Kimmel’s representatives. The crew of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was paid during the hiatus.
Although Kimmel will be back on ABC come Tuesday night, the late show won’t return to Sinclair’s ABC affiliates. Sinclair Broadcasting owns, operates or provides services to 178 television stations in 81 markets, including 30 ABC affiliate stations.
“Beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming,” a Sinclair spokesperson told TheWrap. “Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return.”
