New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdnai backed out of a town hall planned for Thursday with the city’s local ABC station over the Disney-owned network’s suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
Mamdani was scheduled to speak with WABC News, but he said ABC’s decision to indefinitely suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” represented too grave a threat to free speech to reward the network with his appearance.
“ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air after the FCC sought to pressure them,” Mamdani said during a news conference on Monday, according to amNY. “The message that it sends to each and every American across this country is a message the First Amendment is no longer a right that can be counted on, but rather that it is government which will determine what should and should not be discussed, what can and cannot be spoken. And we cannot normalize these kinds of acts nor offenses. These must be the basis upon which we act.”
ABC News did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
Mamdani became the latest in a series of celebrity boycotts of Disney and its products in light of Kimmel’s suspension, and one of the first to affect ABC’s news division. Musicians Sarah McLachlan and Jewel refused to perform at the premiere of the ABC News documentary “Lilith Fair” on Sunday, citing the decision, with McLachlan telling attendees that the artists wanted to “stand in solidarity in support of free speech.”
Kimmel was suspended last week after he joked that “the MAGA gang” was trying to politicize the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s death. The joke prompted the ire of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, a Donald Trump acolyte who warned Disney that it could “do this the easy way or the hard way,” an implicit threat of an investigation.
“It is not the government’s job to bully talk show hosts off of the air,” Mamdani said. “It is not the government’s job to tell us what we can and cannot talk about.”
The move prompted local station owners Nexstar and Sinclair to threaten to preempt Kimmel unless he apologized over his remarks, leading Disney to suspend the show. Kimmel and the company have been discussing ways to bring the show back since the Wednesday suspension, though his show’s status was unclear as of Monday afternoon.
Since then, hundreds of Hollywood creatives have blasted the company’s decision. More than 400 stars — including Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, some stars of Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building” and more — signed a letter with the American Civil Liberties Union that called the decision a “dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation.”
“Lost” creator Damon Lindelof also vowed not to work with Disney again unless Kimmel is reinstated, and actresses Cynthia Nixon and Tatiana Maslany (the star of Marvel’s “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law”) and radio host Howard Stern have urged boycotts of Disney’s subscription services Disney+ and Hulu.
