Trump steps up attacks on ABC and Jimmy Kimmel
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump stepped up his attacks against ABC and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday, urging the network to “get the bum off the air” in a social media post sent shortly after the comic’s latest episode ended.
The president this week had also expressed anger at the network’s chief White House correspondent, Mary Bruce, for questions she asked in an Oval Office meeting, which his press staff followed with a 17-point memo listing grievances against ABC News.
Trump’s latest attack against Kimmel came two months after ABC temporarily suspended the comic for remarks made following the assassination of GOP activist Charlie Kirk. ABC lifted the suspension following a public outcry.
Kimmel’s show Wednesday night began with a blistering monologue about Trump, the first 10 minutes concentrated on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Congress’ vote this week to release more material from Epstein’s correspondence. He noted the country was carefully following the movements of “Hurricane Epstein.”
“We are ever closer to answering the question: What did the president know, and how old were these women when he knew it?” Kimmel said, riffing off a question Sen. Howard Baker Jr. asked about Richard Nixon during the Watergate saga in the 1970s.
Trump struck back in a Truth Social post sent at 12:49 a.m. Eastern. “Why does ABC Fake News keep Jimmy Kimmel, a man with NO TALENT and VERY POOR TELEVISION RATINGS, on the air? Why do the TV Syndicates put up with it?” Trump said. The latter was a reference to ABC affiliates, some of whom got the movement toward Kimmel’s brief suspension started in September by complaining about his Kirk content.
ABC said it would not comment about Trump’s statement on Kimmel, whose ratings saw a bump upon his return to the air in September. While Trump associated him with ABC News, Kimmel works for the network’s entertainment division.
Kimmel isn’t the only late-night comic to draw Trump’s ire lately. Over the weekend, he called for the firing of NBC’s Seth Meyers.
The Epstein case was one of three topics that ABC’s Bruce asked about in pointed questions during an Oval Office news conference Tuesday. The president called Bruce a “terrible reporter” and said he didn’t like her attitude. The Epstein story has clearly gotten under Trump’s skin. Late last week, Trump referred to a Bloomberg News reporter, Catherine Lucey, as “piggy” during a question-and-answer session on Air Force One.
On Wednesday, the White House press office released a letter outlining grievances against ABC News, some dating back to the president’s first term. “ABC ‘News’ is not journalism,” the press office said. “It’s a Democrat spin operation masquerading as a broadcast network.”
Among the complaints: George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate claim that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll, for which ABC’s parent Disney Corp. agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit; the network’s fact-checking of Trump during his 2024 presidential debate with Kamala Harris; and former ABC correspondent Terry Moran calling Trump aide Stephen Miller a “world-class hater.”
There was no immediate comment from ABC News about the criticism.
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.socia l