Megyn Kelly blasted Jimmy Kimmel’s return to ABC after he was suspended for his monologue on Charlie Kirk — and reminded fans of the late-night host’s blackface controversies along with her own.
Some conservatives had called on ABC to bring back the notoriously progressive late-night comedian, defending his right to free speech.
But Kelly argued that Kimmel — who faced backlash over his use of blackface — didn’t defend her when NBC canceled her show following controversial comments she made on the topic.
“Remember when I was cancelled & held back tears on the air & Kimmel stood up for me saying ‘All she did was ask a Q about blackface Halloween costumes, whereas I, Jimmy, have actually worn blackface many times & still have a show! This is wrong!’” Kelly wrote Wednesday in a sarcastic post on X.
“Me neither,” Kelly said. “F him & his self pity.”
Representatives for Kelly and Kimmel did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
Kimmel has faced backlash over his past use of blackface to impersonate celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and basketball player Karl Malone during his time on Comedy Central’s “The Man Show” from 1999 to 2003.
In 2020, a video clip of Kimmel in full-body black makeup and a basketball uniform using an exaggerated dialect to impersonate Malone resurfaced and gained traction online.
A few weeks later, Kimmel issued an apology, writing: “There is nothing more important to me than your respect, and I apologize to those who were genuinely hurt or offended by the makeup I wore or the words I spoke.”
He called his past use of blackface “embarrassing,” adding that he didn’t immediately address it because he believed it would be “celebrated as a victory by those who equate apologies with weakness and cheer for leaders who use prejudice to divide us.”
“I believe that I have evolved and matured over the last 20-plus years, and I hope that is evident to anyone who watches my show,” Kimmel said. “I know that this will not be the last I hear of this and that it will be used again to try to quiet me.”
Kelly, meanwhile, was fired from NBC in 2018 for her own blackface controversy, after she defended its use in Halloween costumes on-air.
“But what is racist?” Kelly said. “Truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface at Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”
She apologized to NBC staffers later that day and issued a tearful apology the following day, but it wasn’t enough to save her show “Megyn Kelly Today,” which was promptly canceled.
Kimmel was suspended “indefinitely” from ABC last week after he said right-wingers were politicizing Kirk’s assassination — and seemingly implied that the killer might have been a MAGA conservative.
During his show’s opening monologue last week, Kimmel said: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
The day after Kimmel’s monologue, court documents were filed that showed that the mother of Tyler Robinson, the accused killer, told investigators that “her son had become more political and had started to lean more to the left.”
During his return to “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Tuesday, the late-night host failed to apologize for his comments.
