Nearly a week after Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was indefinitely pulled off air, “The View” co-hosts addressed his suspension.
“Did y’all really think we weren’t going to talk about Jimmy Kimmel?” Whoopi Goldberg asked Monday morning — after multiple episodes avoiding the matter.
“I mean, have you watched the show over the last 29 seasons?” the EGOT winner, 69, continued.
“No one silences us.”
Goldberg explained that she and her co-hosts had taken “a breath” to see whether Kimmel would speak out regarding the scandal.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr revealed ABC’s ‘The View’ could be investigated after Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension.
Last Wednesday, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was put on pause following the comedian’s monologue about Charlie Kirk’s death and President Trump’s reaction to the 31-year-old’s Sept. 10 murder.
ABC pulled the series after TV station conglomerate Nexstar Media expressed a “strong object[ion]” to Kimmel’s statements — and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr threatened to launch an official probe into the 57-year-old and his show.
It will return to air on Tuesday following talks between the host and the network.
Goldberg railed against him being “indefinitely pre-empted” on Monday, saying, “You can not like [the] show and it can go off the air. Someone can say something they shouldn’t and get taken off the air. But the government cannot apply pressure to force someone to be silenced.”
Ana Navarro chimed in, “I don’t understand how in this country, where the First Amendment was made to the constitution to guarantee freedom of the press and freedom of speech, how the government itself is using its weight and power to bully and scare people into silence.Whoopi Goldberg and her “View” co-hosts finally addressed Jimmy Kimmel’s show being indefinitely suspended. Pictures: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File“This is what dictators and authoritarians do,” the 53-year-old, who “lived through a right-wing dictatorship in Nicaragua and … a left-wing dictatorship in Nicaragua,” added. “It does not matter, the ideology.”
Alyssa Farrah Griffin agreed with her colleagues, saying, “The First Amendment is the first for a reason because you need to be able to hold those in power accountable.”
After discussing the headlines with co-hosts Joy Behar, Sara Haines and Sunny Hostin, Goldberg noted that they “talk about freedom of speech a lot” on their show, which has been running since 1997.
“We are always in somebody’s mess because somebody has decided that we have said something that’s offensive,” she said. “But we fight for everybody’s right to have freedom of speech because it means my speech is free, it means your speech is free.”
Page Six reported last Thursday that the ladies hosting “The View” — which airs, like Kimmel’s eponymous show, on ABC — had not been told “not to discuss it.”
source told us the women would “not be silenced.”
Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon have also spoken out in defense of Kimmel since the news broke.
Colbert, 61, announced in July that “The Late Show” franchise is coming to an end after 33 years, which Trump, 79, celebrated via Truth Social at the time — while calling for Kimmel to be “next.”
He wrote the same of Meyers and Fallon, both 51, last week, calling them “total losers” with “horrible” ratings.
Howard Stern is the latest to clap back at ABC, with the 71-year-old shock jock blasting the network’s “ridiculous” decision and boycotting by canceling his Disney+ subscription.
“When the government begins to interfere, when the government says, ‘I’m not pleased with you, so we’re gonna orchestrate a way to silence you,’ it’s the wrong direction for our country,” he told listeners Monday.
