Whoopi Goldberg kicked off today’s episode of ABC’s The View by addressing the elephant in the room: “Did y’all really think we weren’t going to talk about Jimmy Kimmel? I mean, have you watched the show over the last 29 seasons? No one silences us.”
Last week, The View drew speculation when the daytime talker failed to address the suspension by ABC of Kimmel’s late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live! (Friday’s episode was taped on Thursday). Today, Goldberg explained the show’s decision at the time: “When the news broke last week about Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, we took a breath to see if Jimmy was going to say anything about it first.” She added that the show took the same approach when news of the upcoming cancellation of CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert broke.
Goldberg also slammed the FCC’s apparent role in Kimmel’s suspension. “Someone can say something they shouldn’t and get taken off the air,” she said, “but the government cannot apply pressure to force someone to be silenced.” She continued, “We talk about freedom of speech a lot because we are always in somebody’s mess because somebody has decided that we have said something that’s offensive. 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.”
Co-host Ana Navarro thanked View viewers for “demanding truth and courage from us. You deserve it.” She decried the use of Charlie Kirk to silence debate when Kirk himself was a free speech advocate. “I have to tell you this,” Navarro continued. “I lived through a right-wing dictatorship in Nicaragua and I lived through a left-wing dictatorship in Nicaragua. This is what dictators and authoritarians do. It does not matter the ideology. At first, they come for people with big platforms, they silence the press, but then they come for all of us because their intent is to scare us into silence and self-censorship.”
Conservative co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin added, “The First Amendment is the first for a reason, because you need to be able to hold those in power accountable.”
Since The View’s discussion, Disney and ABC have announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! will return to the network’s lineup starting Tuesday night. “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,” ABC said in a statement. “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 announcement marks the end of Kimmel’s indefinite suspension and is being celebrated in Hollywood and among viewers as a win for free speech and creative expression.
