New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani has pulled out of a televised town hall on an ABC affiliate station, citing the company’s decision to suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
During a Monday morning news conference, the Democratic candidate said his decision comes in defense of freedom of speech rights.
“We simply cannot accept any capitulation to Donald Trump’s attacks on our fundamental freedoms,” Mamdani said. “Now is the time for leadership that fights back with action, and collectively, we must use every tool at our disposal to send a message to Washington and corporate powers alike: Our freedom to speech is not a bargaining chip.”
Mamdani was scheduled to appear on WABC-TV on Thursday for a town hall that had been planned over the previous weeks, according to amNewYork, which first reported the Democratic candidate’s decision. The event is not one of the two general election debates that are scheduled to take place in October — one on Oct. 16 co-hosted by WNBC, Telemundo and POLITICO, and another on Oct. 22 co-hosted by NY1, WNYC/Gothamist, and The City.
Mamdani told amNewYork that in light of his decision to pull out of Thursday’s event, his campaign is “considering a number of town halls to come.”
“ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air after the FCC sought to pressure them,” Mamdani added. “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.”
Just hours after Mamdani made his announcement, Disney announced that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” would be returning to the air Tuesday.
“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,” The Walt Disney Company wrote in a statement shared with NOTUS. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. 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.”
Mamdani’s campaign did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether the Thursday town hall would proceed after Disney’s announcement.
ABC first suspended the late-night show hosted by comedian Jimmy Kimmel indefinitely on Wednesday, just hours after the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, threatened to take action against the network and the owners of its local affiliate stations over a recent segment concerning the death of Charlie Kirk.
Within hours, Nexstar, which owns and operates dozens of local stations, preempted Kimmel’s show “for the foreseeable future.”
“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” Nexstar’s President Andrew Alford said in a release. “Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.”
Notably, Nexstar is currently undergoing the FCC approval process for a more than $6-billion acquisition of news media organization Tegna Inc., which would make it the largest owner of local news stations in the country.
The Trump administration has touted Kimmel’s suspension as a win over the past week, with the president repeatedly vocalizing his interest in cracking down on more media organizations critical of his administration.
“I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me. I get 97% negative, and yet I won it easily,” Trump said, referring to the 2024 election, the day following Kimmel’s suspension. “I won all seven swing states, popular vote, I won everything. And they’re 97% against, they give me wholly bad publicity. … I mean, they’re getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”