CHEQUERS, England (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday praised ABC’s decision to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live” off the air, saying the late-night television host had said “a horrible thing” about assassinated political activist Charlie Kirk.
Walt-Disney owned ABC said on Wednesday it was pulling the show after Kimmel’s comments that conservatives were using Kirk’s killing to score political points.
“Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk,” Trump said during a news conference with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Kirk, a close conservative ally of Trump, was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Sept. 10 at a university campus in Utah, where state prosecutors on Tuesday vowed to seek the death penalty against his accused killer.
“Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago. So, you know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent,” Trump said.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Brendan O’Brien; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Rami Ayyub)
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