Kimmel on comeback episode: Trump's effort to cancel show 'backfired bigly'

Jimmy Kimmel said upon his late-night TV show returning to air that President Donald Trump's effort to cancel the show "backfired bigly."

“I have no illusions about changing anyone’s mind, but I do want to make something clear, because it’s important to me as a human, and that is, you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” Kimmel said during his opening monologue on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Tuesday, The Hill news outlet reported.

“Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what was obviously a deeply disturbed individual,” he continued. “That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make. But I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear or maybe both, and for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way.”

ABC announced Monday that it had reached an agreement with Kimmel to put his show back on the air starting Tuesday after deciding last week to suspend it indefinitely. The situation arose after the host delivered a monologue in which he claimed Trump's "MAGA gang" was trying to politically benefit from conservative political activist Charlie Kirk's killing.

Kimmel said during his monologue, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Kirk, 31, was assassinated while speaking at a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University by alleged shooter Tyler Robinson, 22, whose mother told police that he "had started to lean more to the left," according to a charging document.

Kimmel then criticized Trump and Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr, both of whom celebrated Kimmel's suspension after Carr appeared to threaten unspecified regulatory action against ABC and local affiliates.

The TV show host said he agreed with Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz’s remarks, saying that Carr sounded like a mobster with his threat to “do this the easy way or the hard way” in comments regarding Disney and ABC affiliates.

“Although I don’t know, you want to hear a mob boss make a threat like that, you have to hide a microphone in a deli and park outside in a van with a tape recorder all night long,” Kimmel said.

“This genius said it on a podcast. Brendan Carr is the most embarrassing car Republicans have embraced since this one,” he added, showing a picture of a Tesla Cybertruck emblazoned with “Trump.”

Kimmel said that the effort by the FCC to get his show taken off the air was “un-American,” and showed past clips and quotes of Carr and Trump defending free speech, then played a recent video of Trump saying Kimmel had “no ratings.”

“Well, I do tonight,” Kimmel said. “He tried his best to cancel me, instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show. That backfired bigly. He might have to release the Epstein files to distract us from this now.”

Kimmel also tearfully acknowledged Erika Kirk’s speech at her husband's memorial service in Arizona on Sunday, where she said she forgave his accused killer.

“That is an example we should follow. If you believe in the teachings of Jesus, as I do. There it was. That’s it. A selfless act of grace, forgiveness from a grieving widow that touched me deeply,” said Kimmel, who is Catholic. “And if there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that, not this.”

Following ABC's announcement of the show's return, two of the largest local news providers in the U.S., Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting Group, said they would continue to preempt Kimmel's show.