President Donald Trump offered another conflicting justification for talk show host Jimmy Kimmel's indefinite suspension, and CNN's Kaitlan Collins highlighted a question he hasn't yet been asked on the matter.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened Wednesday to revoke the licenses of ABC affiliates over Kimmel's comments about Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin, and parent company Disney pulled him off the airwaves later that night, and Trump praised his suspension during a press conference in Great Britain.
"He said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk, and Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person," Trump told reporters. “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.”
CNN's Wolf Blitzer found those comments "significant," saying the president had not commented on Kimmel's remarks – which Carr said Thursday were an attempt to "directly mislead the American public" about Kirk's assassination – and Collins agreed.
"Those were the issueshe listed first," Collins said. "He did bring up Charlie Kirk after that, sayingthat he said bad things about Charlie Kirk. That's whatthat he said, 'bad things about Charlie Kirk.' That's whatinvoked the British primeminister then paying tribute to Charlie Kirk's legacy and to howhorrible his assassination wasand how he thought of President Trump immediately, knowing howthey were close."
Collins noted that Trump has been targeting late-night talk show hosts and Kimmel, in particular, for months.
"But on theaspect itself, when it comes to Jimmy Kimmel, I mean,it's not that ABC just fired him out of the blue,ended his show out of the blue," Collins said. "This came after we heard hoursbefore that yesterday from Brendan Carr, the chair of theFCC, in an interview with a Trump ally, saying that, essentially, ABC needed to to payattention. He was saying thatthey could do this, and therewas a quote he said, 'the hardway or we can do it the easyway.'"
"Obviously they'reimplying with that pressure onABC was going to look like," Collins added. "Thepresident's own comments longbefore these Charlie Kirkcomments came from Jimmy Kimmel, the president said after [CBS] canceled the Stephen Colbert Show that he believed Jimmy Kimmel was next. He repeated that again in Augustfrom the Oval Office, and sothat was obviously a key issuehere."
Collins zoomed in on one question she would like the president to address.
"Key questions aboutwhether or not the presidentknew about this pressure thatthe FCC chair was putting on ABC when it came to Jimmy Kimmel'sprogram," Collins said. "But unfortunately, thatis not something that the president was asked about at any great length in that pressconference just now."