'Not nodding in agreement': CNN guest shuts down Heritage Foundation podcaster over Kimmel

A pair of podcasters clashed Friday morning on CNN over President Donald Trump's administration pressuring ABC to drop late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves.

The network's parent company Disney indefinitely suspended Kimmel after Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair, the two biggest local TV operators that each have mergers up for Federal Communications Commission approval, pressured ABC to end "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" over his comments about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

"Ultimately, ABC had the call to make," said Virginia Allen, who hosts two podcasts for the Heritage Foundation's "Daily Signal" website. "We're going to back him no matter what, and they chose not to because they saw it as a losing issue because they saw Kimmel as a liability than an asset."

"CNN This Morning" host Audie Cornish cut in to ask whether the pressure came from the Trump administration or the public, and Allen quickly blamed public pressure for the move.

"I do think, regardless of political viewpoint, I think the public recognizes that it is inappropriate to go on television less than a week after someone was killed and to make comments that are not only really derogatory in some ways, but, quite frankly, also very misleading, as to the facts of the case," Allen said, "and I think that's what so many Americans took issue with, and just thought was very insensitive at a time when many Americans are truly grieving, and not only grieving the loss of Charlie Kirk, but grieving the fact that someone who championed free speech, wanted to have dialog and conversations ultimately was killed because of that."

Cornish noted that Kirk's memorial and funeral were schedule for this weekend, and she turned to New York Times podcaster Lulu Garcia-Navarro and inaccurately noted that she had been nodding.

"No, not nodding in agreement," Garcia-Navarro said. "I think, listen, I'm going to give a little bit of a civics lesson, which is this: In a democracy, you need to have free speech... It's not about the free market, it's about explicit threats from the FCC chairman that were acted on because they have business in front of the FCC."

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr – who wrote a chapter on reshaping the agency he now leads for the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 blueprint – threatened to revoke the broadcasting licenses for stations that aired Kimmel's show hours before Disney pulled the plug.

"The FCC is incredibly powerful," Garcia-Navarro added. "It grants licenses, it actually says what deals can go together. We've already seen a version of this with the Paramount deal, where basically ... the parent company of CBS look at the president and say we're going to pay you over a suit that you have, and lo and behold, right after –"

Cornish cut in at that point, before Garcia-Navarro was presumably going to point out that CBS canceled "The Stephen Colbert" show shortly after settling Trump's defamation suit.

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