ABC’s late-night host, Jimmy Kimmel, is firing back at the “Angry Orange,” President Trump, for calling him a “bum” and calling on ABC to fire him. 

Mr. Trump ratcheted up the pressure on ABC this week, calling for ABC to lose its broadcast license and for Mr. Kimmel’s firing. The White House also released a statement detailing ABC News’s “long, rich tradition of peddling lies, conspiracies, and outright opinion thinly veiled as fact” the day after an ABC News reporter asked pointed questions of Mr. Trump and the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, in the Oval Office, which enraged the president.

For his part, Mr. Kimmel attacked the president on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. During his monologue on Thursday night, the comedian called Mr. Trump “the angry orange,” joked, “I would like to welcome our viewers watching from around the country, all around the world, a special hello to those of you who are watching from the White House — and you know who you are!”

Mr. Kimmel noted the president posted his call for ABC to fire him at 12:49 in the morning, “eleven minutes after the show ended on the East Coast.”

“Which is nice, he watches us live. Hi, Mr. President! Thanks for watching us on TV instead of on YouTube. We appreciate that. And I tell you, it’s viewers like you who keep us on the air, ironically,” Mr. Kimmel said. 

(Despite its title, “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” the show is not broadcast live. It is taped in the afternoon and played out later at night. Friday shows are now reruns due to budget cuts.)

On Thursday night, Mr. Kimmel lambasted Mr. Trump’s repeated calls for his firing, saying, “I have honestly lost count now of how many times the president has demanded I be pulled off the air. I mean, talk about a snowflake, this guy. Every five weeks, he flips out and wants me fired. If you got this many threats from a neighbor, you’d have no problem getting a restraining order. The judge would be like, ‘Yeah, sounds like the guy’s nuts.’”

“It’s disturbing. You know, and you’ve done this before. You tried to get me fired in September. It didn’t work,” he said. “Mr. President, I admire your tenacity. If you’re watching tonight, which I presume you are, how about this? I’ll go when you go. We’ll be a team. Let’s ride off into the sunset together like Butch Cassidy and the sun-tanned kid. And until then, if I may borrow a phrase from you: quiet piggy.”

Mr. Kimmel’s jab at the president included several references to his suspension in September after he claimed a “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” By the time of his comment, officials, including Utah’s governor, had said publicly that the suspect held left-wing views and a transgender lover.

After that comment, the two largest station groups in America, Nexstar and Sinclair, said they would preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” over the late-night host’s comments, which they said were insensitive. 

The decision to preempt the show was cast by left-wing commentators and Mr. Kimmel as Nexstar and Sinclair caving to pressure from the Trump Administration. Before the call was made to preempt Mr. Kimmel’s show, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, said broadcasters “can find ways to take action on Mr. Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Nexstar needs a waiver from the FCC to complete its acquisition of another station group, Tegna, which would increase the number of local stations it owns beyond what current regulations allow.

Mr. Carr’s comment, which was made hours before Sinclair and Nexstar announced their decision to preempt Mr. Kimmel’s show, was seen as a threat of future government action. (Mr. Carr has denied he was making a threat and that he merely meant an individual might file a complaint against the broadcasters, which the FCC would be statutorily obligated to investigate.)

Mr. Kimmel’s return to the airwaves saw more than six million viewers tune in, marking the highest ratings he has received in more than a decade. However, the ratings boost after his triumphal return quickly faded. The next day, only 1.7 million viewers tuned in, marking a roughly 70 percent drop, one of his lowest-rated shows in some time, and the show has continued to perform poorly.

In the third quarter of 2025, Mr. Kimmel averaged 1.85 million viewers. That puts him in second place behind CBS’s Stephen Colbert, who averaged 2.84 million viewers during the same period. Mr. Colbert’s show, despite higher ratings than its competitors at ABC and NBC,  is being canceled in May, with unnamed network executives telling media reporters that “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is losing $40 million a year.

Mr. Kimmel’s ratings in 2025 represent a significant decrease from 2015, when he averaged 2.4 million viewers. But he has more power in Hollywood than Mr. Colbert and close personal ties with senior Disney executives, perhaps contributing to his staying power.