“We’re even”: Kimmel mocks Trump’s ABC lawsuit talk — and calls him a bully

Jimmy Kimmel didn’t wait long to answer President Donald Trump’s latest broadside. A day after “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” returned from a nearly weeklong suspension, the late-night host opened his Sept. 24 show by torching Trump’s threat to sue ABC for putting him back on the air.

“You can’t believe they gave me my job back?” Kimmel deadpanned, riffing on Trump’s Truth Social post. “I can’t believe we gave you your job back.”

Trump had warned that airing Kimmel puts ABC “in jeopardy” and hinted he’d “test ABC out on this,” boasting that a previous legal fight with the network over comments about E. Jean Carroll yielded a settlement.

“Only Donald Trump would try to prove he wasn’t threatening ABC by threatening ABC,” Kimmel cracked, to a roar from his studio audience.

The back-and-forth capped a whiplash week in which Kimmel’s show was yanked “indefinitely” after he said the “MAGA gang” was trying to spin the identity of Tyler Robinson, the suspect charged with killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk, “to score political points.” The comments set off a conservative firestorm, and FCC chair Brendan Carr publicly pushed ABC to act. Disney, ABC’s parent, called the remarks “ill-timed and thus insensitive,” a move that in turn triggered outrage from free-speech advocates who called the suspension government-pressured censorship.

Kimmel returned on Sept. 23 with an emotional monologue about why he keys on Trump so often. He revisited the point Wednesday night.

“I talk about Trump, more than anything, because he’s a bully,” he said. “I don’t like bullies. I played the clarinet in high school, OK? Donald Trump is an old-fashioned ’80s-movie-style bully, taking your lunch money. If you give it to him once, he’ll take it again.”

Then he pushed the metaphor into pop-culture shorthand:

“Rooting for this bully, I don’t care what side you’re on, is like rooting for Biff from ‘Back to the Future.’ I’m with Marty McFly.”

Trump, for his part, has insisted Kimmel’s time off was about “bad ratings” and even claimed the show was “CANCELLED.” Kimmel tossed that back at him, flashing the president’s poor approval numbers on screen.

“He does know bad ratings,” Kimmel said. “He has some of the worst ratings any president has ever had.”

The host also addressed Trump’s claim that his audience is “gone.” Right on cue, someone in the theater shouted, “We’re right here, Jimmy!” Kimmel grinned and, in pure late-night cadence, snapped, “The freedom of speech is only for me.”

While Disney welcomed Kimmel back, the show still isn’t reaching everyone who wants to watch. Nexstar and Sinclair—the two giant station groups with dozens of ABC affiliates—have kept him off the air in parts of the country. Kimmel leaned into the absurdity.

“If you’re watching from one of those cities, please know that the person you are looking at right now is not me,” he joked, before thanking the TV gods that no one had preempted “The Golden Bachelor.”

The legal saber-rattling hangs over everything. Trump framed Kimmel’s jokes as an “illegal campaign contribution” and hinted at another lucrative dust-up with ABC, citing that earlier settlement tied to anchor George Stephanopoulos’ coverage of Carroll’s allegation. Kimmel’s response was to point out the paradox: the president says he’s not threatening ABC while threatening ABC—and celebrating the idea of hundreds of staffers losing their jobs “because he can’t take a joke.”

If Trump hoped suspension would silence his critic, the ratings suggest the opposite. ABC says Kimmel’s comeback monologue reached tens of millions across broadcast and online. Guests Ethan Hawke and Lisa Ann Walter joined the victory lap—Hawke calling the return “amazing,” Walter handing over a pasta dish for a host who’d been “out of work for a few days.”

The politics around it aren’t cooling off. Vice President JD Vance scolded Kimmel for not apologizing to Kirk’s family, even as he conceded parts of the monologue “were kind-hearted.” Carr, the FCC chair who helped turbocharge the initial backlash, later tried to frame the controversy as a matter between local affiliates and the network, but the threat of federal heat clearly left a mark.

Kimmel insists the point isn’t him, or even his show.

“This show is not important,” he told viewers. “What’s important is that we live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”

That’s the line he’s betting on: make the argument bigger than a feud with a president who loves a feud, keep the jokes sharp enough to land, and dare the censors—corporate or governmental—to prove his point.

For now, he’s still on the air, still swinging, and still painting Trump as the swaggering movie villain who can’t stop tripping over the punchline. Whether the threatened lawsuit ever materializes is anyone’s guess. But as Kimmel reminded him, when it comes to surprise comebacks, “We’re even.”

USA Today, CNN, the New York Times, and the Independent contributed to this report.