Benny Johnson on Jimmy Kimmel [WATCH]

Rob Finnerty and commentator Benny Johnson said Monday that the media landscape is undergoing a rapid shift after remarks by ABC host Jimmy Kimmel about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk drew sharp criticism and prompted major affiliates to remove his program from their schedules.

“Benny, this is just a monumental shake up to the media landscape. And on Monday, after all the questions we’ve gotten from the audience about Charlie Kirk and what happens now, where do we go from here? Clearly, things are changing, and it’s going to start with the media, where a reckoning is happening right now, isn’t it?” Finnerty asked during the Newsmax segment.

Johnson responded at length, accusing Kimmel of misrepresenting the motive behind Kirk’s killing and of using his platform to assign blame to conservatives.

“Yes, absolutely, Rob, and thank you for having me on I want to establish what Jimmy Kimmel did here, because the left, much like how they are trying to hide the fact that Charlie was politically assassinated by a Tran Tifa, far left wing sociopath who hated Charlie and hated conservatives, and so with hate in his heart, he inscribed Antifa and far left wing LGBT messaging on bullets and sent them down range to murder Charlie Kirk,” Johnson said.

“They have tried to cover that up, and part of the cover up was using Jimmy Kimmel’s platform to say that Charlie was killed by a MAGA conservative,” he continued.

“Now, left wingers are trying now to rewrite history and say that Jimmy Kimmel was fired for a joke that he told,” Johnson said.

“This is not a joke.”

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“Jimmy Kimmel said that Charlie Kirk deserved his assassination,” Johnson added.

“Jimmy Kimmel said that Charlie Kirk shares in the blame for his own assassination.”

“This is the commentary that Jimmy Kimmel made. It is utterly and completely indefensible,” Johnson said, and then he accused Kimmel of further mocking Kirk and President Trump.

“Jimmy Kimmel went on to then make fun of Charlie Kirk and make fun of President Trump, saying that he did not care about or love his friend.”

“And so I want to establish that this is not a joke. This is a lie,” Johnson said.

Johnson framed his charges in regulatory terms, pointing to ABC’s broadcast obligations.

“Now, ABC has a lavish broadcast license that is granted to them by the American taxpayer. The American taxpayer pays money so that ABC News can be broadcast freely into millions of American homes,” he said.

“They have a responsibility to broadcast true information in the public interest. It is a legally binding contract, and so by Jimmy Kimmel misinforming his audience, not only does he victim blame Charlie Kirk and say that Charlie Kirk deserved to get politically assassinated, he’s also lying to his audience, thus creating an unsafe environment for other conservatives, other Turning Point activists, exactly for you or me.”

“He’s saying that we deserved it, and more importantly, that if you go and kill a Trump supporter, that he will cover for you, that the left can go murder Trump supporters, and Jimmy Kimmel will go and whitewash it for you so that you don’t get any blame, and his side doesn’t get any blame,” Johnson said.

“That’s what Kimmel did that accelerates the dangerous atmosphere that the left has created right now. It continues the atmosphere that got Charlie killed, and so what Jimmy Kimmel did was indefensible.”

Johnson described his response after viewing the clip and said he contacted an FCC official.

“Now I saw that clip, and I got enraged, and I said, we are going to call Brendan Carr and get him on my show, and we’re going to talk about this,” Johnson said.

“Brennan car is the FCC commissioner. Brennan car came on my show and said that ABC is going to have is going to have hell to pay for this. That is a truly sick comment, and at the FCC, they’re not going to tolerate it.”

Johnson said his team then reached out to local broadcast affiliates.

“Then we went and we called the local stations, the broadcast affiliates. And my team has been calling broadcast affiliates all day long,” he said.

“Do you agree? Do you agree with this? And the broadcast affiliates to their great credit, Nexstar and Sinclair both said, No, we are going to pull Jimmy Kimmel from the air. We’re going to take him out of 37 million American households.”

Johnson asserted the de-scheduling would harm Kimmel’s audience and force ABC’s hand.

“Jimmy Kimmel show only does like 2 million views a night. So what is that going to do to his ratings? Of course, it’s going to collapse them,” he said.

“And then at that point, ABC News had no choice but to bow their head to suspend Jimmy Kimmel and to grant in the name of Charlie Kirk, the single greatest cultural victory for the right in a generation.”

Jimmy Kimmel lied about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, blamed him for his own murder, and mocked him on air. The line was crossed.

Thanks to FCC pressure and Nexstar and Sinclair pulling him from millions of homes, his platform is destroyed. He’s finished. Will never recover.… pic.twitter.com/IV2goaiSM5

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 18, 2025

Finnerty and Johnson framed the sequence—public outcry, contact with the FCC, affiliate pullbacks and ABC’s suspension—as evidence of intensified scrutiny on media commentary.