WEAPONIZATION: How Donald Trump tried to silence Jimmy Kimmel

WEAPONIZATION: How Donald Trump tried to silence Jimmy Kimmel

While the “Twitter files” have Republicans up in arms about censorship and the first amendment, little attention has been paid to the king of cancel culture, Donald Trump.

The twice-impeached former President’s ego was so bruised by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s digs that he tried to have the comedian censored.

According to multiple officials working in the administration at the time, Trump “was so upset by Kimmel’s comedic jabs” that he ordered White House staffers to complain to Disney executives and demand they do something.

The family-friendly amusement park titan is the parent company of ABC, which airs the popular late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live! 

Sources told Rolling Stone that the then-President wanted Kimmel to “tone down” his anti-Trump jokes, and his obsession with the host shocked those in the administration.

“I do not know to who[m], but it happened. Nobody thought it was going to change anything but DJT was focused on it so we had to do something…It was doing something, mostly, to say to [Trump], ‘Hey, we did this.’” 

During the first full year of his presidency, Trump was incensed at being the butt of Kimmel’s jokes.

The then-President was so enraged that he had staffers reach out to longtime Disney executive and lobbyist for the corporation, Richard Bates.


The attempt to pressure the senior executive failed but is an example of how Trump tried to wield his presidential powers for his own benefit.

An announcement by Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Ajit Pai, that they would be investigating Stephen Colbert over a joke he made on the Late Show in 2018 backs up allegations that pettiness and revenge topped the ex-President’s list of priorities while in the Oval Office.

Though the FCC declined to take up Trump’s vengeful vendetta, it didn’t stop the ex-President from trying.

“The then-president took enough of an interest in it to repeatedly ask aides for updates on if the FCC had made a decision yet,” sources said.

Consumed with narcissism, Trump ordered the White House staff and his legal team to look into bringing the Dept. of Justice in a retaliatory move against late-night pundits’ field day poking fun at him.

“Trump believed (wrongly) that shows like Kimmel’s and SNL had violated an obscure federal rule which mandates that broadcasters provide equal time to messages from candidates,” Rolling Stone wrote.

A snowflake’s gonna snowflake.

It was recently revealed during testimony by a senior trust and safety employee that Trump tried to get Twitter to remove a 2019 tweet by supermodel, Chrissy Teigen, for calling him a “pussy ass bitch,” .

Projection, deflection, and rejection – of anyone critical of the former President is the name of the Republican game.

As the right attempts to steer the narrative against the left, the proof is in the pudding.

Donald Trump used his position of power to harass, intimidate, and threaten those who exposed his ineptitude – weaponizing the federal government against American citizens who dared to call him out.

Original reporting by Asawin Suebsaeng, and Adam Rawnsley at Rolling Stone

Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick

Ty Ross

News journalist for Washington Press and Occupy Democrats.