White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt joined Fox News' Kayleigh McEnany on her new show "Saturday in America," where she discussed former President Barack Obama's comments about "Jimmy Kimmel Live" being indefinitely suspended.
"With all due respect to former President Obama, he has no idea what he's talking about," Leavitt asserted. "The decision to fire Jimmy Kimmel and to cancel his show came from executives at ABC."
"After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn't like," Obama posted to X on Thursday.
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"This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent - and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it," he added.
Leavitt assured viewers that ABC's decision to suspend Kimmel was not at the behest of the White House, and that President Donald Trump did not pressure the network to do so.
"And how do I know that, Kayleigh?" she asked. "Because I was with the President when this news broke in the United Kingdom."
The press secretary claimed that she was the one who broke the news to Trump during their U.K. visit, and that at the time, the president "had no idea this was happening."
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"It was a decision that was made by ABC because Jimmy Kimmel chose to knowingly lie to his audience on his program about the death of a highly respected man when our country is in a state of mourning. That was a decision that he made, and he is now facing a consequence for that decision and for that lie," she contended.
Disney, ABC's parent company, confirmed to Fox News Digital on Wednesday that Kimmel's show, which is based in Los Angeles, would be pulled "indefinitely."
Nexstar Media Group, which owns hundreds of television stations, announced in a press release it would preempt Kimmel's show on its ABC affiliates starting Wednesday night "for the foreseeable future" and would replace it with other programming over his comments about Kirk's alleged assassin. Sinclair Broadcast Group followed suit.
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"Mr. Kimmel's comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views or values of the local communities in which we are located," Nexstar's broadcasting chief, Andrew Alford, said in a press release.
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On Monday, Kimmel accused conservatives of reaching "new lows" in trying to pin a left-wing ideology on 22-year-old suspect Tyler Robinson, even though prosecutors reaffirmed those ties in Tuesday's indictment.
Leavitt noted that while Trump is "pleased with this decision," he had nothing to do with the show being pulled. She added that ABC's choice likely came down to business, as Kimmel's ratings were "in the gutter."
Fox News Digital reached out to representatives of Obama for comment.
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Fox News' Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
