After a major uproar over the cancellation of his show, ABC’s parent company Disney decided to reverse course and bring Jimmy Kimmel back. The return was eagerly anticipated but if Trump and his critics expected Kimmel to tone down his mockery of him, they would be disappointed, as you can see from this segment that aired last night as Kimmel did not pull his punches. I thought that he hit pretty much the right note.

Jimmy Kimmel returned to air on Tuesday night, calling government threats to silence comedians “anti-American”, as he broke his silence about the suspension from ABC which ignited a national debate over free speech and outcry over the bullying tactics of the Trump administration.
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Later in the monologue, Kimmel hit out against Trump, saying that the president “did his best to cancel me” but that “instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show.”

Kimmel added that “the president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs. Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”

“One thing I did learn from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern, is that a government threat to silence a comedian the President doesn’t like is anti-American,” he added.

Trump, who had gloated in the immediate aftermath of Kimmel’s indefinite suspension, is clearly mad about his return.

Around an hour before Kimmel’s return on Tuesday, Trump lashed out at Kimmel and criticized ABC for allowing the comedian’s show back on air.

“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back” Trump wrote on Tuesday night. “The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there.”

“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” Trump added.

“Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative,” Trump said, seemingly referring to the settlement he reached with ABC News last year in a defamation lawsuit Trump filed against the network.

This is why you should never try to appease Trump. He is like a blackmailer who is never satisfied and keeps coming back and demanding more. Companies like Disney with deep pockets should fight him all the way. Of course, being a major corporation, the bosses there are likely to be sympathetic to Trump but at the same time, they have to be forced to realize that they cannot afford to alienate too many of their viewers either.

The gangster-like rhetoric of the FCC chair Brendan Carr in threatening Disney resulted in huge outpouring of indignation from people across the political spectrum. Kimmel predicted that Trump’s efforts to have him removed would backfire.

After playing a clip of Trump ridiculing his low ratings, the host pointed out that the row had brought huge attention to his comeback, and sent back some ridicule in return.

“He tried his best to cancel me,” Kimmel said. “Instead he forced millions of people to watch the show. That backfired bigly. He might have to release the Epstein files to distract us from this now.”

Preliminary data suggests that he was right. A large number of people tuned in for Kimmel’s return.

The monologue Jimmy Kimmel delivered on his return to late-night television had been seen nearly 19 million times on Google’s YouTube and Meta’s (META.O) Instagram by early Wednesday afternoon.

Kimmel’s Tuesday night monologue had 13.3 million views on YouTube and 5.6 million on Instagram, as of 1:30 pm Eastern. Broadcast ratings for Tuesday’s show were not yet available.

The chances are that people who had never watched his show before tuned in because of all the furor, so he may have actually gained viewers despite the decision by some local affiliates owned by right-wing networks like Sinclair and Nexstar to not carry his show. If his ratings remain high, they may be forced to reconsider because they will be losing advertising revenue and money is the god they worship.