Bill Maher calls out Jimmy Kimmel for not acknowledging he defended him during ABC suspension

Bill Maher ripped Jimmy Kimmel for “thanking everyone” but him after Maher publicly defended the late-night host when ABC suspended his show.

Maher, 69, told Michael Rapaport on Monday’s episode of his “Club Random” podcast that he was among the celebs who slammed Disney-owned ABC for pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air on Sept. 17 after Kimmel falsely claimed Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, was a Trump supporter.

But after Kimmel returned on Sept. 23, Maher noticed he wasn’t among those the host thanked for standing by him.

“Look, Jimmy apparently doesn’t like me too much anymore because he thanked everybody but me. And I was adamant — adamant — about supporting him that week and the next week,” Maher said.

Maher said he didn’t “agree” with Kimmel’s comments about Robinson, but stressed “he has the right to be wrong,” which is why he defended him.

“I can’t lie and say I think what he said was accurate,” Maher added. “But I was adamant he shouldn’t be thrown off the air. He did a great show. I went on and on.”

Maher then criticized Kimmel’s format and other late-night shows as “very predictable,” arguing their hosts are “ideologically captured by one side.”

“Him and hosts like that, quite frankly, they’re all quite similar in this regard – is that they’re ideologically captured by one side,” he said.

“It’s just not what I do, what I’m doing. And so, there’s a reason why half the country feels insulted by them [hosts] and is turned off to them, because it’s just one very predictable point of view.”

Maher added that Kimmel’s suspension stemmed from being “far in the bubble.”

“And this proves that it’s often not completely accurate because that was not really a smart thing to say, that this guy who shot Charlie Kirk was on the MAGA team,” Maher added.

‘Because that’s just something that the Bluesky crowd told themselves, and if you’re that far in the bubble, where you don’t really see both sides and you don’t, you’re gonna believe that Bluesky point of view.”

Disney briefly suspended ABC’s Kimmel after he falsely implied Robinson belonged to the “MAGA gang,” despite reports, later confirmed in the following day’s indictment, that the 22-year-old suspect had left-wing beliefs.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel told his viewers during the controversial segment. 

Kimmel’s baseless claim sparked FCC scrutiny and widespread backlash, leading Disney to suspend his show.

But, less than a week later, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was back on the air to record ratings — 2.3 million viewers within 48 hours and 6.5 million on Sept. 25, the show’s biggest audience in more than a decade.

However, the surge was short-lived, with ratings subsequently declining by 64% two days later.

with Post wires