Missed Kimmel’s return? Here’s a transcript of his monologue

By Luciana Lopez, CNN

(CNN) — Jimmy Kimmel returned to his late night show on Tuesday night after a suspension amid pressure by the Trump administration and a furor over Kimmel’s remarks about the killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Kimmel delivered an opening monologue – occasionally choking up – that ranged across everything from jokes to the importance of the First Amendment.

Here’s what Kimmel said.

“Anyway, as I was saying before I was interrupted, if you’re just joining us, we’re preempting your regularly scheduled encore episode of ‘Celebrity Family Feud’ to bring you this special report. I’m happy to be here tonight with you. Please be seated. I’m not sure who had a weirder 48 hours: me or the CEO of Tylenol. It’s been overwhelming. I’ve heard from a lot of people over the last six days. I’ve heard from all the people in the world over the last six days. Anyone I have ever met has reached out 10 or 11 times. Weird characters from my past, or the guy who fired me from my first radio job in Seattle, where we are not airing tonight by the way! Sorry, Seattle. His name is Larry.”

“In 1989, Larry tried to force me to do a bit called ‘Jokes for donuts’ where people would call in with a joke and I would give them donuts. I refused to do it and then I made a lot of fun of Larry for suggesting it, and eventually Larry fired me and I had to move back in with my parents. But even he wrote in to cheer me up. Thank you, Larry.”

“And I want to thank everyone who checked in. It would take all week to list all of them, but some that I do especially want to mention are my fellow late night talk show hosts: my friend Stephen Colbert, who found himself in this predicament, my friends Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver, Conan O’Brien, James Corden, Arsenio, Kathy, Wanda, Chelsea. Even Jay reached out.”

“I heard from late night hosts in other countries, from Ireland and from Germany. The guy in Germany offered me a job. Can you imagine? This country has become so authoritarian the Germans are like, “Come here. Cut loose.” My boyhood idols Howard Stern and David Letterman were very considerate and kind. And I feel honored to be part of a group of people that knows what goes into doing a show like this.”

“And I also want to thank all of you. Thanks to (all) who supported our show, cared enough to do something about it, to make your voices heard so that mine could be heard. I will never forget it. And maybe weirdly, maybe most of all, I want to thank the people who don’t support my show and what I believe but support my right to share those beliefs anyway, people who I never would have imagined like Ben Shapiro, Clay Travis, Candace Owens, Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, even my old pal Ted Cruz, who, believe it or not, said something very beautiful on my behalf.”

Ted Cruz video plays: ‘I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired.’

“Oh, wait,” Kimmel said. “No, not that. The other part.”

Ted Cruz video plays: ‘But let me tell you, if the government gets in the business of saying we don’t like what you, the media, have said, we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like, that will end up bad for conservatives.’

“I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but Ted Cruz is right,” Kimmel continued. “He’s absolutely right. This affects all of us, including him. I mean, think about it. If Ted Cruz can’t speak freely, then he can’t cast spells on the Smurfs. Even though I don’t agree with many of those people on most subjects – some of the things they say even make me want to throw up – it takes courage for them to speak out against this administration, and they did, and they deserve credit for it. And thanks for telling your followers that our government cannot be allowed to control what we do and do not say on television and that we have to stand up to it.”

“I’ve been hearing a lot about what I need to say and do tonight. And the truth is I don’t think what I have to say is going to make much of a difference. If you like me, you like me. If you don’t, you don’t. I have no illusions about changing anyone’s mind. But I do want to make something clear because it’s important to me as a human. And that is you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man. I don’t, I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”

“I posted a message on Instagram on the day he was killed sending love to his family and asking for compassion and I meant it and I still do. Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what … was obviously a deeply disturbed individual. That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make.”

“But I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way. I have many friends and family members on the other side who I love and remain close to even though we don’t agree on politics at all. I don’t think the murderer who shot Charlie Kirk represents anyone. This was a sick person who believed violence was a solution, and it isn’t it, ever.”

“And also selfishly I am a person who gets a lot of threats. I get many ugly and scary threats against my life, my wife, my kids, my co-workers because of what I choose to say. And I know those threats don’t come from the kind of people on the right who I know and love. So that’s what I wanted to say on that subject.”

“But I don’t want to make this about me, because – and I know this is what people say when they make things about them, but I really don’t – this show, this show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and spend time with comedians and talk show hosts from countries like Russia, countries in the Middle East who tell me they would get thrown in prison for making fun of those in power. And worse than being thrown in prison. They know how lucky we are here. Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country.”

“And that’s something I’m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air. That’s not legal. That’s not American. That is un-American and it is so dangerous.”

“I want you to think about this. Should the government be allowed to regulate which podcasts the cell phone companies and Wi-Fi providers are allowed to let you download to make sure they serve the public interest? You think that sounds crazy? Ten years ago, this sounded crazy. Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, telling an American company, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way’ and that ‘These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,’ in addition to being a direct violation of the First Amendment, is not a particularly intelligent threat to make in public.”

“Ted Cruz said he sounded like a mafioso. Although, I don’t know. If you want to hear a mob boss make a threat like that, you have to hide a microphone in a deli and park outside in a van with a tape recorder all night long. This genius said it on a podcast. Brendan Carr is the most embarrassing car Republicans have embraced since this one (image of Cybertruck painted with the American flag and ‘Trump’). And that’s saying something. The FCC has a tradition of meddling where they shouldn’t under many administrations, but it wasn’t always like this. There was an FCC commissioner back in 2022 who worked under Joe Biden who was spot on. He wrote, ‘President Biden is right. Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people into the discussion. That’s why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship.’”

“You know who wrote that? FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who later was appointed chairman of the FCC by this former crusader for free speech (Trump video plays): ‘If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country. It’s as simple as that. If this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple just like dominoes. One by one, they’ll go down.’

“That was also in 2022,” Kimmel said.

“And I wonder how did that guy turn into this guy?” (video plays): Interviewer: Who would you like to see replace Kimmel on late night?’ Trump: ‘A lot of people, anybody could replace him. Guy had no talent. Kimmel had, look, he was fired. He had no talent. He’s a whack job, but he had no talent. And more importantly than talent he had no – because a lot of people have no talent (but) they get ratings – but he had no ratings.’

“Well, I do tonight,” Kimmel said. “Thank you. You almost, you almost have to feel sorry for him. He tried, did his best to cancel me. 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. Now, a lot of people have been asking me if there are conditions for my return to the air, and there is one. Disney has asked me to read the following statement, and I’ve agreed to do it. Here we go. ‘To reactivate your Disney Plus and Hulu account open the Disney Plus app on your smart TV or TV-connected device.’”

“I’ve been fortunate to work at a company that has allowed me to do the show the way we want to do it for almost 23 years. I’ve done almost 4,000 shows on ABC. And over that time, the people who run this network have allowed me to evolve and to stretch the boundaries of what was once traditional for a late night talk show, even when it made them uncomfortable, which I do a lot. Every night, they’ve defended my right to poke fun at our leaders and to advocate for subjects that I think are important by allowing me to use their platform. And I am very grateful for that.”

“With that said, I was not happy when they pulled me off the air on Wednesday. I did not agree with that decision and I told them that and we had many conversations. I shared my point of view. They shared theirs. We talked it through and at the end, even though they didn’t have to – they really didn’t have to, this is a giant company, we have short attention spans and I am a tiny part of the Disney Corporation – they welcomed me back on the air and I thank them for that because I know that unfortunately and, I think, unjustly, this puts them at risk.”

“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. He was somehow able to squeeze Colbert out of CBS. Then he turned his sights on me, and now he’s openly rooting for NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers and the hundreds of Americans who work for their shows who don’t make millions of dollars. And I hope that if that happens or if there’s even any hint of that happening, you will be 10 times as loud as you were this week. We have to speak out against this because he’s not stopping.”

“And it’s not just comedy. He’s gunning for our journalists, too. He’s suing them. He’s bullying them. Over the weekend, his Foxy friend Pete Hegseth announced a new policy that requires journalists with Pentagon press credentials to sign a pledge, promising not to report information that hasn’t been explicitly authorized for release. That includes unclassified information. They want to pick and choose what the news is. I know that’s not as interesting as muscling a comedian, but it’s so important to have a free press, and it is nuts that we aren’t paying more attention to it.”

“Walter Cronkite must be spinning in his grave right now. (He’s dead, right?) Look, I never imagined I would be in a situation like this. I barely paid attention in school. But 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. That’s anti-American.”

“And I am so glad we have some solidarity on that from the right and the left and from those in the middle like Joe Rogan. Maybe the silver lining from this is we found one thing we can agree on, and maybe we’ll even find another one. Maybe we can get a little bit closer together. We do agree on a lot of things. We agree on keeping our children safe from guns, on reproductive rights for women, Social Security, affordable health care, pediatric cancer research. These are all things that most Americans support. Let’s stop letting these politicians tell us what they want and tell them what we want.”

“There was a moment over the weekend, a very beautiful moment. I don’t know if you saw this on Sunday. Erika Kirk forgave the man who shot her husband. She forgave him. That is an example we should follow. If you believe in the teachings of Jesus as I do, there it was. That’s, that’s it. A selfless act of grace, forgiveness from a grieving widow. It touched me deeply, and I hope it touches many, and if there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that and not this. So, thank you for listening and I’ll have, I’ll have more to say when we come back.”

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