Jon Stewart said Jimmy Kimmel’s return to late-night showed Americans need to “fight like hell” for their right to free speech.
In a Monday episode of “The Daily Show,” Stewart said the public’s backlash against Kimmel’s show being suspended had helped bring it back.
“That campaign that you all launched, pretending that you were going to cancel Hulu while secretly racing through four seasons of ‘Only Murders in the Building,’ that really worked,” Stewart said to laughs from the crowd.
Disney suspended Kimmel’s show on Wednesday, after Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, took offense to Kimmel’s comments about the killing of the conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.
The suspension caused an uproar, with several figures from Hollywood to late-night shows criticizing the Trump administration’s attack on free speech.
On Thursday, Stewart delivered a stinging, sarcastic monologue against Trump and Carr.
However, Disney reversed its decision less than a week after the suspension announcement. In a statement on Monday, it said it had spent the last days “having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy” and decided to get the show back on air on Tuesday.
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Get caught up on the fallout over Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension:
In his Monday night episode, Stewart said President Donald Trump was “using all the levers of government” at his disposal to punish his opponents.
“So you can get on board with that and say, I’m with that, or you can join the rest of us and fight like hell for this constitutional republic,” he said, to loud cheers from the audience.
Another late-night host, Stephen Colbert, welcomed Kimmel back during an episode of “The Late Show” on Monday.
“This is wonderful news for my dear friend Jimmy and his amazing staff that he can continue his show,” he said.
Colbert, whose show will be canceled by CBS in May, joked that he was once again the “only martyr in late night.”
Representatives for Stewart did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
