Jon Stewart will host “The Daily Show” on Thursday night following the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel.
Stewart has only hosted on Mondays since returning to the show last year with the show’s correspondents taking turns behind the desk. Desi Lydic hosted on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The sudden change comes a day after ABC pulled “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from the air indefinitely following Kimmel’s Monday monologue where he criticized conservatives’ response to Charlie Kirk’s murder and suspected gunman Tyler Robinson without knowing his motivations.
“The MAGA gang [is] 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 said.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened Disney with revoking ABC’s broadcasting license following Kimmel’s show, telling right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson the FCC has “remedies we can look at. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Hours later Nexstar and Sinclair both said they’d preempt Kimmel on their ABC affiliates.
Kimmel’s removal comes about two months after CBS canceled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” amid Paramount’s merger with Skydance, President Trump’s settled lawsuit against CBS News and Colbert’s frequent criticism of the administration.
Stewart commented on that news in a July episode.
“Was this purely financial?” Stewart wondered. “Or maybe the path of least resistance for your $8 billion merger was killing a show that you know rankled a fragile and vengeful president, so insecure, suffering terribly from a case of chronic penis insufficiency.”
Paramount owns both CBS and Comedy Central.
“The Daily Show” airs at 11 p.m. ET on Comedy Central, with the episode available on Paramount+ the following day.
