September 26 2025, 08:15 
CNN analyst Harry Enten showed how the Trump administration’s attempt to get late-night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel off the air backfired and actually increased Kimmel’s ratings.
Last Wednesday, ABC abruptly announced that Kimmel’s show was getting taken off the air following comments Kimmel made about the death of rightwing podcaster Charlie Kirk and the ensuing pressure from local ABC affiliates with business before the FCC. But ABC brought Kimmel’s show back on Tuesday following outcry and a viewer campaign that involved canceling subscriptions to Disney+ and Hulu, which are owned by Disney, which also owns ABC.
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Enten pointed out that Kimmel’s median viewership on YouTube over the last six months was 240,000, but that he got 6.7 million for his first monologue after returning to ABC.
“That’s over 25 times as large as the median Jimmy Kimmel video normally gets, and it is the largest video in at least six months,” Enten stressed. “So if Donald Trump’s idea was to give Jimmy Kimmel more press and more viewership, he absolutely did so.” He added he doesn’t really think Trump was trying to help Kimmel’s ratings.
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Enten also pointed out that Google searches for “What time is Jimmy Kimmel” were up 10,000%.
“You wouldn’t have to check what time Jimmy Kimmel is on if you were a regular viewer,” Enten pointed out. “The reason people were checking what time Jimmy Kimmel was on, because he was pulling- potentially pulling a lot of viewers who normally didn’t watch.”
“And get this, it was up over 10,000%. My goodness gracious.”
Harry Enten: "If Donald Trump's idea was to give Jimmy Kimmel more press and more viewership, he absolutely did so" pic.twitter.com/hti3pVZ77G
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 24, 2025
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