Trump trashes ‘overrated’ David Letterman after Jimmy Kimmel comments

Donald Trump is insulting another late-night host.

The 47th president slammed David Letterman on Friday after the former Late Show host made comments about Jimmy Kimmel‘s indefinite suspension from ABC.

“Whatever happened to the very highly overrated David Letterman, whose ratings were never very good, either?” Trump asked on Truth social. “He looks like hell, but at least he knew when to quit. LOSER!!!”

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Letterman for comment.

Letterman, who retired from The Late Show in 2015 and was replaced by Stephen Colbert, spoke out against Jimmy Kimmel Live‘s abrupt suspension on ABC, which began on Wednesday following public pressure from FCC chair Brendan Carr and network affiliate groups that objected to the host’s comments about the motives of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson.

“This is misery,” Letterman said of the situation while speaking at the Atlantic Festival. He went on to explicitly shout out “my good friend Jimmy Kimmel,” adding, “I feel bad about this because we’ll see where this is going, correct? It’s managed media, and it’s no good.”

He continued, “It’s ridiculous, and you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian and criminal administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.”

Trump, on the other hand, celebrated Kimmel’s suspension in another Truth Social post on Wednesday night, also calling for the suspension of The Tonight Show‘s Jimmy Fallon and Late Night‘s Seth Meyers from their hosting gigs.

“Great News for America: The ratings-challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it, NBC!!!”

At a press conference the next day, Trump doubled down on his insistence that ABC dropped Jimmy Kimmel Live purely as a business decision involving viewership, despite the fact that the network’s affiliate groups publicly announced that they were preempting the show for political reasons.

“Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else,” Trump told reporters during a visit to the U.K. “And he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk. Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He has very bad ratings and they should have fired him a long time ago.”

Kimmel’s comments in question came on Monday night’s episode of Live, in which he suggested, “We had 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 with everything they can to score political points from it.”

The host’s comments prompted public outcry from Carr, who encouraged affiliate groups to “push back” against ABC’s parent company, Disney, by dropping the “garbage” program from their lineup until the company’s leaders “straighten this out.”

Almost immediately after, notable affiliate groups Nexstar and Sinclair issued statements saying they would do just that. Nexstar, Sinclair, and Disney all have pending business deals or are lobbying for deregulation that will require approval from the Trump administration.

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ABC’s suspension of Live prompted swift condemnation from a number of politicians and entertainers, including Barack Obama, Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, She-Hulk star Tatiana Maslany, Late Show host Stephen Colbert, and former late-night hosts Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien.