Democratic mayoral nominee and Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani.
Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani will announce Monday that he is cancelling a televised town hall with WABC News planned for Sept. 25 in the wake of the network suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show last week, amNewYork has learned.
Mamdani, his campaign exclusively told amNewYork ahead of the announcement, is making the move in defense of freedom of speech rights, which he says are under attack by President Trump. He is bowing out of the ABC event specifically because the network shelved Kimmel’s show following threats from the Federal Communications Commission over comments the comedian made last week about the assassination of conservative figure Charlie Kirk.
“We simply cannot accept any capitulation to Donald Trump’s attacks on our fundamental freedoms,” Mamdani said. “Now is the time for leadership that fights back with action, and collectively, we must use every tool at our disposal to send a message to Washington and corporate powers alike: our freedom to speech is not a bargaining chip.”
Mamdani, a democratic socialist Assembly member, will reveal the news during a 10:45 a.m. Monday news conference at Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park on Roosevelt Island. According to the campaign, the lawmaker picked the location because it honors President Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address, in which he listed freedom of speech as one of the fundamental “Four Freedoms” of American democracy.
During the event, Mamdani — the frontrunner in the crowded Nov. 4 general election — plans to emphasize that pulling out the WABC town hall is one way of fighting back against Trump’s attacks on dissenting viewpoints. He will also highlight the potential impacts on the show’s production staff — including sound engineers, musicians, writers, and stage workers — who could lose their jobs if it is permanently cancelled. “Jimmy Kimmel Live” films in Los Angeles.
Mamdani’s campaign said the event had been planned over the past few weeks and was due to begin being advertised this past weekend.
ABC suspended Kimmel’s show following conservative backlash over comments he made during his monologue last Monday night about Trump’s supporters and Tyler Robinson, the man accused of shooting and killing Kirk during a Sept. 10 event at a Utah college campus. Kimmel called Trump supporters “the MAGA gang” and said they were “desperately trying to characterize Robinson as anything other than one of them,” comments that those on the right claim were offensive.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr then went on a right-wing podcast last Wednesday and threatened regulatory consequences for ABC, which is owned by Disney, such as suspending its broadcast licenses, if it did not take punitive action against Kimmel. Nexstar, the owner of 32 ABC affiliates, announced it would stop airing Kimmel’s show indefinitely, leading ABC and Disney to do the same across the board.
Throughout his campaign, Mamdani has been a fierce critic of the Trump administration. He has cast himself as someone who will stand up to Trump — a widely unpopular figure in New York City — while casting his opponents, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, as either favored or compromised by the Republican president.
Source link
