JUST IN: Dems’ Kimmel Narrative Crumbles As Real Reasons For His Suspension Emerge

Hothead Jimmy Kimmel felt he had nothing to apologize for, he told ABC and Disney executives as his media blackout and boycott grew from a rolling snowball into an avalanche.

Kimmel had just finished mocking MAGA Republicans on his Tuesday night episode when alarm bells went off inside ABC studios. By injecting himself directly into the finger-pointing game between defenders and detractors of Charlie Kirk, Kimmel had put ABC and Disney in the crosshairs of the culture war, they feared.

Discussions between network executives and Kimmel had not yet reached the desk of Disney CEO Bob Iger, but they were close. Those familiar with the talks say Kimmel was presented with an ultimatum: Apologize for suggesting Tyler Robinson, Kirk’s suspected killer, was a Trump supporter, or face the consequences, which were not yet known to either side.

“We hit 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 doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said during the monologue.

A “social media s**tstorm” quickly followed, an insider said, but then subsided.

Participants had just enough time to take a breath before Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, fanned the flames in an interview where he suggested ABC could lose its broadcasting license for airing one-sided political commentary.

That’s when the storm “became a bigger swirl,” the source told the Hollywood Reporter.

Inside ABC, Kimmel participated in “multiple conversations” where executives asked, “How are you planning to address the situation and lower the temperature?”

In response, Kimmel suggested he was planning to double down on the allegation and pledged not to “kowtow” to voices on the right. That answer was not satisfactory to management, say some individuals familiar with the calls.

Meanwhile, Sinclair and Nexstar, who broadcast Kimmel’s program over vast swaths of the U.S., told ABC that they planned to go dark. Advertiser complaints to the network only compounded the misery.

The issue became a public safety threat after members of ABC saw their personal information doxxed and leaked online, the Reporter stated.

Disney stepped in, asking Kimmel what steps he planned to take to “would take down the temperature,” but what he promised to do next was “going to fan the flames with the MAGA fan base,” the source said.

Another source on Kimmel’s side said his approach wasn’t “making it worse” and that he simply “wasn’t kowtowing” to the outrage.

Kimmel was “defending what he said [as] being grossly mischaracterized by a certain group of people,” the show source says.

The outlet reported that Kimmel had plans to address the controversy on his next episode, but his team had run out of time to do a live taping. By then, roughly 66 of the 200 stations where Kimmel would have been broadcast were promised to be offline.

That’s when Iger and Disney co-chair Dana Walden stepped in, with Walden telling Kimmel he was gone for the time being. She did not ask him to apologize, the source confirmed.