Jimmy Kimmel opened his final monologue of 2025 by sharing his gratitude with viewers for supporting him through an unprecedented year.
In September, Jimmy Kimmel Live was indefinitely suspended by network ABC after Kimmel was targeted by the Trump administration. The late-night show as brought back to air relatively quickly after a public backlash, and Kimmel has continued to trade blows with Donald Trump since.
“This has been a strange year. It’s been a hard year,” Kimmel acknowledged. “We’ve had some lows, we’ve had some highs. For me, maybe more than any year in my life.”
The host began to tear up as he continued, “But on behalf of all of us—I’m crying already, I’m sorry. On behalf of all of us at the show, I just want to say that we appreciate your support, your enthusiasm. And not just for watching. This year you literally pulled us out of a hole, and we cannot thank you enough, personally, professionally.”
“I know there are a lot harder jobs, but this is not an easy job to do,” Kimmel said. “And sometimes it feels like we’re spinning our wheels. You see so many awful and destructive acts, so much damage we inflict on ourselves on purpose, and it can make you feel crazy trying to wrap your head around these things that are so clearly wrong. You grow up reading Superman and you learn to value truth, justice, and the American way, and then you start to realize, especially over the last year, you don’t know where that all went. You don’t know what the American way is even more.”
He added, “But when I hear from people who tell me that they watch our show and the shows that our friends and colleagues do on the other channels and it makes them feel less crazy, it makes me feel less crazy too. And I think that’s an important thing.”
Before getting into the get of his monologue, Kimmel noted, “I also think it’s important that we as Americans let our friends in other countries who watch the show on YouTube, on Instagram, Hulu, wherever, know that a lot of us are not okay with what is happening. There is still much more good in this country than bad and we hope that you will bear with us during this extended psychotic episode that we’re in the middle of.”
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Jimmy Kimmel Live will return in 2026. Earlier this month, Kimmel renewed his deal to host the show until May 2027. The deal was reportedly finalized over the summer — before ABC’s September suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, following a monologue in the wake of Charlie Kirk‘s murder.
That suspension, which came after heavy pressure from the Trump administration, conservative activists, and network affiliates, was billed as “indefinite.” It ended up lasting just a few days, after it prompted a ferocious backlash of its own, with consumers apparently canceling their Disney+ subscriptions en masse and actors and other showbiz figures condemning ABC and its parent company, Disney.
Kimmel returned to the show with a studio audience chanting his name. His 17-minute monologue, in which he said it was “never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” drew 6.26 million viewers, making it the most-watched regular episode in the show’s history.
From Rolling Stone US
