Zohran Mamdani pulls out of local ABC town hall over Jimmy Kimmel suspension

The candidate of the Democrat mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, said on Monday that he had withdrawn from a local Town Hall of ABC to protest against the network’s decision to suspend the late evening Jimmy Kimmel.

Mamdani castigated the “cowardice” of the parent company of the network, Disney, in its decision to draw “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Out of air indefinitely in the wake of the Trump administration pressure. The Wabc town hall in which Mamdani was to participate was scheduled for Thursday.

“It is not the government’s work to intimidate the air host talk show. It is not the government’s work to tell us what we can and cannot speak,” Mamdani said at a campaign event on Roosevelt Island in New York, adding that the message sent by the events in ABC “is a message that the first amendment is not a right that can be counted on”.

Mamdani has referred to “the responsibility that we all have at the moment to show how unacceptable these types of actions are, how unacceptable it is that we live in a time when Donald Trump’s actions are those that determine whether we can appreciate what we have taken for so many years.”

He added that “we cannot be free if we are subject to those who abuse their own ends”, taking not only Trump, but also to his two main competitors in the mayors, the former governor Andrew Cuomo and the mayor Eric Adams.

“We cannot understand this moment of authoritarianism as coming only from the White House when it is also a moment which is characterized by the cowardice of those in response, the cowardice that we have seen characterized, whether by the parent company of ABC, or by so-called managers like Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams.”

Mamdani said he was withdrawing from the town hall event “in response to business leaders who will put their results before their responsibility to assume press freedom”.

In response to Mamdani’s comments, the White House spokesman Abigail Jackson, sent an email to NBC News: “It is not surprising that the little communist is too afraid to defend his positions of absurd policy on live television.”

The spokesman for Cuomo’s campaign, Rich Azzopardi, said that “ABC suspended Kimmel was a big mistake, but refusing to speak to local journalists because of the actions of their parent company should not pass the test of the smell of person and that the press should not continue to give him a pass.”

Azzopardi accused Mamdani of “fleeing journalists” in the months following the June primary “and refusing to answer direct questions about” various campaign positions.

Disney and Adams campaign spokesperson did not immediately answer NBC News questions on Mamdani’s comments.

Mamdani added that he remained “wishing to answer questions from the public” and said he was “determined to take another town hall in the coming weeks”.

NBC New York should organize a debate at the town hall on October 16.

ABC said last week that he had withdrawn Kimmel’s show “indefinitely”, citing comments from the end of evening host on the motivations of the man who, according to the authorities, fatally killed the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. This decision was made after the president of the Federal Communications Commission Brendan Carr threatened to “take action” against Disney and ABC for Kimmel’s remarks.

Following the comments of Carr, Nexstar Media Group Inc. announced that the affiliates of the ABC of the company would preempt “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in the foreseeable future. Nexstar, which has more than 200 stations in the United States, awaits the FCC approval for an acquisition of $ 6.2 billion from the media company Tegna.

Kimmel’s suspensions aroused the indignation of Democrats and defenders of freedom of expression who say that the actor was punished for having said things that the administration did not like.

Mamdani won an upset victory in the Primary Democrat mayor of June on Cuomo, who continues his offer as an independent. Adams also works as independent.