Disney pulling Kimmel off air over Charlie Kirk comments draws response from tennis great

Former women’s tennis star Martina Navratilova fired off a series of social media posts on Wednesday seemingly in response to news that Disney pulled talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air after he made controversial comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. 

Navratilova is known as a highly outspoken liberal as a former athlete. She expressed objection to Disney’s removal of Kimmel from his show in a series of X posts.

Navratilova also re-shared a handful of X posts referencing the situation involving Kimmel. 

Tennis legend and female rights activist Martina Navratilova blasted The New York Times for the controversial description of biological women. (Angel Martinez/Getty Images for Laureus)

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On Monday, Kimmel accused conservatives of reaching “new lows” in trying to pin a left-wing ideology on 22-year-old suspect Tyler Robinson, even though prosecutors reaffirmed those ties in Tuesday’s indictment.

“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.

Kimmel’s comments came one day after both FBI officials and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said that Robinson held a “leftist ideology” and was increasingly radicalized in recent years. It was also revealed that he had a romantic relationship with a transgender partner who was biologically male and transitioning to female.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr then issued a threat against Disney if it didn’t address the controversy. 

FCC CHAIR LEVELS THREAT AGAINST ABC, DISNEY AFTER KIMMEL SUGGESTED CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSIN WAS ‘MAGA’

Appearing on Wednesday’s “The Benny Show,” Carr called Kimmel’s comments “some of the sickest conduct” and suggested there were potential “avenues” the FCC could pursue.

“In some quarters, there’s a very concerted effort to try to lie to the American people about the nature … of one of the most significant newsworthy public interest acts that we’ve seen in a long time in what appears to be an action by Jimmy Kimmel to play into that narrative that this was somehow a MAGA or a Republican-motivated person,” Carr told host Benny Johnson. 

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Nexstar Media Group, which owns hundreds of television stations, announced earlier it would preempt Kimmel’s show on its ABC affiliates starting Wednesday night “for the foreseeable future” and would replace it with other programming over his comments about alleged Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson.

News of Kimmel’s removal from air was then confirmed by Disney later on Wednesday night.

“Jimmy Kimmel Live will be pre-empted indefinitely,” a Disney spokesperson confirmed to Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.

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