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New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani announced on Monday that he is withdrawing from an upcoming WABC town hall to protest Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension.
The town hall, hosted by ABC News’ New York affiliate, was scheduled for Thursday, one week after a Disney spokesperson told Fox News Digital, “Jimmy Kimmel Live will be preempted indefinitely.”
“It is not the government’s job to bully talk show hosts off of the air,” Mamdani told reporters on New York City’s Roosevelt Island on Monday. “It is not the government’s job to tell us what we can and cannot talk about.”
The White House fired back against Mamdani’s “authoritarian” accusations on Monday. “It’s not surprising that the Little Communist is too scared to defend his absurd policy positions on live TV,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Fox News Digital.
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The socialist candidate, who could become New York City’s first Muslim and first millennial mayor if elected this November, joins a chorus of late-night talk show hosts, celebrities and lawmakers who have criticized Kimmel’s indefinite suspension.
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“We cannot understand this moment of authoritarianism as solely coming from the White House, when it is also characterized by the cowardice of those in response to it,” Mamdani said Monday.
Mamdani delivered his remarks at Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms State Park on Roosevelt Island, where he invoked the former president’s 1941 State of the Union address, when the United States was on the brink of joining World War II.
“A moment similar to now, when tyranny was spreading across the globe,” Mamdani said. “And he articulated a thesis of democracy built around four freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. And all of our freedoms are currently under attack from this federal administration.”
Mamdani said Trump’s “authoritarian” administration has “showcased, once again, an attack on the First Amendment.”
“ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air after the FCC sought to pressure them. And the parent companies, Nexstar and Sinclair, put the decision of their merger, the factors that they are considering as part of that, in front of those very freedoms and that very First Amendment right,” Mamdani said.
The 33-year-old mayoral hopeful said his withdrawal from the WABC town hall is not an “indictment of the local affiliate or the hard-working journalists there, but rather, in response to the corporate leaders who have put their bottom line ahead of their responsibility in upholding the freedom of the press.”
In the next several weeks ahead of the November election, Mamdani vowed to participate in another town hall featuring questions from the public.
“We are living in a moment where Donald Trump’s actions are the ones which determine whether or not we can enjoy that which we have taken for granted for so many years,” Mamdani said.
ABC did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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