Jimmy Kimmel Blasts CBS as ‘Trump Suck-Ups’ Over Scott Pelley Firing Decision
Jimmy Kimmel has thrown his support behind Scott Pelley after CBS fired him following a clash with new management. Pelley has since spoken out against CBS leadership for attempting to gain favor with the Trump administration. Kimmel echoed this sentiment, slamming the network as suck-ups.
Jimmy Kimmel supported Scott Pelley after his firing
In late 2025, Bari Weiss took over as the editor-in-chief of CBS News. Since then, she has made a number of shakeups at the network that have garnered criticism, including firing many people at 60 Minutes. Kimmel criticized the network for firing Pelley.
“Last night, the Trump suck-ups at CBS fired a great and deeply respected journalist, Scott Pelley, from his job at 60 Minutes,” he said in his monologue. “Because he stood up for truth and integrity at a show that’s been the gold standard for broadcast journalism for 57 years.”
Kimmel added that Pelley “had enough after the clowns who run that show in the CBS News division fired reporter Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, along with the executive producer Tanya Simon, and replaced Tanya Simon with a guy who has no experience in TV news. And that was it for Scott Pelley. He said the collapse of values at the top has become untenable, and he let him have it in a staff meeting right to the new guy’s face.”
He also noted that Donald Trump, with whom he has frequently clashed, celebrated the decision.
“The president, of course, applauded this cowardly decision,” Kimmel said. “He said Scott Pelley is part of a gang of crooked, stupid people — different from the gang of crooked, stupid people he’s a part of. And that should make for an interesting situation at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which is apparently back on.”
The veteran reporter issued a statement after his firing
After his firing, Pelley also accused CBS News of cozying up to Trump. Many people believe that this is also why Stephen Colbert lost his show.
“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories,” he said in a statement obtained by MS Now. “When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration. The waste is heartbreaking.”
He claimed that new leadership instructed him to include biases and incorrect information in his political reporting.
“For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” he said. “I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them.”
Still, Pelley said he is grateful for his colleagues and audience.
Jimmy Kimmel is not the only media figure to stand up for Pelley
A number of media figures have joined Kimmel in criticizing the decision to fire Pelley.
“There’s nobody who is more acutely attuned to the value of a free press than those who are trying to take it away,” Rachel Maddow said. “When the president baldly says, ‘I am going to use the power of the state in order to get the media that I want,’ and he lines up oligarchic friends in order to do that for him. Again, there’s no pretense. There’s no saying this is for any other reason.”
Former 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft believes that the changes to 60 Minutes are both dangerous and foolish.
“I think this is journalistic interference. It makes no business sense whatsoever,” he said on PBS NewHour. “The show is still doing very well. It’s the highest-rated news program on television. And it has been that way for more than 50 years. The audience was up about nine percent last year. And why would you mess with that?”
CBS News staffers, including Dan Rather and Katie Couric, have since signed an open letter to David Ellison demanding that he respect editorial values. Ellison owns CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance.
