Disney Vs. Trump Heats Up: After Kimmel's Stellar Return, Mouse House Reportedly Braces For Legal Battle With POTUS

Jimmy Kimmel's late-night talk show returned to ABC with a bang, with Tuesday's episode garnering over four times its typical viewership and the best rating in a decade, even as pressure mounts from the U.S. political brass.

The Walt Disney-owned network stated that 6.26 million viewers watched the episode, according to initial figures compiled by Nielsen, despite a quarter of the U.S. TV audiences not receiving the feed due to a boycott by some of ABC's partner stations. The show averaged 1.42 million viewers across its entire 2024-2025 season, according to the BBC.

That earned "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" a 0.87 rating, its highest in 10 years, according to ABC, which added that parts of the episode garnered over 26 million views across YouTube and social media platforms.

Disney's decision to publicly advertise the viewership numbers, notably hours after Trump's scathing remarks over Kimmel and the show's return, points to an escalating situation.

"I can't believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back," Trump said in a Truth Social post late Tuesday. He, again, accused Kimmel of being a mouthpiece of the Democrats and threatened "test ABC out on this," referencing a prior legal dispute where he claimed to have won $16 million.

Trump and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr last week threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of Disney's local stations. Notably, Nexstar Media and Sinclair opted to keep "Jimmy Kimmel Live" off their combined 70 owned and operated ABC stations on Tuesday.

Bloomberg is reporting that Disney anticipates legal retaliation and has consulted experts, although the company's leadership is confident that it will prevail in any case involving broadcast licenses.

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment for Disney remained in the 'extremely bearish' zone, even as the score improved from Tuesday. Disney stock rose 1% on Wednesday.

A bearish watcher on Stocktwits called Wednesday's gain a "bump before the dump" for Disney. "Bump because Kimmel came back. Now the dump begins. 250k plus people canceled Disney+. At least half, probably 60 percent or more, were conservatives that won't comeback."

On Tuesday's show, a tearful Kimmel said it "was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man," and accused Carr of "mob tactics." He also criticized Trump for calling for the axing of his fellow late-night hosts.

"Our leader celebrates people losing their livelihoods because he can't take a joke," Kimmel said, adding that Trump openly rooting for people to lose their jobs was "un-American" and "dangerous".

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