Donald Trump has claimed Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show was pulled off the air because of “bad ratings”.

Kimmel’s programme on US network ABC was axed after he criticised the US president and his allies for their response to the assassination of the right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.

The decision led to accusations that free speech was under attack in the US, with Democrats including former US president Barack Obama and a number of celebrities sounding an alarm.

Mr Trump said: “Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings, more than anything else.”

“And he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk.

Speaking at a news conference alongside Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Trump added: “Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago.

“So, you know, you could call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent.”

The latest season of Jimmy Kimmel Live averaged 1.57 million viewers per episode, according to media research firm Nielsen – and the show’s YouTube channel has almost 21 million subscribers.

What did Kimmel say?

Kimmel made the controversial remark on Monday night.

He said: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Speaking about Mr Trump, he added: “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”

“Many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalise on the murder of Charlie Kirk,” he continued.

Free speech under attack?

Disney-owned ABC then said the show would be taken off air indefinitely, and with immediate effect, after network operator Nexstar – which operates a number of ABC affiliates – said it would stop broadcasting it.

But the move – months after fellow CBS late-night show host Stephen Colbert saw his programme cancelled – sparked concern over the state of freedom of speech in the country.

Former US president Barack Obama wrote on X: “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

“This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent, and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating it.”

A string of high-profile celebrities, including actor Ben Stiller, criticised the decision.

Mr Stiller reacted to another post on the news, replying: “This isn’t right.”

Actress Alison Brie said in an Instagram story: “This is unreal. And very scary.”

Actress Jean Smart and comedian Alex Edelman also attacked the move.

What happened

Kimmel’s comments led to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Trump backer Brendan Carr, threatening to “take action” against Disney and ABC.

In an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson, he said: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

After the show was pulled, he then praised Nexstar’s broadcasting division, saying “it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values”.

Kimmel’s suspension has triggered outrage from Democrats like California Governor Gavin Newsom, who posted on X: “The @GOP [Republican Party] does not believe in free speech. They are censoring you in real time.”

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called for people “across the political spectrum… to stop what’s happening to Jimmy Kimmel”.

A representative for Kimmel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

He has not issued any statement since the show’s withdrawal.

Both Disney and Nexstar have FCC business ahead of them. Disney is seeking regulatory approval for ESPN’s acquisition of the NFL Network and Nexstar needs the Trump administration go-ahead to complete its $6.2bn purchase of broadcast rival Tegna.

Mr Kirk’s suspected killer, Tyler Robinson, appeared in court for the first time on Tuesday. Prosecutors said he had expressed negative views about Mr Kirk, an influential media figure in the MAGA movement.

From a carriage procession, state banquet and the meeting of leaders, Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK has been jam packed. 

Since touching down in London late on Tuesday, all attention has been on the US president and first lady, Melania.

With a warm welcome from Sir Keir Starmer, a lavish royal display, and protests in London against the visit, the trip yielded a mixed reception – although the US president was shielded from the ‘realities of life’ and people outside of the Windsor walls, according to Sky News’ International Affairs Editor Dominic Waghorn.

As the unprecedented visit draws to a close, here are nine things you may have missed during Mr Trump’s time in the UK.

Follow Trump state visit live

The handshake that breached royal protocol – or did it?

Greeting the King and Prince of Wales with a firm handshake – something the US president has become known for – Mr Trump also touched the monarch and second-in-line to the throne on the arm.

Mr Trump was captured again, this time putting his hand on the King’s back, while they took seats before the Red Arrows flypast.

While Buckingham Palace makes it clear that touching the King is not a breach of official protocol, it is an accepted custom not to initiate physical contact with a member of the Royal Family.

It was clear neither Charles nor William took offence to the act.

The first lady’s eye-covering hat

Keeping in line with the first lady’s past fashion choices, Melania Trump arrived in Windsor wearing a purple hat that covered her eyes from virtually every angle.

The hat was similar to one Mrs Trump wore to her husband’s inauguration in January – that time a navy and white hat which was designed by Eric Javits.

Despite the similarities, the designer of the hat for the UK state visit has yet to be publicly disclosed.

‘Watch the sword’

While inspecting a line of honour guard at Windsor Castle on Wednesday, the King playfully nudged Mr Trump on the arm, telling him to “watch the sword” as one member of the King’s Guard shifted position, swinging the blade near the US leader.

The moment was captured by Sky News’ royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills.

The president’s joke

During the state banquet in Windsor Castle’s St George’s Hall, both the King and Mr Trump made speeches.

Hailing the state visit as “one of the highest honours of my life” Mr Trump also made a joke, saying he hopes he is the last US president to be given an unprecedented second state visit.

“This was the second state visit, and that’s the first, and maybe that’s going to be the last time, I hope it is actually,” he said to muffled laughter in the room.

Queen Nixon?

In his own remarks at the state banquet, the King paid reference to some of the biggest issues of the day, referencing trade, Ukraine, and environmentalism.

But he also recalled a story about another US president – who he claimed tried to set the then-Prince of Wales up with his daughter in the 1970s.

After the King about how “I cannot help but wonder what our forebears from 1776 would make of this friendship today,” he talked up the special relationship between the US and UK, saying: “Throughout my life… I have cherished the close ties between the British and American people.

“In fact, had the media succeeded in the 1970s in their own attempt at deepening the special relationship, I myself might have been married off within the Nixon family!”

Teetotal Trump

Mr Trump is famously teetotal, having told Fox News after winning the presidential election for the first time that he has “never had a drink”. And it appears during the state banquet the president stuck to water.

In pictures showing guests raising a glass, the contents of Mr Trump’s is noticeably different to those around him.

It remains unknown if a non-alcoholic version of the banquet’s special cocktail – a Transatlantic Whisky Sour – was made for the US leader.

Beekeeper Kate

When the Princess of Wales and the first lady joined a group of Scouts in the grounds of Frogmore Cottage, the youngsters were given honey sandwiches, which were made by bees kept by Kate at Anmer Hall, her Norfolk home.

Keeping on theme, Melania also brought a jar of White House honey for each of the children.

The Queen is also a keen apiarist (someone who looks after beehives) – and she keeps bees at Raymill, her retreat in Wiltshire.

Arrest (and release) over Epstein projections

As Mr Trump flew into the UK, projections of him and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein were projected on to Windsor Castle.

The huge pictures were beamed from a nearby hotel, and the nine-minute film included several pictures showing the US president with Epstein.

A 60-year-old from East Sussex, a 37-year-old from Kent, a 36-year-old from London, and a 50-year-old also from London were detained over the incident on Tuesday night. All four were then released on bail on Thursday.

Thames Valley Police said the men had been bailed until 12 December while they investigate “possible offences including malicious communications and public nuisance”.

Read more from Sky News:
Trump historic state visit – second day in pictures
‘Putin has really let me down’, says US president

‘What is your answer to that?’

The final question in a joint press conference between Mr Trump and Sir Keir came from Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby, who asked the two leaders about the recently sacked UK ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson.

But Mr Trump quickly moved the answer to Sir Keir.

“I don’t know him, actually. I had heard that, and I think maybe the prime minister would be better speaking of that, it was a choice that he made,” he said before turning to Sir Keir.

“What is your answer to that?”

Starmer answered: “Some information came to light last week, which wasn’t available when he was appointed.

“And I made a decision.”

Lord Mandelson was fired last Thursday after it emerged that he had continued his friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein after his first conviction in 2008, having encouraged him to fight for early release.

In years to come, it may become known simply as Chequers ’25.

But today’s summit between Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump, at the prime minister’s country retreat, has the potential to be a landmark moment in UK-US history.

There’s plenty of scope for it to go horribly wrong, of course: over Jeffrey Epstein, Sir Keir’s pledge to recognise Palestine, the president’s lukewarm support for Ukraine, the Chagos Islands sell-off, or free speech.

Trump state visit live – read the latest

But on the other hand, it could be a triumph for the so-called “special relationship” – as well as relations between these two unlikely allies – with deals on trade and tariffs and an improbably blossoming bromance.

Either way, this Chequers summit – on the president’s historic second state visit to the UK – could turn out to be one of the most notable one-to-one meetings between PM and president in 20th and 21st century history.

Sir Keir and Mr Trump have already met several times, most recently at The Donald’s golf courses in Scotland in late July and, before that, memorably at the White House in February.

It was then that the PM theatrically pulled King Charles’s invitation for this week’s visit out of his inside pocket in a spectacular stunt surely masterminded by the “Prince of Darkness”, spin doctor-turned-ambassador (until last week, anyway) Peter Mandelson.

And over the years, there have been some remarkable and historic meetings and relationships, good and bad, between UK prime ministers and American presidents.

From Churchill and Roosevelt to Eden and Eisenhower, from Macmillan and JFK to Wilson and Johnson, from Thatcher and Reagan, to Blair and Bush, and from Cameron and Obama… to Starmer and Trump, perhaps?

A brief history of relationships between PMs and presidents

Throughout UK-US history, there have been many examples of a good relationship and close bond between a Labour prime minister and a Republican president. And vice versa.

Also, it has not always been rosy between prime ministers and presidents of the two sister parties. There have been big fallings out: over Suez, Vietnam and the Caribbean island of Grenada.

Leading up to this Chequers summit, the omens have not been good.

First, the PM was forced to sack his vital link between Downing Street and the Oval Office, Lord Mandelson, over his friendship with Epstein.

Second, the president arrived in the UK to a barrage of criticism from London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, who accused him of doing more than anyone else to encourage the intolerant far right across the globe.

And third, in a video-link to the “Unite the Kingdom” march in London last weekend, one-time Trump ally Elon Musk called for a dissolution of parliament and a change of government and appeared to encourage violent protest.

Churchill and FDR

Back in the mid-20th century, the godfather of the “special relationship” was wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill, though it was 1946 before he first coined the phrase in a speech in the US, in which he also spoke of the “iron curtain”.

It was in 1941 that Churchill held one of the most significant meetings with a US president, Franklin D Roosevelt, at a Washington conference to plot the defeat of Germany after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour.

Churchill arrived in Washington in December after a rough 10-day voyage on a Royal Navy battleship and stayed three weeks, spending Christmas in the White House and on Boxing Day becoming the first UK PM to address Congress.

The close bond between Churchill and Roosevelt was described as a friendship that saved the world. It was even claimed one reason the pair got on famously was that they were both renowned cigar smokers.

Churchill and Truman

After the war ended, Churchill’s “special relationship” speech, describing the alliance between the UK and US, was delivered at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri in March 1946.

The speech was introduced by president Harry Truman, a Democrat, with whom Churchill had attended the Potsdam Conference in 1945 to negotiate the terms of ending the war.

These two were also close friends and would write handwritten letters to each other and address one another as Harry and Winston. Mr Truman was also the only US president to visit Churchill at Chartwell, his family home.

Eden and Eisenhower

But the transatlantic cosiness came to an abrupt end in the 1950s, when Churchill’s Conservative successor Anthony Eden fell out badly with the Republican president Dwight Eisenhower over the Suez Crisis.

Mr Eden did visit Mr Eisenhower in Washington in January 1956, and the official record of the meeting describes the discussion as focussing on “policy differences and Cold War problems”.

Macmillan and JFK

But in the early 1960s, a Conservative prime minister and a Democrat president with seemingly nothing in common, the stuffy and diffident Harold Macmillan, and the charismatic John F Kennedy, repaired the damage.

They were credited with rescuing the special relationship after the rupture of the Suez Crisis, at a time of high tensions around the world: the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, and the threat of nuclear weapons.

The two leaders exchanged handwritten notes, as well as Christmas and birthday cards. The Macmillans visited the Kennedys twice at the White House, in 1961 and 1962 – the second described in the US as a “momentous” meeting on the Cuban crisis.

The relationship was abruptly cut short in 1963 by Supermac’s demise prompted by the Profumo scandal, and JFK’s assassination in Dallas. But after her husband’s death, Jacqueline Kennedy was said to have had a father-daughter relationship with Macmillan, who was said to have been enchanted with her.

Wilson and LBJ

After JFK, the so-called special relationship cooled once again – and under a Labour prime minister and Democrat president – when Harold Wilson rejected pressure from Lyndon B Johnson to send British troops to Vietnam.

Mr Wilson became prime minister in 1964, just two months after LBJ sent US troops. His first overseas trip was to the White House, in December 1964, and the PM returned to tell his cabinet: “Lyndon Johnson is begging me even to send a bagpipe band to Vietnam.”

Thatcher and Reagan

And even though Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were ideological soulmates, Thatcher was furious when she wasn’t consulted before the Americans invaded Grenada in 1983 to topple a Marxist regime.

Even worse, according to Mrs Thatcher’s allies, a year earlier, Reagan had stayed neutral during the Falklands War. Reagan said he couldn’t understand why two US allies were arguing over “that little ice-cold bunch of land down there”.

But their relationship didn’t just survive, it flourished, including at one memorable visit to the presidential retreat at Camp David in 1984, where Reagan famously drove Mrs T around in a golf buggy.

They would also memorably dance together at White House balls.

Blair and Bush

Camp David was also where, in 2001, Republican president George W Bush and Labour’s Sir Tony Blair embarked on the defining mission of his premiership: the Iraq War. It was to prove to be an historic encounter.

The war was the turning point of Sir Tony’s decade in Number 10. He was branded a liar over claims about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”, he was vilified by the Labour left, and it was the beginning of the end for him.

And to add to the suspicion among Sir Tony’s critics that he was Mr Bush’s poodle, in 2006 at a G8 summit in St Petersburg – that wouldn’t happen now – a rogue microphone picked up the president calling, “Yo, Blair! How are you doing?”

Cameron and Obama

Some years later, the Tory prime minister sometimes called the “heir to Blair”, David Cameron, bonded over burgers with the Democrat president Barack Obama, serving a BBQ lunch to military families in the Downing Street garden. They also played golf at the exclusive Grove resort in 2016.

They seemed unlikely allies: Obama, the first African-American president, and Cameron, the 19th old Etonian prime minister. It was claimed they had a “transatlantic bromance” in office. “Yes, he sometimes calls me bro,” Lord Cameron admitted.

But not everything went well.

The Tory PM persuaded Mr Obama to help the Remain campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum, when he claimed the UK would be “at the back of the queue” on trade deals with the US, if it left the EU. It backfired, of course.

Now it’s Sir Keir Starmer’s turn to tread a delicate and potentially hazardous political tightrope as he entertains the latest – and most unconventional – US president.

The greatest dangers for Sir Keir will be a news conference in the afternoon, in the gardens, if the weather permits.

Good luck, as they say, with that.

Before then, there’s the potential for what the Americans call a “pool spray”, one of those impromptu, rambling and unpredictable Q&As we’ve seen so many times in the Oval Office.

For Sir Keir, what could possibly go wrong?

Chequers ’25 could be memorable and notable, like so many previous meetings between a PM and a president. But not necessarily for the right reasons for this UK prime minister.