Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr responded to ABC and affiliate stations’ removal of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel after the comedian made remarks about Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination last week.

ABC suspended Kimmel’s late-night show indefinitely beginning on Sept. 17 after comments he made about Kirk’s killing led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say they would not air the show and prompted remarks from a top federal regulator.

The veteran comedian made several remarks about the reaction to the conservative commentator’s assassination on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” during his Sept. 15 and Sept. 16 shows, including that the “MAGA gang” is “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.”

In an interview on Sept. 18 with CNBC, Carr said: “The issue that arose here, where lots and lots of people were upset, was not a joke.

“It was appearing to directly mislead the American public about a significant fact.”

Carr told Fox News the night before that under the FCC’s jurisdiction, over-the-air networks such as ABC, NBC, or CBS operate under a license that requires them “to operate in the public interest.”

“Broadcasters are different than any other form of communication,” Carr said.

He said that affiliate groups such as Sinclair and Nexstar took action against Kimmel’s show because they were “standing up to serve the interests of their community.”

“Over the years, the FCC walked away from enforcing that public interest obligation,” Carr told Fox News. “I don’t think we’re better off as a country for it.”

Carr also said, “I can’t imagine another time when we’ve had local broadcasters tell, what we call a national programmer like Disney, that ‘your content no longer meets the needs and the values of our community.’”

On Sept. 16, the Utah County Attorney’s Office announced charges against Tyler Robinson, the man suspected of shooting Kirk, including counts for capital aggravated murder, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering.

During a Sept. 17 congressional hearing, FBI Director Kash Patel provided a statement about Robinson’s parents in the lead-up to the 22-year-old’s arrest.

Robinson’s family, Patel said, “has since been interrogated” and told federal investigators that, because of the video that the FBI released and the photographs that they released, they identified their son.

“They confronted their son when he swung by their home,” Patel said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the FBI. “And that’s what led to his apprehension.”

On Sept. 17, Carr told podcaster Benny Johnson that the FCC could potentially take action against broadcasters if there was a pattern of news distortion.

“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said in the interview that aired on Sept. 17.

The Epoch Times contacted ABC News and Disney for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.