The ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ executive producer and co-head writer delivered a speech at The Hollywood Reporter’s 2025 Women in Entertainment Breakfast

Jimmy Kimmel and Molly McNearney (left); President Donald Trump.Credit : Michael Kovac/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty; Kevin Dietsch/Getty

Molly McNearney says she took the First Amendment “for granted” before her husband Jimmy Kimmel and their show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, was temporarily pulled from the air in September.

The Jimmy Kimmel Live! co-head writer and executive producer offered a keynote speech at the The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment breakfast on Wednesday, Dec. 3. During the event, she called out President Donald Trump for being “thin-skinned” and emphasized the current political climate being a “fragile time for freedom” following Jimmy Kimmel Live!‘s six-day suspension this fall.

“I’ve been asked to speak about freedom of speech, and I have to be honest. I naively assumed it was a guarantee in this country. Until September 16, 2025,” McNearney, 47, opened her remarks, referring to the day Kimmel made comments about the death of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in a monologue.

“It’s something that I took for granted, something I thought I’d always have,” she added. “Like my period. Did you guys know that those just stop? Your period stops. And it turns out your freedom in this country can too.”

Molly McNearney on Dec. 3, 2025.Phillip Faraone/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty

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McNearney added that “we experienced it most recently in 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade,” and “got another taste” during Kimmel’s suspension, which lasted six days, and which Trump, 79, celebrated on social media.

“I watched a show, co-workers, friends and the man I love be put on ‘indefinite suspension’ after our thin-skinned president asked for his removal and his FCC chair publicly threatened the company we work for,” she said. “It is a fragile time for freedom.”

McNearney later added, “This is exactly how we lose our freedom: With perimenopause. No. If anything, perimenopause rage is going to save us and get us all our freedoms back.”

“We lose our freedom when we are scared and we are distracted. I have been very consumed by both,” she clarified. “Fear is contagious. But the good news is, so is bravery. I’ve watched Jimmy and my friends and my co-workers hold our leaders accountable without fear night after night. I’ve watched other late-night shows and journalists and lawyers and activists and politicians and civilians in the street stick their neck out there for all of us.”

Elsewhere in her address, McNearney emphasized that her “husband, workplace livelihood and friends” have been “threatened multiple times” by Trump and “the propaganda machine that feasts on deliberately misinterpreting our words and making comedy the enemy.”

“And I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said. “We got knocked down, and with all of you, you helped us get back up. And I cannot thank you enough.”

Kimmel introduced McNearney during the event, as he joked that “no one — not the FCC, not ABC standards and practices, not even President Trump himself — has taken more action to infringe upon and forcibly limit my speech than Molly McNearney.”

Live! was pulled from ABC’s lineup temporarily on Sept. 17 following Kimmel’s remarks about Kirk, after FCC chairman Brendan Carr threatened retaliation over the comments. The show returned to air on Sept. 23 as the Walt Disney Company said in a statement it had “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy” before reaching a decision. Kimmel has since said he felt like the ordeal came about as a “distortion on the part of some of the right-wing media networks,” which he aimed to correct.

Kimmel and McNearney met on the set of Jimmy Kimmel Live!  before getting married in July 2013. The pair share two children: daughter Jane, 11, and son Billy, 8. Kimmel is also dad to two adult children with his first wife, Gina Maddy: daughter Katie, 34, and son Kevin, 32.

Appearing on the Nov. 6 episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast alongside Kimmel, McNearney revealed her relationships with some relatives have been hurt and “lost” amid the family’s issues with Trump.

While she has “sympathy” for many of her family members who “are deliberately being misinformed every day,” McNearney added, “It hurts me so much because of the personal relationship I now have where my husband is out there fighting this man.”

“And to me, them voting for Trump is them not voting for my husband and me and our family,” she said.