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The abrupt decision by the network, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, assailed Mr. Kimmel and suggested that his regulatory agency might take action against ABC because of remarks the host made on his Monday telecast.
The network did not explain its decision, but the sequence of events on Wednesday amounted to an extraordinary exertion of political pressure on a major broadcast network by the Trump administration.
Many Democrats immediately criticized the move, with Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, calling it “outrageous.” But President Trump, in a social media post from Windsor Castle in Britain, where he is traveling, described it as “Great News for America.”
The decision to suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live” was made by Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, and Dana Walden, the company’s television chief, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private process.
The comments at the center of this week’s firestorm came during Mr. Kimmel’s opening monologue on Monday night. “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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,” the host said.
Conservative activists castigated those comments, saying they mischaracterized the political beliefs of Tyler Robinson, the accused shooter. Prosecutors said Mr. Robinson had written in private messages about Mr. Kirk’s “hatred,” but the authorities have not identified which of Mr. Kirk’s views the suspect found hateful; his mother told prosecutors that her son had recently shifted toward the political left and had become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.”
Mr. Carr, in an interview on a right-wing podcast on Wednesday, said that Mr. Kimmel’s remarks were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people,” and that the F.C.C. was “going to have remedies that we can look at.”
“Frankly, when you see stuff like this — I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Mr. Carr told the podcast’s host, Benny Johnson. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the F.C.C. ahead.”
Mr. Carr’s criticism of Mr. Kimmel was the latest attack against the media by the president and his administration. Mr. Trump himself sued ABC last year in a case that the network paid $16 million to settle. On Monday, the president filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and four of its reporters.
This summer, Mr. Carr’s F.C.C. approved a major merger involving CBS’s owner, Paramount, days after CBS agreed to pay $16 million to settle a separate lawsuit filed by the president.
CBS also canceled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” ending a network franchise for over three decades after next May. CBS said the cancellation was for financial reasons, but many in the media industry have speculated that it was done to curry favor with the Trump administration while Paramount’s merger was pending. Mr. Colbert, like Mr. Kimmel, is frequently critical of Mr. Trump and his policies.
Mr. Kimmel had planned to address the backlash to his comments during his Wednesday telecast, according to two people familiar with the program. But Disney’s executives made the decision to suspend the show before taping began. The company’s board was not involved, according to one of the people with knowledge of the discussions inside Disney.