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The 78-year-old comic legend David Letterman arrived onstage at The Atlantic Festival today carrying a list of presidents he’d mocked in his 33 years as the longest-running late-night comedy host in American history. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama—he’d made fun of them all (especially, he added with a chuckle, Clinton and Bush II).

“Beating up on these people, rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately, in the name of comedy—not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency, let alone the dreaded FCC,” he said. He added, “The institution of the president of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show.”

Letterman was speaking with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg a day after ABC announced it was suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live “indefinitely”—a move that critics attributed to pressure from Brendan Carr, the Donald Trump–appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The incident has ignited concerns over free speech and the willingness of media conglomerates to bow to government threats. “We all see where this is going, correct?” Letterman said. “It’s managed media. And it’s no good, it’s silly, it’s ridiculous, and you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian—a criminal—administration in the Oval Office. That’s just not how this works.”

During his opening monologue on Monday night’s show, Kimmel said that America had “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.” Kimmel’s comment seemed to imply that Kirk’s alleged killer, the 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, is a MAGA supporter—an implication now contradicted by most available evidence.

According to a charging document filed by police in Utah, where the shooting took place, Robinson’s mother said her son had “started to lean more to the left” over the past year, and his father said Robinson had criticized Kirk for “spreading hate.”

Frequently, when entertainers say something untrue and inflammatory on camera, they issue a correction, apologize, and move on. But Kimmel’s statement arrived amid grief and outrage about Kirk’s death and the perception that many on the left were cheering it. Yesterday, on the conservative podcast hosted by Benny Johnson, Carr spoke critically of Kimmel and said that networks “have a license, granted by us at the FCC, that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest.” He added, “Frankly, when you see stuff like this—I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” After Carr’s comments, Sinclair and Nexstar, companies that operate dozens of ABC’s affiliate stations, quickly announced that they were pulling Kimmel’s show for the foreseeable future. Disney, ABC’s parent company, soon after declared it would follow suit.

As Letterman pointed out onstage, the “easy way or the hard way” verbiage had the ring of Mafia language. “Who is hiring these goons?” he asked. “Mario Puzo?”

Letterman said Kimmel had texted him that morning: “He’s sitting up in bed, taking nourishment. He’s going to be fine.” But he was concerned about the implications for the comedy world more broadly. Trump posted last night that ABC’s decision was “Great News for America” and called upon NBC to banish late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, “two total losers.” Kimmel’s suspension came just two months after CBS announced that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert would end next year with no planned replacement. The network attributed the decision to financial motives, but Letterman instead saw political motives at play, given Colbert’s history of criticizing Trump. “That was rude,” he said. “That was inexcusable. The man deserves a great deal of credit.”

(As for Fallon, Goldberg suggested in his interview with Letterman that he was a less “sharp-tongued” critic of Trump than other late-night hosts. Letterman shot back, “Why do you think that is? Has something to do with IQ, is that what you’re saying?”)

In the years before Trump ran for political office, he was a frequent guest on Letterman’s Late Night, but the host retired from the gig in 2015. (“Ten years ago, I was smart enough to cancel myself,” he cracked at the festival.) Now Letterman is as loud a critic as any of the Trump administration. “This is misery,” he said onstage. In a “dictatorship,” he said, “sooner or later, everyone is going to be touched.”