Here a little something everyone should know about free speech:

It’s not always free.

Late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel just found that out the hard way last week after ABC took him off the air over remarks he made about President Donald Trump and his MAGA followers in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination.

In the days since Kirk’s murder, and the arrest of his alleged assassin, several high profile pundits have been fired for controversial comments they made about Kirk, 31, a loyal Trump associate and a key Conservative youth organizer.

But Kimmel said nothing disparaging about Kirk.

“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,” Kimmel said during his monologue.

He also poked fun at Trump after the president talked about the White House ballroom after answering a question about how he was handling Kirk’s death.

“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend,” Kimmel said. “This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish.”

Before Kimmel could say “Constitution,” he was off the air indefinitely.

ABC didn’t capitulate to public pressure to suspend Kimmel. Rather, ABC reportedly kowtowed to pressure from the FCC. That is where it gets dicey.

The First Amendment is supposed to protect free speech from government interference. It states:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The Trump administration apparently missed the memo.

“When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do,” Trump said aboard Air Force One following a state visit to Great Britain. “They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that. I would think maybe their license should be taken away,”

Networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox are not licensed directly, but they each affiliate with local stations that hold Federal Communications Commission licenses.

Trump seems to think he is the only president who has been targeted by late night TV hosts.

A Center for Media and Public Affairs study said that former Tonight Show host Jay Leno told 4,000 Bill Clinton jokes during his late night run.

And don’t get us started on Johnny Carson, who hosted “The Tonight Show” through seven presidential administrations.

Among Kimmel’s defenders was former President Barack Obama, who warned of the dangers of suppressing free speech.

“This commentary offers a clear, powerful statement of why freedom of speech is at the heart of democracy and must be defended, whether the speaker is Charlie Kirk or Jimmy Kimmel, MAGA supporters or MAGA opponents,” Obama wrote in a social media post.

“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 to it.”

This was coming from a president who had been the butt of more than a few Kimmel jokes.

At a White House Correspondents Dinner during Obama’s first term, Kimmel teased the Democratic president about everything from the size of Obama’s ears to his weight.

“Mr. President. Remember when the country rallied around you in hopes of a better tomorrow?” Kimmel said. “That was hilarious.”

Obama did what presidents are supposed to do. He laughed.

He didn’t sic the FCC on him.

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