Jimmy Kimmel says that his interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico will not air on TV after President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) threatened Jimmy Kimmel Live!, ABC, their affiliates, and local stations.
During his Wednesday monologue, Kimmel said that while Talarico would stop by the show for an interview on Thursday, viewers at home won’t be able to watch it on broadcast television. Instead, the interview with the Democratic nominee has been relegated to YouTube.
“Tomorrow night, I’ll be interviewing James Talarico — tomorrow night, under unusual circumstances,” Kimmel began. “You know, for a lot of years, for the whole 20-plus years of our show, in fact, I’ve been interviewing Americans who are running for office with no problem at all, just like Letterman did, Leno did, Arsenio, et cetera, et cetera. I’ve interviewed a lot of political candidates from Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz to Donald Trump himself.”
Kimmel highlighted that he interviewed Trump when he was running for president in 2015. “At that time, when he was the one sitting next to me, he seemed to have no problem with the idea of talk show hosts interviewing candidates,” said the host, adding that Trump was “very eager” to return before he became the nominee in 2016. Kimmel added, “But for some reason, and I can’t seem to figure out what that reason is, something has changed now that he is president.”
Now that Trump is president, Kimmel said that “his FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations — based on simple, traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings it would seem they don’t like.” He said that “out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas who would have to deal with this nonsense,” his interview with Talarico will not air on television and be posted to YouTube instead.
Talarico is facing a close race in Texas against state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Democrats have not won a national seat in Texas in over 30 years.
“So if you want to learn about a candidate for the Senate tomorrow, you will have to go to the Jimmy Kimmel Live YouTube channel where you will see it in its entirety,” continued Kimmel. “And thank goodness we have that, because in the America we live in right now, that is the best that we can do until November, of course. Make sure you’re registered to vote, by the way, because that’s the most important thing you can do.”
Kimmel’s announcement arrives nearly six months after former Late Show host Stephen Colbert claimed lawyers for CBS barred The Late Show from airing an interview with Talarico, citing threats from the FCC. “He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers — who called us directly —- that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said at the time. CBS denied they prohibited the Late Show from broadcasting the interview.
Talarico, a former school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian serving his fourth term in the Texas House of Representatives, made waves in Democratic politics through a combination of progressive values grounded in religious doctrine. Talarico has packaged his left-leaning politics as the common sense approach to combating wealth inequality while holding the disconnected Washington, D.C., elite to account — as a result, he has courted the votes of Texas independents, moderates, and even disaffected Republicans.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
