Hollywood legend Robert De Niro joined Jimmy Kimmel’s “comeback” show for a brutal parody of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and the MAGA attack on free speech.
De Niro, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, joined the ABC late-night show for a sketch where he played a tough new mob boss-esque chairman of the FCC.
Carr’s reaction to Kimmel’s monologue last week, where he addressed the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, kicked off the chain of events that saw ABC yank the late-night host off the air, before Tuesday’s much-awaited return.
Kimmel addressed the MAGA elephant in the room on Tuesday, pointing out that his show was not being broadcast to approximately 20 percent of the country’s ABC affiliates, due to conservative backlash, so they claimed to have reached out to Carr to appear on the show.
Instead, Kimmel was connected with the “new” FCC chair, played by De Niro, who refused to give his name but said he had been appointed by “Sir Trump,” who he used to “do some work for” in Atlantic City.
After talking about teaching The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg “a lesson about consequences,” De Niro’s tough-talking character took offense to Kimmel’s claim that the FCC was using “mob tactics” to suppress free speech.
“What the f— did you just say to me?,” De Niro’s character asked, channelling his iconic role in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.
When Kimmel pointed out that he wasn’t allowed to swear or the FCC would fine the show, De Niro said “I am the f—ing FCC. I can f—ing say whatever the f— I want. You? No.”
He added, “Look, it’s just me Jimmy, the chairman of the FCC, gently suggesting that you shut the f— up.”
The politically-charged skit then addressed the hot topic of free speech.
“About that: speech—it ain’t free no more. We’re charging by the word now,” De Niro said, adding of the cost, “It depends on what you want to say. You want to say something nice about the president’s beautiful thick yellow hair, how he can do his makeup better than any broad, that’s free.”
“But if you want to do a joke like he’s so fat he needs two seats on the Epstein jet,” he added, “that’s gonna cost you.”
De Niro said the price for the Jeffrey Epstein joke would be “a couple of fingers, maybe a tooth, depends how constipated he is.”
When he said the new FCC motto was “sticks and stones may break your bones,” he clarified to Kimmel that words “can harm you now.”
He added, “Just make sure you pick the right words. Capiche?”
The skit ended with the new FCC boss picking up a call from the president, greeting him with a “Hi, handsome” and noting “I gotta go. Couple of cases of Tylenol fell off a truck and now I got to figure out how to put autism in them.”
“I’ll be watching you, Kimmel,” De Niro’s character warned. “Maybe not on ABC, that’s up to you.”
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