Jimmy Kimmel will not air his interview with Texas senate candidate James Talarico after threats from the FCC, the late night host shared Wednesday.
During Wednesday’s monologue for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” the comedian explained that he would release a sit down with Talarico on his YouTube channel, rather than broadcasting it on ABC.
“I’ll be interviewing James Talarico tomorrow night under unusual circumstances,” Kimmel said. “You know, 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 [David] Letterman did, [Jay] Leno did, Arsenio [Hall], etc., etc.”
He added: “I’ve interviewed a lot of political candidates from Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz to Donald Trump himself. I interviewed Donald Trump when he was running for president in 2015.”
As Kimmel went on, he claimed Trump at that time “seemed to have no problem with the idea of a talk show host interviewing candidates.”
“In fact, he was very eager to come back for another interview, which he did just before he became the nominee in 2016. But for some reason, and I can’t seem to figure out what that reason is, something has changed,” Kimmel said. “Now that he is president, 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.”
Per Kimmel, he made this decision out of “consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas, who would have to deal with this nonsense.”
Kimmel confirmed that the Talarico interview will not air on television, but be posted on YouTube instead.
“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,” he noted. “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.”
Before moving on, Kimmel called on his viewers to make sure they’re registered to vote, noting it was “the most important thing you can do.”
Watch Kimmel’s full monologue below.
Kimmel’s update comes amid ABC’s ongoing legal battle with the FCC, which sparked after the Brendan Carr-led agency ordered Disney in April to submit early renewal applications for its eight ABC-owned stations, even though the licenses were not otherwise scheduled to come up for renewal until 2028 or later.
This led ABC to sue the FCC last month, where the company accused the agency of using its licensing authority to punish the network over programming that has been criticized by Trump and Carr.
While the administration has publicly criticized ABC programming on more than one occasion, including “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “The View,” the FCC said on Friday that those controversies did not prompt its decision to accelerate the renewals. Rather, the FCC maintained that the early reviews stemmed from an ongoing investigation into allegations of unlawful discrimination in employment practices at Disney and ABC.
The post Jimmy Kimmel Says He Will Only Release His James Talarico Interview on YouTube After FCC Threats: ‘Best That We Can Do’ appeared first on TheWrap.
