The White House insists it did not threaten Jimmy Kimmel into not broadcasting his impending interview with James Talarico, accusing the ABC late night comedian of creating a “false narrative” against the FCC.
“Jimmy Kimmel is play-acting — as he often does — to create a false narrative about this administration’s policies. Chairman Carr has not threatened him regarding interviewing James Talarico, or any other candidate,” Assistant White House Press Secretary Davis Ingle said on Thursday. “Any media outlet blindly amplifying Kimmel’s egocentric delusion should insist on proof. Of which they will find none.”
Ingle’s comments came ahead of Thursday night’s “JKL” episode and hours after Talarico responded to Kimmel’s Wednesday night monologue. “We found out about this very recently, and I guess we’ll see what happens tonight. But government censorship should be a concern to all of us, regardless of our political party,” the politician told MS NOW on Thursday morning.
“It’s the most dangerous form of cancel culture: people at the top, powerful politicians, powerful media executives, censoring what we watch, what we read [and] what we say,” Talarico added. “And that, again, should be a concern to everyone who believes in the First Amendment and believes in the freedom of speech.”
On Wednesday night, Kimmel referenced his ongoing battle with Brendan Carr and the Federal Communications Commission while sharing his side of the story.
“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.”
“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,” he continued. “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 … 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.”
“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,” Kimmel further 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.”
Last week, the FCC moved to dismiss ABC’s First Amendment lawsuit regarding its early station license reviews, calling the network’s retaliation claims “meritless.”
Regardless, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is still set to air Thursday night on ABC.
The post The White House Insists FCC Did Not Threaten Kimmel to Pull Talarico Interview appeared first on TheWrap.
