Jimmy Kimmel Sends James Talarico Interview to YouTube After Threats From Trump’s FCC

Jimmy Kimmel has revealed that his interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico will be kept off broadcast TV on Thursday, claiming threats from President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) forced his team to put the segment on YouTube instead.

The late-night host announced the unusual arrangement during his Jimmy Kimmel Live! opening monologue on Wednesday night, saying his show had routinely interviewed political candidates for more than two decades without controversy.

“I’ll be interviewing James Talarico tomorrow night, under unusual circumstances,” Kimmel said. “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 [David] Letterman did, [Jay] Leno did, Arsenio [Hall], etcetera, etcetera. I’ve interviewed a lot of political candidates from Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz to Donald Trump himself.”

He continued: “I interviewed Donald Trump when he was running for president in 2015. And at that time, when he was the one sitting next to me, he 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 added that “now that he is president,” Trump’s “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.”

The host went on to say that the show had made the decision to air the Talarico interview in full on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! YouTube channel “out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas who would have to deal with this nonsense.”

“It will not be on TV,” he added.

“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 said. “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.”

Talarico, a Texas state representative, is running against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a closely watched Senate contest. Democrats have not won a statewide race in Texas in decades.

The controversy follows a similar episode involving Talarico earlier this year when former Late Show host Stephen Colbert said CBS lawyers prevented The Late Show from broadcasting an interview with the Democrat because of FCC threats. Colbert moved the interview to YouTube also, though CBS denied prohibiting the interview.

Kimmel ended his announcement with an appeal to viewers: “Make sure you’re registered to vote, by the way, because that’s the most important thing you can do.”

Watch above via ABC.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!