Jimmy Kimmel says the Trump administration's pressure campaign has claimed another casualty.
A planned Thursday interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico will now air only on YouTube instead of ABC, according to The Daily Beast.
The move echoes last year's clash, when Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr forced "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" off the air for a week over Kimmel's comments about the right's reaction to activist Charlie Kirk's murder. This time, Kimmel says, similar pressure led him to pull the Talarico sit-down from broadcast rather than risk trouble for ABC's affiliates.
Talarico is challenging Trump ally Ken Paxton, whom Kimmel mocked Wednesday as a "piece of human silly putty," for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas. Kimmel noted the irony that Trump himself once had no objection to late-night hosts interviewing candidates.
"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," Kimmel said. "But for some reason, and I can't seem to figure out what that reason is," he added, drawing laughs, "something has changed."
Kimmel said the FCC under Trump "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 the network backed off "out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas," so the interview "will be posted on YouTube instead, it will not be on TV" — a line that drew boos from the studio audience.
Still, Kimmel urged viewers to seek out the interview and register to vote before November. Some viewers reacted online, with one calling the decision proof of "how much FEAR the GOP has" heading into the midterms.
The segment followed Tuesday's 4,000th episode, when Kimmel declared, "we did it the hard way, Brendan. And we are still here" — a jab at Carr over last year's suspension.
