The late night host announced that his interview with the Texas Senate candidate will only air on YouTube

Jimmy Kimmel says that his interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico will not air on TV after President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) threatened Jimmy Kimmel Live!, ABC, their affiliates, and local stations.

During his Wednesday monologue, Kimmel said that while Talarico would stop by the show for an interview on Thursday, viewers at home won’t be able to watch it on broadcast television. Instead, the interview with the Democratic nominee has been relegated to YouTube.

“Tomorrow night, I’ll be interviewing James Talarico — tomorrow night, under unusual circumstances,” Kimmel began. “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 Letterman did, Leno did, Arsenio, et cetera, et cetera. I’ve interviewed a lot of political candidates from Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz to Donald Trump himself.”

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    It’s the same trick, executed out of the same playbook.

    Go to the FCC, say “We’re going to do an interview with a popular candidate for Senate”, get a nastygram from some DOGE staffer back in response, then generate a bunch of attention-grabbing headlines with “The Man Won’t Let Us Interview America’s Coolest Senator on TV so Come See It On Our Website Instead”.

    • Thunderbird4@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      You’re suggesting that this is a stunt by Talarico’s campaign or by Kimmel? You’d sooner believe that both Kimmel and Colbert’s shows would pull the same stunt to boost their YouTube channels than believe trump’s FCC when they say they’re willing to pull broadcast licenses over political discourse?

      • BigPotato@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        It can be everything - Kimmel’s people could know that Trump would threaten ABC to not air the interview, allowing them to get more views. Talarico’s team might know that the interview would get canned, giving them more publicity. Trump’s people may be actually trying to suppress Talarico’s team from getting the publicity and totally plan to pull the license. ABC might be aware of all of this and planned to kotow from the beginning.

        Who knows?

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        You’re suggesting that this is a stunt by Talarico’s campaign or by Kimmel?

        Kimmel. He’s a hack, so of course he stole Colbert’s bit.

        You’d sooner believe that both Kimmel and Colbert’s shows would pull the same stunt to boost their YouTube channels

        I think Kimmel’s boosting his own brand because he’s also on his way out.