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.”
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?