Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said Wednesday that his show won’t air a recently taped interview with Texas’ U.S. Senate hopeful James Talarico due to pressure from the Trump White House’s Federal Communications Commission.
Instead, the interview will be posted to the Jimmy Kimmel Live YouTube channel Thursday.
“Because in the America we live in right now, that is the best that we can do,” Kimmel said in an announcement video posted to Instagram.
In a clip, Kimmel said that during President Donald Trump’s administration, the 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.”
Kimmel pointed out his history of interviewing political candidates, including Trump himself in 2015, when he first began running for president, and again in 2016 just before he became the Republican nominee.
“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,” Kimmel said. “In fact, he was very eager to come back for another interview.”
Kimmel mentioned that he has interviewed numerous politicians at this point, including President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden, Sen. Ted Cruz, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“For the whole 20 years we’ve been on air, I have been interviewing Americans who are running for office with no problem at all,” Kimmel added.
Additionally, Kimmel said his sit-downs with political candidates and politicians are part of a long-history of late night hosts interviewing such guests. The tradition stretches back to the tenures of Jay Leno, David Letterman, Arsenio Hall and before.
“But for some reason, and I can’t figure out why that is, something has changed,” Kimmel said to laughter from the audience.
Talarico is polling ahead of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican and steadfast Trump ally whom Kimmel referred to as a “piece of human Silly Putty.” Talarico has also vastly out-raised Paxton, who’s had trouble uniting his party behind him due to a history of scandals.
This isn’t the first time threats from Trump’s FCC have forced a late-night show to pull a previously taped interview with Talarico from the air. Stephen Colbert said in February that CBS didn’t air his interview with Talarico out of fear of reprisals from the agency.
Due to the chilling effect such federal pressure can have on the media, Kimmel decided to err — and air — on the side of caution.
“Out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas, who would have to deal with this nonsense, my interview tomorrow with James Talarico will not air on television,” Kimmel added.
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