Late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel has said he pulled an interview with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico following an alleged warning from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Kimmel told the audience of his ABC program on Wednesday night that he has interviewed candidates for office for decades, including President Donald Trump himself, “without any issue” in the past.
“Now that he’s president, something has changed,” Kimmel said, claiming that “his FCC has threatened me, threatened my show, threatened our network … based on simple editorial decisions.”
Kimmel’s interview with Talarico will be released on his YouTube channel instead.
“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 Talarcio will not air on television,” 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.
“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.”
Kimmel did not say whether he would interview Talarcio’s Republican opponent for the Senate seat, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The FCC did not immediately respond to an Epoch Times request for comment on Thursday. Neither it nor its chairman, Brendan Carr, publicly responded to Kimmel’s claim on Wednesday or Thursday morning.
But previously, the FCC and Carr warned Kimmel over jokes and comments he made in the wake of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk’s assassination a year ago. Carr last year argued that Kimmel may have misled the public with a comment he made about Kirk and the suspect in the case, Tyler Robinson.
Meanwhile, Carr has said that broadcasters such as ABC, CBS, and NBC are obligated to act in the public’s interest, again making that argument in a post on X last month.
“All broadcasters have an obligation to operate in the public interest—even Disney,” he wrote in the post. Disney is the owner of ABC.
“Indeed, broadcasters made a deal with the American public—in exchange for free access to a valuable public resource (the airwaves) they agreed to meet their public interest obligations.”
The fact that they operate over airwaves “sets them apart from cable channels or podcasts or newspapers,” Carr added, responding to an August lawsuit that was filed by Disney and ABC against the FCC over the agency’s decision earlier this year to review its broadcasting licenses.
Lawyers for the companies argued that the Trump administration has effectively targeted ABC for political reasons and that the lawsuit is necessary because ABC has no other relief available.
“Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts,” the lawsuit states. “That campaign began in this Administration’s earliest days and has only intensified since.”
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