Jimmy Kimmel Brings James Talarico to YouTube After Being Targeted by FCC

Jimmy Kimmel welcomed Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico to the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” stage on Thursday night, but their interview only aired in full on YouTube.

“I mentioned last night, we are being targeted by the FCC for the crime of interviewing political candidates, even though, for years, we and every other late night talk show have welcomed numerous candidates, including Donald Trump,” Kimmel shared atop the 21-minute clip. “When he was running, he was on this show two times. But now I guess he doesn’t like me anymore — or the First Amendment.”

“And so, the FCC has threatened me or threatened my show, our network, even our local ABC stations, because they want to make our editorial decisions for us, which of course we cannot accept,” he continued. “So, tonight, we are bypassing the public airwaves and hosting this YouTube interview on YouTube, even though our government would clearly prefer that we not do it at all.”

During their interview, the Texas state representative spoke at length about his opponent Ken Paxton refusing to debate, as well as President Donald Trump and his RNC Midterm Convention. However, Kimmel also made sure to point out that Talarico was similarly “demoted to YouTube” back in February with Stephen Colbert (“The Late Show” has since gone off the air).

“Well, they’re worried that we’re going to win this race in Texas,” Talarico replied. “But we are the underdogs until the last vote is counted. We’re not just going up against the most corrupt politician in Texas, we’re going up against this entire corrupt system.”

“You may have seen that Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, has already dumped millions of dollars to try to defeat us in Texas; MAGA Inc., the president’s dark-money super PAC, spent $10 million last week to try to defeat us,” he added. “They are terrified of this movement we’re building in Texas; working people coming together across party, and race, and gender, and religion, and culture to take on the people at the top who have been screwing us over for far too long now.”

On Wednesday night, Kimmel revealed that his Thursday interview with Talarico would not be airing on the linear show due to his ongoing feud with the FCC. Instead, their sit-down would stream in full on YouTube. He explained that the decision was made in “consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas, who would have to deal with this nonsense.”

“I’ll be interviewing James Talarico tomorrow night under unusual circumstances,” the comedian shared in his Wednesday monologue. “You know, 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 [David] Letterman did, [Jay] Leno did, Arsenio [Hall], etc., etc.”

“I’ve interviewed a lot of political candidates from Hillary Clinton to Ted Cruz to Donald Trump himself. I interviewed Donald Trump when he was running for president in 2015,” he continued. “In fact, he was very eager to come back for another interview, which he did just before he became the nominee in 2016. But for some reason, and I can’t seem to figure out what that reason is, something has changed … Now that he is president, his 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.”

“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 further noted. “And thank goodness we have that, because in the America we live in right now, that is the best that we can do until November.”

In response, The White House insisted there was no threat and that the ABC late night host was creating a “false narrative” against the FCC.

“Jimmy Kimmel is play-acting — as he often does — to create a false narrative about this administration’s policies. Chairman Carr has not threatened him regarding interviewing James Talarico, or any other candidate,” Assistant White House Press Secretary Davis Ingle stated. “Any media outlet blindly amplifying Kimmel’s egocentric delusion should insist on proof. Of which they will find none.”

Either way, “Jimmy Kimmel Lives!” airs weeknights at 10:35 p.m. ET on ABC, with select clips on YouTube.