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.”

    • jaaake@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Literally what happened with the same politician being interviewed by Colbert during his primary. FCC told them they couldn’t air the interview, they posted it on YouTube, Streisand Effect happens and it’s one of the most viewed Colbert videos ever. It won him that election. I think Jasmine Crockett was a better candidate and she may have stood a chance had she gotten that level of exposure.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        It won him that election.

        Idk about that. Talarico had a stronger ground game and a prodigious fundraising haul. He won with a healthy 6-pt margin over Crockett.

        Incidentally, CBS gave plenty of coverage and multiple interviews to Crockett during her primary run. And Crockett was even interviewed - multiple times, including on CBS - specifically over the Colbert show controversy. The idea that she just wasn’t getting enough press to win in Texas seems sparse.

        I think the biggest baggage Crockett had to carry was Colin Alred’s. He flubbed it in 2022. So Texas voters decided to try and run another Beto-style West Texas cracker, instead of a second Dallas social media suburbanite.

        • jaaake@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          Sounds like you’ve got better insight into Texas politics than I do. From my outside perspective, this is what put Talarico into the national spotlight. I was previously unfamiliar with him, but had seen her fighting the good fight against GOP stupidity and ICE specifically.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            28 minutes ago

            From my outside perspective, this is what put Talarico into the national spotlight.

            Sure. Nationally it was big for his brand. But all the local media was on this race months beforehand. Texas Tribune, Houston Chronicle, all the local stations. Ken Paxton running against John Cornyn showed an enormous fissure in the Texas Republican Party when it was already sporting wounds in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Everyone who follows Texas politics was locked in on the Texas Senate race going back to 2025.

            Also, plus, too, Abbott running for a third term as Governor was kinda assumed to be a shoe-in. And Texas is a big media market. So Senate is where the coverage naturally went.

            I was previously unfamiliar with him, but had seen her fighting the good fight against GOP stupidity and ICE specifically.

            I mean, Crockett was certainly good at getting in front of a camera. But she was heavily keyed in on African American civil rights and not terribly popular with Latinos. Without Talarico in the race, she could have probably clinched it. But he’s scratching all the itches that your classic Central Texas indie voter loves.

            I think Talarico caught people off guard because he codes as a classic Conservative Republican in appearance and demeanor. But that’s just what Anne Richards / LBJ loving Texas Democrats all look like.

    • bedwyr@piefed.ca
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      4 hours ago

      How far are we from youtube censoring stuff like this that the admin asks them to?

      We really need to further grow some alternates, youtube is too large to trust, even if google didn’t own them.