{"id":432697,"date":"2026-09-11T10:04:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T10:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/432697\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T10:04:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T10:04:19","slug":"jimmy-kimmels-pulled-tv-interview-with-james-talarico-drops-on-youtube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/432697\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Kimmel’s Pulled TV Interview With James Talarico Drops on YouTube"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJimmy Kimmel<\/a> turned to YouTube on Thursday night to house his interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico<\/a> \u2014 in light of fears that the FCC would punish ABC stations for running the chat.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat are they so scared of you?\u201d Kimmel asked the candidate. Said Talarico: \u201cWell, they\u2019re worried that we\u2019re going to win this race in Texas. But we are the underdogs until the last vote is counted. We\u2019re not just going up against the most corrupt politician in Texas. We\u2019re going up against this entire corrupt system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong the topics that Kimmel and Talarico discussed were him not taking money from corporate PACs, Trump\u2019s relationship with Talarico\u2019s opponent (Ken Paxton), the GOP attempting to suppress voting and how the teachings of Jesus had been corrupted by the MAGA movement.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cScripture tells us that you can\u2019t love God and hate other people,\u201d Talarico said. \u201cYou can\u2019t love God and abuse the immigrant. You can\u2019t love God and oppress the poor. You can\u2019t love God and bully the outcast \u2026 I was brought up to believe that in the face of a neighbor, we glimpse the face of God. Matthew 25 tells us Christians exactly how we\u2019re going to be judged and how we\u2019re going to be saved by feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI often wonder what would Jesus do if he visited the U.S. Senate. I think he would tell the senators on the floor, \u2018Depart from me, for I was hungry and you cut my food assistance. I was sick and you kicked me off Medicaid. I was a stranger and you deported me and my family.\u2019 And then I think he would flip over those fancy desks on the floor of the U.S. Senate and demand that we take care of all of our neighbors, especially the least of these.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTalarico also addressed the fact that his opponent, Paxton, was previously impeached by his fellow Republicans for bribery. \u201cKen Paxton gets rich on the public\u2019s dime, and then he refuses to answer basic questions about that corruption,\u201d Talarico said. \u201cI mean, literally, any time someone asks him a hard question, he runs away. You can watch these videos of people asking him about his 15 homes, asking him about the THC ban in Texas, and he gets this terrified look on his face, and he just walks the other way. When I get hard questions on the campaign trail, I answer them, and that\u2019s exactly what we should expect from our public officials in a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn his actual ABC broadcast monologue Thursday, Kimmel told the audience that \u201cthis is \u2014 the show you\u2019re watching \u2014 this is an unusual program for us because in a few minutes, I\u2019m going to interview James Talarico \u2014 the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas. But you\u2019re not going to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKimmel announced on his show Wednesday night that his interview with Talarico would not air on ABC and would instead be posted to YouTube, citing concerns about the FCC, which has previously threatened ABC station licenses and played a key role in Kimmel\u2019s brief suspension in 2025.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOut 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,\u201d Kimmel said. \u201cIt will be posted on YouTube instead. It will not be on TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe expanded on the reason in his Thursday monologue: \u201cI mentioned last night, this interview will not be televised because of threats from the FCC, led by Commissioner Brendan Carr, who says we do not have the right to interview whichever candidates we want to interview. Which is something we\u2019ve been doing for twenty-plus years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is yet another attack on free speech, something that has become all too familiar for us here at the show for us in the country,\u201d Kimmel added. \u201cThe FCC wants to make it impossible for me to interview candidates by requiring that I interview every candidate on the ballot who asks for equal time. So not only would I have to interview James Talarico as a Republican opponent, Ken Paxton \u2014 which, by the way, I would love to do, call me.\u00a0I have many questions for you. Our affiliates in Texas would have to give equal time to as many candidates as there are on the ballot, and there\u2019s about 10 candidates on the ballot. But the White House, once again, is claiming that what I\u2019m saying, which is clearly true, is not true.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019d be great news if we could do this the easy way instead of the hard way. That would be terrific.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked by MS NOW about the interview before it was posted to YouTube, Talarico said he was \u201cstill hopeful\u201d it would air on ABC. He called the FCC\u2019s threats<\/a> \u201cthe most dangerous form of cancel culture,\u201d saying, \u201cPeople at the top, powerful politicians, powerful media executives, censoring what we watch, what we read, what we say. And that, again, should be a concern to everyone who believes in the First Amendment and believes in the freedom of speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not the first time a late-night show has preempted an interview with the Texas Senate candidate. In February, Stephen Colbert said CBS executives pulled his interview with Talarico from the air over concerns about violating the FCC\u2019s \u201cequal time\u201d rule, which requires broadcast stations to give equal time to political candidates when they appear on-air. While there are exemptions to the rule, Trump\u2019s FCC chief Brendan Carr has been aggressive about clamping down on broadcast programs perceived as liberal. (The government agency is currently in a dispute with ABC\u2019s \u201cThe View\u201d and, in 2024, went after \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d over a brief cameo by Kamala Harris.)<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, Colbert put his Talarico interview on YouTube, with the clip garnering 9.5 million views. The Talarico campaign raised $2.5 million in the 24 hours after Colbert revealed he was barred from airing the interview.<\/p>\n

\n\tHere\u2019s Kimmel\u2019s interview with Talarico, posted Thursday night on YouTube:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jimmy Kimmel turned to YouTube on Thursday night to house his interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2135,33863,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-432697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-james-talarico","tag-jimmy-kimmel","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}