Jimmy Kimmel‘s pulled TV interview with James Talarico, the Texan Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, has crossed 5 million views in the 24 hours since it was posted to YouTube.
It was revealed during Wednesday night’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” that the interview would not air on his ABC show because of threats from Donald Trump’s FCC against the network’s affiliate stations. “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 said on air. “It will be posted on YouTube instead. It will not be on TV.”
This, of course, is not Kimmel’s first conflict with the FCC. Chairman Brendan Carr’s threatened ABC after the host’s comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk in 2025, and the network later suspended him for nearly a week.
Talarico is no stranger to FCC feuds either. In February, the agency told “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” that it couldn’t broadcast an interview with him. The segment was posted to the show’s YouTube Channel instead, where it reached more than 9 million views.
The pulled TV interview between Kimmel and Talarico started with the late night host asking the Texas senate candidate why Trump and the FCC are so scared of him. Talarico responded: “Well, they’re worried that we’re going to win this race in Texas. 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.”
Watch the full 20-minute interview in the video below.
