Texas Senate candidate James Talarico decried ABC’s decision to not air an interview he sat for on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” as “the most dangerous form of cancel culture,” while assailing the Trump administration for pressuring the network to alter its programming.
Talarico addressed the circumstances surrounding his interview with Kimmel on Thursday, telling MS NOW that “government censorship should be a concern to all of us, regardless of our political party.”
“I think it’s the most dangerous form of cancel culture,” Talarico said. “People at the top — powerful politicians, powerful media executives — censoring what we watch, what we read, what we say. That should be a concern to everyone who believes in the First Amendment and believes in the freedom of speech.”
Kimmel posted the full interview to YouTube late Thursday night. He asked the Texas state representative about religion, his opponent Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and voter suppression.
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When Kimmel asked Talarico why the administration was so keen to get him off the air, Talarico answered, “They’re worried that we’re going to win this race in Texas.”
ABC has faced ongoing threats from the Federal Communications Commission and its chair, Brendan Carr, over workplace diversity practices, Talarico’s appearance on daytime talk show “The View,” and for remarks Kimmel made in September 2025 after the conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death, which resulted in a brief suspension of his show.
After the FCC signaled it would review the broadcast licenses of ABC’s owned and operated television stations years before they were set to expire, ABC accused the commission in a regulatory filing of retaliation. ABC and its parent company Disney sued the FCC on Aug. 18 over accusations that its First Amendment rights were being violated.
In February, an interview between Talarico and Stephen Colbert, who hosted a late-night show on CBS up until this spring, was also uploaded to YouTube due to the FCC’s enforcement of the “equal time” rule, which dictates that radio and TV broadcasters must provide equal airtime to competing political candidates if requested.
Kimmel titled his interview with Talarico “Jimmy Kimmel’s Interview with James Talarico That the FCC Doesn’t Want You To See” and began the conversation by saying the FCC has issued threats against him, his show, ABC and its affiliates because “they want to make our editorial decisions for us, which of course we cannot accept.”
That was why, Kimmel said, the interview would be posted on YouTube, “even though our government would clearly prefer that we not do it at all.”
Kimmel also said he would “love” to interview Paxton in accordance with the FCC’s “equal time” rule, saying he had a lot of questions for the Republican candidate.“Call me,” Kimmel said to Paxton at the end of the segment.
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