Jimmy Kimmel made it clear he was less than impressed with Wednesday’s Senate oversight hearing, where FCC chairman Brendan Carr was grilled for pressuring ABC and local broadcasters to pre-empt “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in September.
The comedian addressed Carr’s testimony on his late night show Wednesday evening and blasted Senate Republicans for failing to hold the FCC head accountable.
“The hearing was on C-SPAN 3,” he joked. “You know, it’s bad when you can’t even make the main C-SPAN, but I didn’t.”
On a more serious note, he added: “In the end, none of the Republicans confronted the commissioner in any way. No one watched this. No one admitted to anything. Nothing was done to prevent it from happening again. No one’s held accountable, and your freedom of speech is only guaranteed, depending upon what you have to say. It was not the bipartisan effort we might have expected.”
However, Kimmel’s take wasn’t necessarily accurate, given Sen. Ted Cruz (R- Texas) did reprimand Carr during the hearing, noting, “We cannot have the government arbitrating truth or opinion.”
Despite this scolding by Cruz, the senator clarified he was not a fan of Kimmel’s, sharing that he found the late night personality “angry, overtly partisan and profoundly unfunny.”
In response to Cruz’s dig, Kimmel hit back: “There’s my old ball of expired mayonnaise … I have to say, ‘profoundly unfunny,’ hurts my feelings. I would never say he isn’t funny. I think he’s very funny. It was funny when he jetted off to Cancun during that snowstorm. It was funny when he liked that stepmom porn on 9/11. It was a lot of funny stuff.”
Overall, Kimmel was mainly in shock that he was the subject of a federal hearing. “It was so weird watching this morning while I made bagels for my kids,” he noted. “If you told me 25 years ago, 30 years ago, that the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation would be holding a hearing about me, I [would’ve guessed] I got drunk on a plane and tried to force the door open in the air.”
Kimmel’s drama with the FCC and the Trump administration started back on Sept. 17, when ABC shared that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” would be “pre-empted indefinitely” following the comedian’s remarks about Charlie Kirk’s alleged shooter. ABC’s decision followed a public denouncement from Carr, who accused Kimmel of misleading the public about Kirk’s death.
The suspension extended down through the ABC affiliate stations owned and operated by Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcasting — though, Kimmel was reinstated by ABC’s parent company Disney less than a week later.
While many accused Carr of violating the First Amendment with his warning about Kimmel, he appeared to stand by his decision during Wednesday’s hearing. He said, “I think any licensee that operates on the public airwaves has a responsibility to comply with the public interest standard, and that’s been the case for decades.”
Watch Kimmel’s full monologue above.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.
