I interviewed Donald Trump when he was running for president in 2015, and at that time when he was the one sitting next to me, he seemed to have no problem with the idea of talk show hosts interviewing candidates. In fact, he was very eager to come back for another interview, which he did just before he became the nominee in 2016.
But for some reason, and I can’t seem to figure out what that reason is, something has changed. Now that he’s president, his FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations, based on simple, traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings it would seem they don’t like.
Kimmel said the decision to put the interview on YouTube was made out of consideration for local stations that could face FCC threats to their broadcast licenses.
This is the same federal government that’s now offering (non-existent) $5,000 checks to elect them.
So yeah, this sucks, but it’s sort of small fries when democracy is clearly already dead.