Robert De Niro marched onto Jimmy Kimmel’s Brooklyn set Wednesday armed with a baseball bat and a fake FCC persona, turning the host’s gripe about government pressure into a roughhouse sketch about President Donald Trump and the agency now threatening late-night television.
Kimmel set up the bit by reminding the audience that his last Brooklyn visit came right after what he jokingly called an “unexpected FCC vacation week,” then told the crowd the pressure had not gone away.
“I don’t know if you know this, but the last time we were here in Brooklyn, we were just getting back on the air after we had that unexpected FCC vacation week,” Kimmel told the audience.
“And while I would like to say that things have improved over the last year, they haven’t really. We are still being threatened by the FCC.”
That was De Niro’s cue to enter as FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, turning the supposed regulator into a bat-carrying bully.
“You’re being threatened by the FCC? Who is threatening you? Am I threatening you? Do you feel threatened by me?” De Niro questioned.
The routine became a staged shakedown as De Niro’s Carr character ran through anti-Trump lines and demanded to know whether Kimmel had used them on-air.
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Kimmel barely got in a question before De Niro silenced him and appeared to slap him.
“Did I tell you it was your turn to talk, numbnuts? You speak when I tell you to speak, and otherwise you shut the f— up,” De Niro snapped.
The interrogation then moved to a punchline about Trump and Adele.
“Did you say that President Trump has touched more women than the music of Adele?” De Niro asked.
Kimmel tried to sell the joke on its own merits.
“Come on now. You have to admit that’s pretty funny, right?” Kimmel replied.
De Niro’s fake Carr answered with another over-the-top threat.
“You’re doing it again!” De Niro responded. “Am I going to have to tie your d— to a bag of doorknobs and kick you down the stairs?”
Kimmel had spent recent monologues revisiting his four-day suspension last year, which followed his comments about the killing of Charlie Kirk, while also attacking Trump’s White House media ban.
In a 13-minute monologue, the host said he once thought Trump had pushed him off the air, only to see the president later create his own camera problem.
“That was a year ago. Never did I imagine that 12 months later, Trump would do the same thing to himself,” Kimmel recalled.
Kimmel argued that the ban had stripped Trump of the television attention he likes most.
“He has no cameras following him around anymore. There are no microphones to record what he’s saying,” Kimmel said.
At Trump’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new South Lawn helipad, viral footage showed the president speaking without press-pool audio after major networks refused to fill in for CNN’s crew. CNN, MS NOW and Politico had been singled out in the ban.
Kimmel praised the networks for sticking together during his monologue, telling his audience it “has to drive Trump even crazier than he already is.”
“There’s nothing this man loves more than being on television,” Kimmel jabbed.
He turned the lack of official cameras into a joke about first lady Melania Trump.
“And now, thanks to his own dumb actions, the only camera at the White House is the Ring camera Melania had mounted on her bedroom door to keep him out of it,” Kimmel said.
After the audience laughed, Kimmel tied the jab to Trump’s 2016 win.
“If only they’d done this nine years ago, we might not be in this situation,” Kimmel joked.
Kimmel maintained that Trump’s ban had “no defense,” saying the president simply disliked what the networks were saying.
De Niro had already been on the anti-Trump circuit before the Kimmel sketch, speaking at a private Ohio-Texas Victory Fund reception in Manhattan for Senate candidates Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and James Talarico (D-TX).
In a speech that ran about 10 minutes, the actor accused Trump and his family of profiting from the presidency while ordinary Americans struggled, while also questioning Trump investments and business interests tied to his sons.
De Niro also brought up reporting on Trump’s oil and gas holdings during the Iran conflict and allegations about defense technology investments connected to increased Pentagon spending.
The actor moved from Trump’s finances to Senate control, telling the room that a recent vote directing Trump to end the Iran war failed by one vote and suggesting either Brown or Talarico could have changed the outcome from inside the chamber.
His biggest reaction came after he connected possible Democratic wins to Senate Republicans and Mitch McConnell (R-KY), whose health has remained under scrutiny.
Brown and Talarico winning, De Niro said, would mean Republicans would not need to “make Mitch McConnell leave his coffin to cast the deciding vote.”
McConnell, 84, came back to the Senate on Sept. 14 in a wheelchair after a June fall at his Washington home that required hospitalization and rehabilitation.
After roughly three months away, McConnell told reporters he was “still not quite back to 100%,” while saying he would continue physical therapy and show up for important Senate votes.