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Actor Robert De Niro joined Jimmy Kimmel on stage Wednesday, prodding the late-night host with a baseball bat and jokingly slapping him while posing as FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
“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 said during the show. “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.”
De Niro entered the set and said, “You’re being threatened by the FCC? Who is threatening you? Am I threatening you? Do you feel threatened by me?”
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De Niro listed off a series of insults about President Donald Trump and asked the late-night host if he had said them before Kimmel questioned, “What is the point of this?”
Robert De Niro poses as Brendan Carr and holds a baseball bat on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Sept. 30, 2026. (ABC/JimmyKimmelLive)
“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 said, as he appeared to slap Kimmel.
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The FCC did not return Digital’s request for comment.
De Niro went on, “Did you say that President Trump has touched more women than the music of Adele?”
Kimmel responded and told De Niro, “Come on now. You have to admit that’s pretty funny, right?”
“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?”
“Robert De Niro is a washed-up has-been who hasn’t been relevant in 30 years,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told Digital in a statement. “Now, he just beclowns himself by spewing hate speech and inciting violence against others. Instead of embarrassing himself every time he speaks, he should seek immediate treatment for a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has completely rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Monday, Sept. 28. (Disney via Getty Images)
The White House also called out Jimmy Kimmel in a statement.
“Jimmy Kimmel is a no-talent loser who has beclowned himself with tanking ratings and by spewing disgusting lies to his dwindling audience. He is so devoid of actual talent that nobody with any commonsense would ever watch him unless it was to laugh at his miserable failures,” Ingle said.
The liberal late-night host, upon returning to host his show after a summer break on Sept. 8, jabbed at Carr and said, “We’re still here.”
The late-night host noted that it was the 4,000th episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“We’ve done 4,000 of these. Which is, it’s a lot of shows,” Kimmel said. “According to the White House, it’s too many shows.”
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A composite image shows late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, left, and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, right, after ABC temporarily suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following Kimmel’s comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. (Getty Images)
“There are those who said we would never last this long. There are even those who used the regulatory might of the FCC to unconstitutionally try to make sure we didn’t last this long. But we did it the hard way, Brendan. And we are still here,” Kimmel added.
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Radio host Howard Stern joined Kimmel on Tuesday and issued a warning to ABC during the interview, should anything go wrong with Kimmel’s show.
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“He has done everything for the company. And I hope that they keep that in mind,” he said. “Oh my God. I don’t know about you, but if something goes wrong, oh, is ABC going to have hell to pay. Am I correct? Are you with me?”
