Jimmy Kimmel Cut Off by Dallas Broadcaster While Delivering Emotional Monologue on Texas Shooting

Jimmy Kimmel was cut off by a commercial while delivering an emotional monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live Wednesday night addressing the Texas school shooting. Kimmel, who shared a tearful speech with his audience condemning the tragedy, was cut short on Dallas/Fort Worth’s ABC affiliate channel WFAA/Ch. 8, Variety reports.

After the episode aired, Kimmel addressed his viewers in Dallas on Twitter, where he posted a clip of his full monologue and wrote, “To my friends in Dallas who are asking: I do not know whether our @ABCNetwork affiliate @wfaa cut away from my monologue tonight intentionally or inadvertently but I will find out. In the meantime, here’s what you didn’t get to see.”

A source from WFAA denied to the Fort Worth Star Telegram that Kimmel’s monologue was intentionally censored, and instead blamed the issue on a news segment that had run overtime prior to the latest episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live. The source said a Seth MacFarlane interview featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live was also interrupted by commercials.

Pete Freedman, director of digital content at WFAA, denied intentionally cutting off Kimmel’s monologue. He replied to Kimmel’s tweet last night, writing, “We’d made the decision earlier in the day to extend our 10 o’clock news to include *extra* Uvalde coverage in our broadcast, it had nothing to do with your monlogue [sic]. We’re on the same team. 🤝”

Kimmel’s monologue included a teary plea from the late night host for lawmakers to take action and keep our country safe with gun reform. He said, in part, “Once again we grieve for the little boys and girls whose lives have been ended and whose families have been destroyed.”

He then called out right-wing politicians and newscasters for not wanting to politicize gun violence, saying, “They immediately criticize our president for even speaking about doing something to stop it. Because they don’t want to speak about it because they know what they’ve done and they know what they haven’t done. And they know it’s indefensible, so they’d rather sweep this under the rug.”

Kimmel ended his monologue with a call to action, telling the audience, “if you care about this — and we all do, doesn’t matter what party we vote for, we all care about this — we need to make sure that we do everything we can to make sure that … not one of any of these politicians ever holds office again.”

Jimmy Kimmel Live airs weeknights at 11:35/10:35c on ABC. Watch Kimmel’s full monologue in the video above.