Donald Trump’s A-list nemesis Robert De Niro crashed an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! to roast one of the president’s cronies.
During a broadcast from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, host Jimmy Kimmel took aim at Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr. The regulatory chief has faced intense backlash after the agency took the unprecedented step earlier this year of seeking an early review of ABC’s broadcast licenses following persistent White House complaints about late-night humor.
Kimmel claimed his show was “still being threatened by the FCC” before bringing out actor Robert De Niro, 83, who walked on stage wielding a baseball bat and playing a mob-style government inspector sent to enforce compliance.
De Niro told Kimmel he was conducting a “routine inspection to make sure you are abiding by the terms of your license.” A woman playing devoted presidential aide Natalie Harp then handed the actor a dossier detailing “192 instances” of the comedian making fun of the president’s appearance.
When Kimmel attempted to interject during a reading of insulting nicknames, De Niro barked at him, “Shut the f--k up!”
The comedic skit directly lampooned the administration’s crackdowns on media outlets. Last month, Kimmel revealed that regulatory pressure forced his show to pull a scheduled television interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, relegating the segment entirely to YouTube.
While the FCC’s long-standing equal-time doctrine has historically exempted news and talk show interviews, the agency signaled plans to scrap those protections, with Carr claiming late-night programs are “motivated by partisan purposes.”
De Niro mocked the policy during the skit by inventing his own skewed version of equal time. He warned Kimmel that every joke aimed at the president required an immediate follow-up compliment, joking, “For example, if you were to say something like, ‘Trump wasn’t invited to Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday party cuz they were afraid he’d start eating the cake before the kid jumped out.’ Then you got to also compliment his penmanship in that naked lady birthday poem he didn’t write.”
The stunt highlighted De Niro’s long-running public campaign against the administration. The actor became visibly emotional during an appearance on Amy Poehler’s podcast last week, wiping away tears as he warned about political overreach.
“It’s so upsetting to see what’s happening in this country, and it’s so crazy,” De Niro told Poehler. “In a way, that’s better that it’s so blatant because this will happen again; this guy will influence people, and they’ll come up, and they’ll say, ‘Well, I can do it this way or that way.’ And we have to always be on guard with what’s happening now.”
The administration has repeatedly fired back at the Taxi Driver star, with the 80-year-old president previously labeling De Niro a “sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely Low IQ.”
