Texas broadcast of Jimmy Kimmel’s Uvalde shooting monologue cut short

Late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel said his monologue was cut short by a Dallas ABC affiliate channel following the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two adults dead.

“To my friends in Dallas who are asking: I do not know whether our ABC Network affiliate WFAA cut away from my monologue tonight intentionally or inadvertently but I will find out,” Kimmel said in a tweet with a link to his full monologue for those who “didn’t get to see.”

In the monologue, Kimmel called the failure of lawmakers to take action on the issue “indefensible.”

“A bipartisan bill passed in the House. It’s been stalled in the Senate for over a year now,” Kimmel said, referring to H.R. 8, a bill that would require background checks for all gun sales.  

“They won’t pass it because our cowardly leaders just aren’t listening to us. They’re listening to the NRA. They’re listening to those people who write them checks, who keep them in power, because that’s the way politics work,” he said.

“I say this tonight with the hope — not with an expectation but with the hope — that people like Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott and John Cornyn, people who are elected by Texans, will actually listen to it instead of going right to ‘gun control laws don’t work and we need armed teachers and guards at schools.’ If your solution to children being massacred is armed guards, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on,” he added, citing the presence of armed guards at mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., Parkland, Fla., and Uvalde. 

“We want limits on who could walk around with an AR-15, and it damn well shouldn’t be a teenager who works at a fast food restaurant. If we can’t agree on that, forget it,” Kimmel said before the Texas affiliate station cut away. 

After a few advertisements, the station cut back in to show a video from Everytown for Gun Safety, which aired as the final part of Kimmel’s monologue.

In response to Kimmel’s tweet, WFAA tweeted that the cut was the result of “technical difficulties” and apologized for the error on its website. 

Pete Freedman, the director of digital content at WFAA, said the decision was due to additional coverage of the Uvalde mass shooting.

“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. We’re on the same team,” Freedman tweeted, adding that he would “personally ensure we share your monologue again on our website in the morning.”

Tegna, which owns and operates WFAA, referred The Hill to a tweet from the local news station.

Following the explanation, Kimmel said that the mistake was made “unintentionally.”

“I’ve known the staff at @wfaa personally and professionally for almost 20 years and believe this mistake was made unintentionally. Thanks for reposting and for correcting this error. Sending love to all my friends in Texas,” Kimmel tweeted Thursday morning.

Updated at 11:49 a.m.