Hollywood liberals have a new favorite Democrat, and they’re not even pretending to be subtle about it.

Late-night television just hit a new low.

And that’s because James Talarico went on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, and what they said about the Bible will enrage every Christian.

What Kimmel Actually Did

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! recently interviewed Talarico, the Texas House Democrat running for US Senate against Republican Ken Paxton. The FCC raised equal-time concerns, so the segment never aired on television. Kimmel posted it to YouTube instead.

That didn’t stop it from functioning as exactly what it was: an out-of-state liberal celebrity throwing his weight behind a Democrat Senate candidate in Texas.

Kimmel opened by framing the whole thing as a mystery of Republican fear, asking Talarico, “This is not the first time you’ve been demoted to YouTube. When you were on Stephen Colbert’s show this same very same thing happened? Why are they so scared of you?”

Then came the theology lesson from the Jimmy Kimmel Live! desk.

Kimmel told Talarico, “I’ve been following you for a long time. I’ve been watching your videos. I think what you’re doing is great. I really do, and you hit on something that I think is very — it resonated with me because you hit on something. It used to be on all of the bumper stickers. It would be ‘What Would Jesus Do’ and, you know, I think Jesus has been co-opted by this MAGA enterprise in this way that is — it makes no sense when you really think about it. Would Jesus be throwing people into vans and separating them from their children? Would Jesus be taking kids off food stamps? These are not — this is not the Jesus that I learned about growing up and you bring it right back to the Bible, to the real teachings of Jesus, and it is very authentic. I mean, you can feel it — that you know what you’re talking about.”

He kept going: “That you believe what you’re talking about, and I think that is so very powerful and good for you for doing that.”

Kimmel even ran a portion of one of Talarico’s campaign ads during the segment.

Talarico, for his part, leaned into the Jesus framing hard. “Scripture tells us that you can’t love God and hate other people,” he said. “You can’t love God and abuse the immigrant. You can’t love God and oppress the poor. You can’t love God and bully the outcast.”

He added: “Matthew 25 tells us Christians exactly how we’re going to be judged and how we’re going to be saved by feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger.”

And then came the vision of Jesus addressing the US Senate: “I often wonder what would Jesus do if he visited the U.S. Senate. I think he would tell the senators on the floor, ‘Depart from me, for I was hungry and you cut my food assistance.'”

The Scripture They Left Out

Let’s take the Bible seriously for a moment, since both Kimmel and Talarico insist they want to.

The same Scripture that calls Christians to feed the hungry also has something to say about the sanctity of unborn life. Psalm 139 speaks of God knitting a child together in the womb. Jeremiah 1:5 records God saying he knew the prophet before he formed him in the womb. The New Testament records John the Baptist leaping in his mother’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice. These are not obscure passages.

But Talarico has claimed the Bible permits abortion. On Joe Rogan’s podcast in September 2025, he argued the angel Gabriel “asks Mary if this is something she wants to do, and she says, ‘If it is God’s will, let it be done.'” That is his reading of the Annunciation as a consent framework for ending pregnancies. He also claimed in an interview with a New York Times podcast that his Christian faith grew “by learning more about Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism,” adding that “these beautiful faith traditions are circling the same truth.” In 2021, he declared from the floor of the Texas legislature that “God is nonbinary.”

And Kimmel praised this man for bringing it “right back to the Bible, to the real teachings of Jesus.”

The Bible does not call for open borders. It does not prescribe a federal food assistance program administered by Washington bureaucrats. It does not endorse the Democrat Party’s platform. Talarico and Kimmel are not doing theology. They are doing politics dressed up in a collar.

The same Jesus whose teachings Talarico claims to follow said, in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” That is not a statement that “all faith traditions are circling the same truth.” It is an exclusive claim. Talarico believes in a version of Jesus that is conveniently compatible with every progressive policy priority and conveniently silent on everything the Democrat Party wants to do.

What This Is Really About

Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night ratings have been sliding for years, and there is a reason for that. Viewers who tune in for comedy do not want a nightly lecture from a California millionaire about which Senate candidates deserve their votes in Texas.

But this segment was not even subtle. Kimmel ran Talarico’s campaign ad. He praised his theology. He framed every Republican immigration enforcement action as something Jesus would oppose. And he did it all while ABC’s lawyers were apparently nervous enough about equal-time rules that the network refused to put it on television.

That last part is worth sitting with. The network’s own legal team concluded this interview crossed a line that required it to be buried on YouTube rather than broadcast. And Kimmel still posted it, still praised Talarico as an authentic voice of Christian values, and still called Republican policies a betrayal of Jesus.

Talarico is the Democrat nominee challenging Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race. The GOP establishment has been slow to fully back Paxton after he defeated incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the Republican primary. Cornyn, who supported amnesty measures and championed Joe Biden’s gun control legislation, has declined to raise money for Paxton. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have withheld the kind of television spending typically devoted to defending a seat — a posture widely viewed as payback for President Trump’s endorsement of Paxton and as part of a broader effort to distance the party establishment from MAGA influence.

That institutional gap is exactly the kind of opening that produces a Jimmy Kimmel YouTube rally for a Texas Democrat.

But the theology question matters on its own terms, separate from the horse race. When Democrats claim Jesus as a validator for their policy agenda, they are making a specific argument: that Christian voters who support border enforcement, or who oppose government-run healthcare, or who believe abortion is the taking of a human life, are somehow betraying their own faith.

That argument requires a very selective Bible. It requires ignoring what Scripture says about life in the womb. It requires reading Matthew 25 as a mandate for federal spending programs while ignoring John 14:6 as inconvenient. It requires a Jesus who agrees with the Democrat Party platform on every issue and disagrees with it on none.

Kimmel is not a theologian. He is a talk show host with declining ratings who found a Democrat candidate willing to package left-wing politics in religious language, and he treated that packaging as the authentic article.

The real teachings of Jesus are not a bumper sticker. They are not a campaign ad. And they certainly do not belong exclusively to the party that has spent decades fighting to keep abortion legal at every stage of pregnancy, redefining marriage away from its biblical definition, and pushing gender ideology into government schools.

Talarico is welcome to make his case to Texas voters. But when he and Jimmy Kimmel claim the exclusive rights to Jesus, they should expect someone to point out the parts of the Bible they skipped.

Sources: Newsbusters, “Kimmel Gushes Over Talarico For Using ‘The Real Teachings Of Jesus,'” September 11, 2026; Variety, “Jimmy Kimmel’s Pulled TV Interview With James Talarico Drops on YouTube”; Deadline, “Jimmy Kimmel Posts James Talarico Interview, Calls Out Trump And FCC”; Fox News, “Texas Dem who said God is ‘nonbinary’ now says atheists are more ‘Christ-like’ than Christian colleagues,” January 31, 2026.