When Jimmy Kimmel stepped back into the spotlight for his comeback show, he wasn’t the only surprise in the room — Robert De Niro popped up unannounced and immediately set the tone.
The 82-year-old Oscar winner slipped into a blunt, weathered-joke persona and spent a brief, bracing sketch ribbing Donald Trump while playing a faux government official.
De Niro as the intimidating FCC boss
De Niro pretended to be Brendan Carr — framed as the kind of heavy-handed Federal Communications Commission chair who sounds more like a mob boss than a regulator.
He and Kimmel traded barbs about free speech, with De Niro leaning into that gruff, intimidating energy he’s used to from films like Goodfellas and The Irishman.
Whoopi and the opening jab
Early on De Niro took a swipe at Whoopi Goldberg — a clear nod to her criticism of Kimmel’s recent suspension — delivering a line that mixed menace and mockery.
Kimmel played along, asking if De Niro had been appointed by Trump, and De Niro cheekily admitted he’d “worked” for the man, joking about Atlantic City ties.
The “you can’t say that” back-and-forth
Their exchange pivoted into a running gag about whether the FCC could censor language.
Kimmel kept testing the boundaries — and De Niro, in character, repeatedly flipped it, insisting he was the one who could swear and threaten.
The bit built to the absurd idea that free speech now comes with a price tag.
Punchlines about paying per word
De Niro’s punchline: speech isn’t free anymore — you pay by the word.
Nice, innocuous compliments about the president’s hair? Free.
A meaner gag referencing Trump and Epstein? That’ll cost you.
The crowd laughed as the sketch exaggerated the idea that jokes now have literal consequences — sometimes physical, in the De Niro-style fantasy.
The Epstein name and the real-world context
The sketch briefly referenced Jeffrey Epstein and his past social ties to Trump in the 1990s and 2000s — a note of real-world context tucked into the satire.
(As in public records, Trump has denied knowing about Epstein’s crimes before Epstein’s conviction.)
A dark little twist on a public health claim
The scene then took a sharper shot at a recent press moment: De Niro’s character answered a phone as if it were the president, and the sketch closed with an oddly blunt gag about putting “autism” into Tylenol — a send-up of remarks from Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about painkiller use during pregnancy.
The line landed as a satirical jab at that controversy.
De Niro’s long history of attacking Trump
The sketch wasn’t out of character for De Niro.
He’s long been an outspoken critic of Trump — from harsh comments on the campaign trail in 2016 to confronting MAGA supporters outside the hush-money trial in New York last year.
De Niro has repeatedly labeled Trump with scathing language and accused his supporters of falling for false promises.
Kimmel’s suspension and the sketch’s closing note
The four-minute segment wrapped with De Niro warning Kimmel he’d be watching — maybe not on ABC, but “that’s up to you.”
The exchange came on the heels of Kimmel’s own brief removal from the air after controversy over comments about MAGA and a shooting suspect; the sketch felt like both a return-to-form and a provocative reminder that late-night satire still loves to push buttons.
Bottom line
It was a compact, sharp sketch: De Niro got to lean on his tough-guy persona, Kimmel played the straight man, and together they turned current headlines into a pointed, sometimes dark, comedy bit that mixed pop-culture jabs with political satire.