While other late-night hosts are off this week, Jimmy Kimmel responded to Donald Trump’s comments about his bit at the Oscars at the former president’s expense.
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel spent St Patrick’s Day with his family in Los Angeles, while “the large orange leprechaun spent his St Patrick’s Day focused on me, of all people,” he noted on Monday evening.
Trump was “still stewing” about a joke Kimmel made at the Oscars last Sunday, in which the host mocked Trump’s Truth Social post about him on air. In an interview with Fox News, Trump mocked Kimmel for even mentioning him.
“I shouldn’t be surprised – Donald Trump has said I’m not talented so many times Eric is starting to get jealous,” said Kimmel. “But what he doesn’t realize is that I love this. I love that this bothered him so much. I love that Fox picked a news guy nobody knows to interview him, and I especially love when he tries to spin the fact that everyone was laughing at him into a positive.”
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said: “He wants to go out there, and he wants to … I guess, confront me, and he ends up reading my Truth. I said, ‘this guy’s even dumber than I thought. The thing went viral – it went all over the world now – and all he had to do is keep his mouth shut.’”
“You forget why it went viral,” Kimmel responded, replaying his joke from the bit: “I’m surprised you’re still up – isn’t it past your jail time?”
“Barbie was laughing at you!” Kimmel gloated. “Not only were they laughing at you on Oscar Sunday, there are now dozens of ‘isn’t it your past your jail time’ shirts for sale,” among other merchandise online.
“If only I kept my mouth shut – imagine him telling anyone they should’ve kept your mouth shut. That should be on his tombstone,” he added.
“Maybe you’re right about me being dumb,” Kimmel continued. “We should take one of those cognitive tests, or an IQ test together, or maybe we could sit down for a long game of Scrabble and find out who has the biglier brain. I would love that.”
In other Trump news, the former president’s lawyers were forced to tell a court on Monday that they can’t find anyone to put up the $454m bond needed to cover what he owes the state of New York. “Gee, I wonder why,” said Kimmel. “Can you imagine that call? – ‘Hi, we represent Donald Trump. We were wondering if you could – hello?’
“Who would’ve ever guessed that a hard-earned reputation for not ever paying your bills would make it difficult to get credit,” he added. “And what’s the problem, anyway? Didn’t you say Mar-a-Lago is worth $1.8bn? Just get a reverse mortgage on that!”
Kimmel also touched on Trump’s latest headline-making comments from the campaign trail – at a rally in Vandalia, Ohio, on Sunday, Trump promised a “bloodbath” if he was not re-elected president.
Pundits have since debated whether Trump was referring to literal bloodshed or metaphorically speaking of the auto industry, but Kimmel didn’t see a point to debating it. “Listen, there are very fine people on both sides of the bloodbath,” he said, “but the truth is the context we should be considering isn’t whether or not Trump meant bloodbath literally, it’s that he’s such a lunatic, we actually have to debate if he meant it literally.”