Jimmy Kimmel sounded off on MAGA’s outrage to his jab at Markwayne Mullin, noting the GOP had similar resume concerns when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stepped into office.
During Thursday’s monologue for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” the late night host addressed the backlash to his call out of Mullin’s resume, where he ripped the new DHS Secretary as being “unqualified,” given he was a former plumber and low-level MMA fighter-turned- junior United States senator from Oklahoma before being tapped to replace Kristi Noem.
“The president and his pals in the MAGA media are not happy with me right now,” Kimmel said. “Trump even called into Fox to complain about me tonight. His apple polishers are all in a tizzy because I made light of the fact that his new head of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, before he was a senator, was a plumber and now he’s the head of Homeland Security, which is not necessarily the kind of resume you might hope for the person in charge of protecting us from terrorism.”
He continued: “Of course, they decided to twist that to say it was an insult to plumbers, which it was not. I wouldn’t put a plumber in charge of Homeland Security for the same reason I wouldn’t call a Five-Star general to pull a rat out of my toilet. We all have our areas of expertise.”
After playing some of the footage of the outrage, Kimmel called out the double standard coming from MAGA media, sharing he “distinctly remember[ed] some very serious concerns resume-wise when it came to a certain former bartender from New York.”
At this moment, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” editors shared a supercut of all the conservatives who roasted Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s past job as a bartender.
“Well, on behalf of bartenders everywhere, we anxiously await your apology,” Kimmel said. “You do the bartenders, I’ll do the plumbers.”
Kimmel’s response came mere hours after Trump appeared on Fox’s “The Five,” where he blasted the late night host as a “loser” with “no ratings” for his crack at Mullin.
“Well, I’ve watched this guy. He’s a loser. He gets no ratings. None. He’s got no talent. He’s got Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Trump told the hosts of “The Five” on Thursday. “Whenever I watch, I just can’t believe that he’s even on the air. He shouldn’t be on the air. He should be canned.”
As Trump went on, he voiced support for Mullin, who he praised as “fantastic.” The president also noted that he had no issue with Mullin’s past as a former plumber and low-level MMA fighter.
“You know, he became very successful,” the president went on. “He took over a small company from his parents — and he made it very, very successful. Made money. He was also a very good fighter. I never heard of low-level MMA.”
Watch Kimmel’s full monologue above.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.
