One week out from Jelly Roll’s headline-making guest run on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” David Spade weighed in on the country singer’s surprising jabs at President Donald Trump and ultimately bemoaned that the late night series had become too political.
“They had Jelly Roll on and he goes, ‘Trump’s a fat pig and so am I’ — so I think he got away with it,” Spade said on Sunday’s episode of his “Fly on the Wall” podcast with Dana Carvey. “Of course, a little too many politics on that show for my taste. Love Jimmy, of course. I think it’s the only clips I see, it’s all political.
“Jelly Roll,” Spade continued, “[comes] in off the street and he gets a fat-pig joke.”
The actor determined that at the end of the day, Jelly Roll was giving Trump a taste of his own medicine and dishing back the kind of rhetoric the president regularly serves.
“Listen, Trump is, you know — it’s the decision of whether you play nice with the guy who plays a little dirty or you just give him back the same stuff. Because I think he called a reporter a little piggy,” Spade admitted before adding: “That’s nicer.”
“Well, like Bill O’Reilly said on our podcast, Trump can take more punishment than any human that’s ever existed, as far as criticism, making fun,” Carvey said. “What I think Jelly Roll, who is right up there [as] kind of [the] sweetest person I’ve ever met, and now he’s really feeling good, he’s lost all that weight, so it must be kind of fun to go, ‘That guy’s a fat pig!’”
“He said I used to be a fat pig like Trump,” Spade clarified of the singer’s impressive weight loss, estimated to be around 300 pounds.
It’s an accomplishment that Jelly Roll referenced several times over through his week on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” joking the first night, “I’ve lost 300 pounds. That means I’ve lost an entire Donald Trump. And let’s be honest, based on his approval ratings, it seems like most of the country wants to do the same thing.”
He even joked later in the week that his monologues caused more of a stir than Rosie O’Donnell, who became the late night program’s highest-rated guest host of the summer the week prior.
“What a turn of events. Who would have guessed I’d get in more trouble with the president than Rosie O’Donnell?” he joked. “I love you, Rosie. Thanks for having my back today, baby.”
Spade has previously guest hosted for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” himself in 2017 and 2020. Back on “Fly on the Wall” Sunday, he recalled ABC rejecting his ask to be paid Kimmel’s salaried rate for the gig.
“Kimmel always takes a good stretchy vacation, bless his heart,” Spade said. “I remember one time I hosted and I go, ‘So I get whatever he would make tonight?’ And they go, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That’s funny. That’s actually hysterical, we’re going to tell everyone that because it’s so funny, but you’ll get scale minus 10 and you’ll get a boxed lunch.’”
“It’s for the exposure, Davey!” Carvey reasoned.
Listen to the full podcast episode here.
