As President Trump continues to say the meme depicting him as Jesus that he posted this week was actually depicting him as a doctor, Vice President JD Vance offers a different explanation. According to Vance, the meme was just a joke people didn’t appreciate — which made Jimmy Kimmel’s ears perk up on Tuesday night.
During his monologue, the ABC late night host outright laughed at Trump’s defense of the meme, which drew wide backlash from both sides of the aisle. Kimmel called the excuse incredibly “lame,” and argued that no one actually believes it. That includes Vance, who said Trump eventually took down the meme because “he recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor.”
“He was posting a joke, you understand, and like all the best jokes, it had to be explained and then deleted,” Kimmel mocked. “First he was Jesus. Then he wasn’t Jesus, he was a doctor, and now it was a joke. Why did I get kicked off the air again? I can’t remember.”
Kimmel was indeed suspended last year, after a comment during his monologue about the man who murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said at the time.
As a result, Kimmel was suspended indefinitely, though after a massive uproar among viewers and in Hollywood calling the move an attack on free speech, he was reinstated just under a week later.
You can watch Jimmy Kimmel’s full monologue in the video above.
