In case you thought Jimmy Kimmel would pull punches on Trump in the face of threats from federal officials and still-boycotting affiliates – he’s not.
The “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host did a 15-minute monologue on Wednesday night, nearly all of it focused on roasting the president, calling him, among other things, a bully in the style of Biff from “Back to the Future.” After acknowledging that the show was being taped for “not all of the country,” Kimmel kicked off his rapid-fire roast by noting that among all the people he heard from during his four-day suspension, one “special friend” stood out: “The Mad Red Hatter.”
Kimmel pulled up many of Trump’s Truth Social posts, including the one that said “I can’t believe ABC fake news gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back.”
“You can’t believe they gave me my job back? I can’t believe we gave you your job back,” Kimmel fired back. “The White House was told by ABC that his show was cancelled. … Something happened between then and now because his audience is gone and his talent was never there,” Kimmel said, throwing the president’s criticisms right back to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
At that point, someone in the audience shouted some words of support, but Kimmel quickly shot him down: “Shut the [bleep] up,” he said. “The freedom of speech is only for me.”
Kimmel went straight into the teeth of veiled threats that came from Trump and FCC chairman Brendan Carr downstream of his reinstatement, saying, “They go to all these lengths to say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t coercion. The president was just musing.’ And then the second Trump is alone, he sits on the toilet. He gets his grubby little thumbs on his phone. And he immediately blows their excuses to smithereens and says, ‘It was ratings that got me fired.’”
He continued: “This was his big closer? Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his bad ratings. And he does know bad ratings. He has some of the worst ratings any president has ever had. So on behalf of all of us, welcome to the crappy ratings club, Mr. President.”
Kimmel also had choice words for “those who think I go too hard on Donald Trump … I talk about Trump more than anything because he’s a bully. I don’t like bullies. I played the clarinet in high school. Okay? So I just don’t like them.”
He called Trump an “old-fashioned ’80s movie style bully”: “I don’t care what side you’re on. It’s like rooting for Biff from ‘Back to the Future.’ Literally, Donald Trump was the model for Biff in ‘Back to the Future’ [Editor’s Note: This was only true for “Back to the Future II”]. And this is who people are cheering for. I don’t know about you. I’m with Marty McFly.”
Watch the entire video clip above – including a long segment featuring “real, unedited [and not entirely encouraging] texts” that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” staffers got from moms, aunts and other family members during their forced hiatus.
