In the weeks leading up to this week’s midterm election, Republicans — and quite a lot of media outlets — were convinced it would be a “Red Wave.” Meaning, Republicans would sweep races all over the country and, presumably, take both houses of congress.
Instead, while Republicans did have some wins, and they might eke out a razor thin House majority, Democrats look likely to retain control of the U.S. Senate. And that’s not including several crucial victories in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Given how they normally go, historically it was the best midterm election for a first-term U.S. President in decades.
And in talking about all that on Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Jimmy Kimmel joked during his monologue that “it was less of a Red Wave and more of a Purple Nurple.”
“I feel like everyone is exhausted. This is the first election where people don’t even have the energy to threaten to move to Canada. We just wanna go to sleep,” Kimmel said. “Democrats were riding high today. Even though they probably lost the House and could still lose the Senate.”
“And it’s like ‘Great news! We didn’t get beaten as badly as everyone expected us to!’ Whatever happens, it was less of a Red Wave and more of a Purple Nurple,” Kimmel continued.
One element of the election that got much discussion is the impact disgraced ex-president Donald Trump had. He and his supporters were a big source of the Red Wave claims, but across the country, candidates he endorsed lost and by Wednesday morning he was getting a lot of criticism from other Republicans.
Kimmel of course talked about that, saying “America twisted Donald Trump’s chubby little nipples into a balloon animal last night. Many in MagaLand were expecting a big victory” only to end up being very disappointed.
“And the truth is, we still don’t really know where we stand. We’re still waiting for results in a couple of key states, including Arizona and Nevada. We might not have the results from Nevada until the weekend,” Kimmel said.
“Which this is crazy. Nevada, this is a state where you’ve got slot machines, you’ve got poker machines, you’ve got Keno, you’ve got Bingo, you go into a sports book, they’re tallying up the odds for every game, every horse race, every JaiLai match in the world, all of those scores and odds somehow appear on a giant video board in real time. And it takes them five days to count a pile of cardboard,” he joked.
“People are thrown out of casinos for counting cards – now they have no one left to count ‘em. So we don’t know about Nevada, but what we do know is that it looks like Lauren Boebert of Colorado may be out on her ass,” Kimmel went on. And for those of you curious, as of this writing this still appears to be the case.
“I wonder what she’ll do if that holds up?” Kimmel pondered. “My guess is either Fox News correspondent, bathroom attendant at a Cracker Barrel, or mannequin at a local Bass Pro Shop.”
Kimmel also talked about the U.S. Senate race in Georgia between Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Hershel Walker, which will be decided via runoff election in December. “A ‘runoff’ is also what Herschel does when one of his kids shows up with a DNA kit,” he said.
“But Republicans are disappointed that Herschel Walker couldn’t seal the deal, they thought he had this thing all knocked up,” Kimmel added, referencing Walker’s secret children that he lied repeatedly about.
But Kimmel did identify the bright side in the whole thing: “The runoff will happen on December 6th – it could very well determine which party takes the Senate. But more importantly – we get another month of Herschel Walker on the campaign trail. Which is clearly a gift from comedy God, right?”
Watch the whole monologue above.