Jimmy Kimmel clapped back at MAGA critics who took issue with his shots at Donald Trump while appearing on Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson’s podcast “IMO,” telling spectators to stop telling him what his role is a late night host.
At the time, the group was discussing the state of comedy when Kimmel, who was suspended from ABC after remarks he made following the murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, said that talking about Trump and his actions in the White House is “unavoidable.”
Watch the clip below.
“It just seems obvious and unavoidable. I just can’t imagine on those nights talking about anything other than what we are talking about,” Kimmel explained. “I think it would be embarrassing if we didn’t talk about this. It would be shameful. I love telling jokes. I love being funny. I love when the audience laughs. There’s nothing that’s more exciting to me than that.”
He went on to say that one of the points of his job is to discuss the matters of the world and the influential people in it, and that includes Trump.
“To say that, well your job is this, it makes me — I bristle at that,” Kimmel said. “Because, first of all, don’t tell me what my job is. I don’t tell you what your job is. My job is whatever I decide my job is, whatever my employer allows me to do. That’s what my job is.”
He added that what he does is no different that what comedians before him have performed.
“Comedians have been doing this for a long time. You know, from my generation, George Carlin, Richard Pryor,” Kimmel said.
At another point during the conversation, Kimmel called out Trump and his MAGA squad as “opposite of Christianity.”
“The cardinal rule of MAGA is to never admit when you are wrong. First of all, it’s the opposite of Christianity,” Kimmel said. “I mean, it’s the basis of the whole faith you know, is asking for forgiveness. And that seems to be cast aside.”
