The fight against Donald Trump is personal for Jimmy Kimmel’s wife and show producer Molly McNearney, she told the “We Can Do Hard Things” podcast this week. McNearney noted that she has extended family members who support the Trump administration and “it hurts me so much” because “of the personal relationship I now have where my husband is out there fighting this man.”
McNearney noted that her immediate family did not vote for Trump in 2024 after having previously supported him in 2016, and also reflected on her own past as a Republican voter. “When Donald Trump was first elected, I was so upset, we all were,” she said. “But I remember thinking I understand it, because I grew up in a very conservative Republican house. I mean, I bought my dad a Rush Limbaugh tie in high school. I voted Republican straight ticket, and that’s what I was told to do.”
Once she left her hometown and “started to understand different things and different needs and different people,” McNearney changed her political affiliation.
“And so there’s like a little bit of sympathy I have for people in my family that I feel are kind of being deliberately misinformed every day,” she explained. “They’re deliberately being misinformed every day, and they believe it. But it hurts me so much because of the personal relationship I now have where my husband is out there fighting this man. And to me, them voting for Trump is them not voting for my husband and me and our family. And I unfortunately have kind of lost relationships with people in my family because of it.”
McNearney also said that the discussion is not about politics — it’s about “family values.”
Kimmel was suspended from his late night hosting duties in September due to comments he made about the death of Charlie Kirk. He returned to his desk later that month and told his audience, “It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man.”
Of ABC, he added, “They welcomed me back on the air, and I thank them for that. Unfortunately, and I think unjustly, this puts them at risk. The President of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs.”
“Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke. He was somehow able to squeeze Colbert out of CBS, then he turned his sights on me, and now he’s openly rooting for NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers and the hundreds of Americans who work for their shows who don’t make millions of dollars.”
Kimmel has not stopped taking swings at Trump since his return. The comedian responded to this week’s Election Night results on Wednesday, when he told the studio audience, “Everything he touched was a loser. Trump hasn’t been this embarrassed since he found out there was a Donald Trump Jr. But don’t worry, if you’re tired of all the losing, fear not. He’s got an excuse. In fact, he’s got two of them.”
Watch the interview with Kimmel and McNearney in the video above.
