Jimmy Kimmel has said he would “love” to have Donald Trump on his show, even though the president led the right-wing celebrations when the host’s primetime program was taken off the air.
He has also said that he thought Jimmy Kimmel Live! was “done” after he triggered an intense MAGA backlash with comments he made about the assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk.
The comedian was speaking at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles, his first interview since returning to the air. He said there was a concerted effort to “maliciously mischaracterize” his comments.
The MAGA outrage focused on Kimmel’s solo stand-up and one comment in particular. “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.”
ABC and two large station owners pulled the show before reinstating it less than a week later.
Still, he would like to have Trump on his show. “I’d love to have Trump on the show, for sure. All right, I’ll ask him,” he said.
Trump has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live three times in the show’s history. The last time was during Trump’s first presidential campaign, in May 2016.
“[Trump] is on TV all day, every day, so he gives us a lot to use, to deal with. That’s unusual, it’s not how it used to be,” the funnyman added. “You hear him, you see him, he’s just presented himself so frequently that it makes it more digestible and less digestible at the same time.”
Kimmel deadpanned, however, that Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is not welcome on his show. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” he said.
Kimmel’s musing about Trump sitting across from him comes despite the president reveling in the show’s temporary cancellation.
“Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED,” Trump posted on Truth Social after the show was axed. “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers], two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT.”
“Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings, more than anyone else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk,” Trump later told reporters.
“Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings and they should have fired him a long time ago. You can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent.”
Elsewhere in the wide-ranging interview, Kimmel declined to say whether he will continue to host the show after his contract runs out in May and revealed how he felt when it was taken off the air.
“A list of demands was presented to me, and I was not going to go along with any of them,” he said on Wednesday. “And it’s like, well, I guess we’re done. I said to my wife, ‘That’s it. It’s over.’”
Source link
