Bill Maher Roasted Jimmy Kimmel's Wife, Now Their Friendship is ‘In the Balance’
New rule: don’t publicly dunk on your friend’s wife on national television and expect them to continue inviting you to birthday parties and board game nights.
Bill Maher and Jimmy Kimmel have seemingly been quite chummy for years, as evidenced by the time they shot the shit in Maher’s Club Random man cave, whereupon the former Politically Incorrect host tried to convince his guest that arch-enemy Jay Leno is actually a great guy.
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After ABC (briefly) suspended Kimmel's late night show in September, Maher told his Real Time audience that Jimmy is his “friend” and “compatriot,” and he addressed Kimmel directly by stating, “I am with you, I support you.”
But when Kimmel returned to the airwaves the following week, he thanked pretty much every late night talk show host alive other than Maher and Greg Gutfeld, including Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver, Conan O’Brien, James Corden, Arsenio Hall, Kathy Griffin, Wanda Sykes and Chelsea Handler.
Then, presumably pouring salt directly into Maher’s gaping wounds, Kimmel actually gave Leno a shout-out.
“Jimmy apparently doesn’t like me too much anymore, because he thanked everybody but me," Maher complained on a recent podcast. “And I was adamant, adamant, about supporting him that week and the next week.”
While Kimmel was presumably unhappy with Maher’s mischaracterization of his comments concerning the assassination of Charlie Kirk at the time, hence the snub, now it sounds as though the pair of hosts are on even worse terms than ever before.
On his pre-Thanksgiving episode of Real Time, Maher railed against the ghosting of MAGA family members, and specifically pointed to statements made by Kimmel’s wife and co-head writer Molly McNearney, who recently said that she has “lost relationships” with right wing family members, during an interview with the We Can Do Hard Things podcast.
Maher mocked McNearney for sending her family members an email prior to the election providing ten reasons why they shouldn’t vote for Trump. “And some still didn't obey,” Maher said before making the throat-cutting motion, implying that McNearney then cut off all relatives that didn’t fall in line.
“Ten reasons? I can think of a hundred,” Maher continued. “But I wouldn’t present it to someone as an ultimatum. Ultimatums don’t make people rethink their politics, they make them rethink you.”
But while McNearney claimed that she sent her family an email “begging” them not to vote for Trump, she never suggested that she gave them an “ultimatum.” She also said that the email went “ignored by 90% of its recipients," meaning her family members ghosted her, not the other way around.
Not surprisingly, Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t thrilled with the bit that condescendingly (and inaccurately) ridiculed his wife’s anecdote, as Maher revealed on the most recent episode of Club Random. “One relationship that’s in the balance… I mean, we weren’t close. I’m talking like it’s– it’s Jimmy Kimmel,” he revealed to guest Ana Kasparian.
“I was as kid-glove as I could (be) and I see that they’re mad at me,” Maher said of the editorial’s reaction. “And I’m sorry. I mean, I was being, again, as respectful as I could. But I don’t agree with that point of view. And since she went public with it, it wasn’t out of school for me to (go) public with it. I love Jimmy, I always have, I don’t know him that well, but he’s a great guy.”
Maher also suggested that he and Kimmel have a “connection” since he was fired by ABC while doing a show in the same timeslot more than two decades ago. “I hope we’re friends forever, but I don’t know,” he admitted.
Don’t worry, Bill still found a way to blame this whole situation on “the woke."
