Do We Have Donald Trump To Blame For One More Year of Jimmy Kimmel?
Jimmy Kimmel made an announcement to an audience of one during his monologue last night. “The last thing I want to do is upset you at this sensitive time, but I have one more bit of entertainment news to share,” he declared directly to President Donald Trump. “I have decided to extend my contract here at ABC for another year.”
If you’re tired of Kimmel’s act, blame Trump for the extended encore. The Jimmy Kimmel Live! host has been making noise for years about retiring, including gripes in February 2024 that he was exhausted by the job. “I think this is my final contract,” he said at the time. “I still have a little more than two years left on my contract, and that seems pretty good. That seems like enough.”
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So why not ride off into the sunset? The answer is obvious: Donald Trump. After successfully beating back the president’s calls for ABC to remove Kimmel from the airwaves, signing off now would be waving a white flag of surrender. There’s no way Kimmel would give him that satisfaction, since there’s no doubt Trump would claim he’d won the war.
Retiring now would mean Kimmel giving up his bully pulpit, a platform he used last night to fire back after Trump’s latest insults at the Kennedy Center Honors:
“He’s been boasting about hosting, saying we've never had a president host the Kennedy Center Honors before. Yeah. Why do you think that is? We've also never had Neil Patrick Harris order a military strike on a fishing boat before.”
“The honorees included George Strait, Gloria Gaynor, (and) the band KISS, the only people who wear more makeup than he does.”
Trump also said Kimmel was terrible at hosting the show. “Do you think he even knows I’ve never hosted the Kennedy Center honors? Maybe he's confusing me with Queen Latifah.”
After Trump said he had more talent than Kimmel: “Let’s have a talent competition. I’ll come out, I’ll tell a few jokes, I’ll draw something, I’ll play my clarinet. He can play golf, spank a porn star, and ruin a country.”
And on Kimmel went, making a meal of the joke setups that Trump delivers to him daily. Walk away from this comedy treasure trove? Kimmel’s never been more popular, and every time there’s a Truth Social post about NO TALENT and BAD RATINGS, his numbers spike up even more.
Jimmy has more than enough cash to stay home with the kids, but what fun is that? There’s devilish glee in Kimmel’s eyes as he tells Trump he’ll be tormenting him for the foreseeable future. “Our show has been renewed till May of 2027,” Kimmel said, “or until the world ends, whichever comes first.”
