“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” wants viewers to hear Trump in his own words

Considering how much material Donald Trump has prepared for joke writers over the past eight-plus years, it was heartening this week to see late-night TV hosts nonetheless sinking their teeth into the hand that feeds them.

Maybe because they believe the future of American democracy will be on the ballot on Tuesday. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyersand especially Jimmy Kimmel are spending much of their remaining airtime before the election reminding viewers of what Trump has caused—fury, chaos, distrust—and what will be at stake if voters return him to the White House for another four years.

Sometimes the hosts’ nuance misses the mark, as with Fallon’s unfunny joke on Wednesday that “Trump’s claims of election fraud are like holidays—it feels like they’re happening earlier and earlier every year.” But some of their arrows were so sharp that their monologues sounded less like jokes and more like biting social commentary.

For example, on Monday’s Late Show, Colbert, reporting on Trump’s MAGA rally at Madison Square Garden over the weekend, called the event “a sickening six hours of hate, racism and threats of totalitarian vengeance.” There’s nothing funny about this, guys. But the presenter laughed when he pointed out the hypocrisy of Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico a “floating pile of rubbish.” Colbert replied: “Dude, you can’t call anything else a floating pile of garbage when you’re standing on top of Penn Station. They wash away the urine with fresher urine.”

But Kimmel seems to be going all in. On Tuesday, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” The host, who made no secret of his antipathy toward Trump, devoted the first 20 minutes of his show specifically to appealing to Republican voters. Before moving on to the evening’s guests – Hugh Grant, Aldis Hodge and Dawes – he wanted his television audience to watch a collection of clips of the former president and wonder whether it was really wise to re-elect the guy.

“What I ask you to hear is not what I want to say. It doesn’t matter. I want you to hear what he has to say,” Kimmel said. “I’m just going to focus on the words that came out of his mouth.”

What followed was a string of some of the dumbest or patently false claims that Trump continues to repeat, including his claim that forced gender reassignment surgeries are being carried out in US schools; falsely claiming that he actually won the 2020 election; and his bizarre obsession with the health effects of… windmills.

Trump may be a goldmine for late-night hosts and their writers, but Kimmel has clearly had enough. “I saw a T-shirt the other day that said, ‘I support Trump because he pisses off the people who piss me off,’” Kimmel said. “But is this really all we want for America? To make each other angry? I don’t want this.”

Mark Shanahan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @MarkAShanahan.