Jimmy Kimmel is thrilled to be part of the movement against Donald Trump. After winning the Emmy for Outstanding Host for a Game Show for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the late-night host was asked backstage how it feels to be defending democracy on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
“Those are heavy thoughts, and I have a tendency to reject them,” he said. “I don’t necessarily feel like I’m defending democracy, but I do feel like I’m giving this guy a little poke and he deserves it and I enjoy it and I love that people enjoy it too.”
Kimmel was also asked if he has been thinking about leaving late-night (his contract for Jimmy Kimmel Live expires in 2026). “I’m not prepared to answer their question, but it is something I think about a lot, and things have changed a lot over the last, what, nine years,” he replied. “Each day is a new adventure, and I take them as they come. Is that a good way of dodging the question?”
Kimmel recalled being at the Daytime Emmys in 1999 when he and Ben Stein won the outstanding game show host award for Win Ben Stein’s Money.
“It was very surprising,” Kimmel said. “When we won that Emmy, we went on the air the same week South Park went on the air, and Comedy Central was not a channel that many people watched. And we were up against these titans, the same shows we’re up against now, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. We didn’t know anyone was watching the show. I think it was the first Emmy Comedy Central ever won. I specifically remember being at that ceremony and seeing Susan Lucci in the front row, and she had lost 15 years in a row. It was like the big story every year. So when we won, I said something to the effect of ‘it seems ridiculous that we would win this in our first year.’ And I handed the Emmy to her, and she later gave it back. She rejected it. At the airport the next day, the lady at the TSA goes, ‘Are you the guy who gave Susan Lucci the Emmy?!’”
Kimmel has used Jimmy Kimmel Live as a platform to comment on Trump and his policies, both prior to the election last November and during the president’s current second term. In April, the host dedicated his monologue to mocking Trump’s first 100 days in office, noting that it has been more “prehistoric” than historic.
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“It’s difficult to give Trump’s first 100 days a grade, but if I had to I’d say it falls somewhere between F and U,” Kimmel said on the show. “Don’t get me wrong, there have been some positives. Unfortunately they have all been pregnancy tests for women who slept with Elon Musk.”
Earlier this year, Kimmel told Rolling Stone of Trump, “I like when he admits I’m bothering him. Here at the show, where we put a lot of work into lampooning him, for him to acknowledge our work is one of the few things he does that I appreciate. If he ignored us, it wouldn’t be as much fun.”
