As the co-creator of the Comedy Central puppet show Crank Yankers, Jimmy Kimmel knows a thing or two about prank calls. So when he heard the recording of Donald Trump pretending to be his own publicist under the fake name John Miller, he assumed the presumptive Republican nominee was just having fun at the expense of the media.
“If Trump says that wasn’t him, we have no reason not to believe him, he’s never lied to us before,” Kimmel said, laughing, when he joined The View Monday morning to discuss, among other things, the satirical vice-presidential campaign he announced on his late-night show last week.
“It’s clearly him, right?” Kimmel asked the show’s co-hosts. “I would just say it's a prank call and this idiot on the other end of the phone,” he added, explaining how he would handle the latest controversy. “That's the question to me, how does the guy from People magazine or whatever go along with this?”
Asked why Trump would lie about something so ridiculous, Kimmel said, “Listen, if you were calling People magazine and telling them all the women that wanted to have sex with you, I think you would be embarrassed about that.” Among the lines “John Miller” fed the press about Trump was that Madonna was pursuing him romantically.
“I wish Madonna would weigh in on this,” Kimmel said. “Why haven’t we heard from Madonna?! These are the kinds of things I will handle when I’m vice president of the United States.”
After a break, The View hosts made the mistake of subjecting themselves to Kimmel’s popular “Mean Tweets” segment, each taking a turn reading something nasty that someone wrote about them on Twitter. Somehow, at 11 in the morning with an audience that was more likely to let out sympathetic “aws” than good-natured laughs, the bit felt even more cruel.
“Mine says ‘Joyless Boobhar is dumb as rocks,’” Joy Behar said, to which Kimmel replied, “Some are more clever than others.”
“Whoopi Goldberg has threatened to leave The View. If only we could get her to leave the planet,” the show’s moderator read about herself to loud groans from the crowd.
However, a bigger misstep than welcoming “Mean Tweets” into their studio was Behar’s decision to ask Kimmel about his guest-hosting gig on Live! with Kelly (and no longer Michael Strahan) earlier this morning. This line of questioning opened the door for Kimmel to bring up some of the bad blood in The View’s recent past.
“I would imagine that for you guys there’s no greater thrill than seeing the hosts of another morning show on ABC fighting,” Kimmel said. “Right? I mean, finally somebody else.” When they insisted they never fight, Kimmel added, “Yeah, you remember when Rosie was on the show those two times?”
“Rosie who?” Behar joked in response. He could have been referring to either O’Donnell or Perez, who both left the show under unexplained circumstances during the past year.
“Let’s be honest, you have had more fights here than the WWE,” Kimmel continued. “We’re lucky this table is still intact.”