Last fall, The Daily Beast reported that Jimmy Kimmel had been getting some behind-the-scenes help in his crusade to protect the Affordable Care Act. It turned out, some of the late-night comic’s talking points were coming directly from the office of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
But now that Schumer and enough of his fellow Senate Democrats caved to pressure from Republicans to reopen the government on Monday on a vague promise from Mitch McConnell about a potential deal on DACA, Kimmel is clearly disappointed in his one-time source.
“Democrats and Republicans reached a deal, kind of a deal, to reopen the government for, well, for at least three weeks. They agreed, the Democrats, to fund the government through February 8th in exchange for a promise from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that they would have a debate and a vote on DACA,” Kimmel said in his monologue Monday night. “In other words, for nothing.”
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As the host explained, Schumer thought he made a deal with President Trump at the White House on Friday, “but then the president’s team came in and said, ‘No, no, no, bad boy, go back to bed and eat a cheeseburger,’ and the deal was off.”
Kimmel also lashed out at Trump for his almost complete absence from the negotiations over the weekend. “It’s funny, he always claimed to be the best negotiator,” he said. “This was his big selling point, ‘I’m the dealmaker.’ At this point it seems pretty clear he couldn’t even negotiate 20 percent off at Bed, Bath & Beyond with the coupon.”
Last week, before the shutdown went into effect, Kimmel argued that Democrats could not possibly be blamed by voters for bringing the government to a halt, joking that the left “can’t even shut their computers down without Paul Ryan’s permission.” Now it looks like their own base could blame them by for letting down the DREAMers.
