Liz Cheney’s new memoir, Oath and Honor, won’t officially be released until Dec. 5, but it’s already creating lots and lots of juicy headlines—not to mention a few hearty chuckles, including from Jimmy Kimmel.
On Wednesday, Kimmel read some excerpts from the former House Republican chair’s book, and became a little skeptical when it came to one exchange between Cheney and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) regarding the then-Speaker of the House’s surprise trip to Mar-a-Lago following the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Here’s how it went:
Cheney: Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?
McCarthy: They’re really worried. Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.
Kimmel wasn’t buying that for a second. “That I don’t believe,” Kimmel said of the former president’s reported hunger strike. “I believe anything other than ‘He’s not eating.’”
If Trump was indeed depressed after the deadly attack on the Capitol, Kimmel has an alternate theory about why that might be: “January 6 is also the day Eric was born,” the host said, chuckling. “Could be why he wasn’t eating, OK,” Kimmel added.
Earlier this week, CNN’s Jake Tapper expressed similar suspicion as to the veracity of these claims.
“First of all, that alone I find surprising, just because he’s a man of healthy appetites,” Tapper said of the fast food-loving former POTUS. “I don’t mean that disparagingly,” he added.