Jimmy Kimmel has publicly fired back at Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The ABC host, a constant fixture of MAGA ire, reposted Kennedy’s analysis of the alleged decline of late-night television. MAGA has been gloating since Stephen Colbert’s CBS show closed its curtains last week, with Kennedy reveling in the “shocking collapse of liberal comedy.”
“This is the best explanation of how we’ve reached the nader where late-night host Jimmy Kimmel can say ‘It’s not my job to be funny,’” Kennedy wrote on X, reposting a satirical video slating late-night TV hosts. “As this author shows, he was hired as a comedian, but he made himself a priest.”
Kennedy made a blatant error in his statement, however, which Kimmel was quick to call out.
“It’s ‘nadir’ dummy,” wrote the comedian on Instagram. “Now get back to spreading polio.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services for comment.
Kennedy appears to be taking notes from his boss’s book. Trump has increasingly ranted about Kimmel and fellow late-night hosts, who frequently question and mock the 79-year-old president. After Colbert’s final episode of The Late Show last week, Trump passionately celebrated the Emmy-winning host’s departure and suggested other TV hosts will soon follow.
“Stephen Colbert’s firing from CBS was the ‘Beginning of the End’ for untalented, nasty, highly overpaid, not funny, and very poorly rated Late Night Television Hosts. Others, of even less talent, to soon follow. May they all Rest in Peace! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote.
Kimmel has been embroiled in a long feud with Trump and the MAGA base. The president and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, called for the TV host to be fired last month after a joke Kimmel made days before an assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
On April 30, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “When is ABC Fake News Network firing seriously unfunny Jimmy Kimmel, who incompetently presides over one of the Lowest Rated shows on Television? People are angry. It better be soon!!!”
