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Trump’s Favorite TV Target Proves Him Wrong With Ratings Win

The president has repeatedly said the show had “bad ratings,” but new numbers paint a very different picture.

Donald Trump is not going to like this.

The president has repeatedly claimed that Jimmy Kimmel’s “audience is gone,” but Kimmel’s show was the only late-night talk series to gain new viewers in 2025, according to new numbers from Nielsen.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! finished 2025 with a 14% increase in total viewership year over year (and a 4% increase in the coveted 18-49 demo). News of the gains comes after Kimmel’s brief suspension from ABC last September following his on-air comments criticizing MAGA’s response to the death of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk.

At the time, the network announced that the decision to pull Kimmel from the lineup was “indefinite,” but the host was reinstated six days later, following network and streaming boycotts from fans and celebrities, and pushback from lawmakers.

Kimmel’s first monologue after the suspension drew a record 6.3 million live viewers, making it the show’s most-watched live episode in over a decade. The YouTube upload of his monologue became his most-watched ever, with 23 million views. In his remarks, he clarified his comments but has continued to call out Trump and MAGA, earning him praise from fans who were happy to see him back on air without “bending the knee.”

The momentum of his return apparently carried over, as Kimmel’s late-night show was the only one on network television to gain new eyeballs, despite not airing in many cities for several days after his reinstatement.

Even with the show’s growing success, ABC hit the host with budget cuts this month, reducing music performances from one per broadcast to just two per week.

The news of Kimmel’s year-end win is not likely to please Trump, who often claims that Kimmel’s ratings are “terrible.”

“Jimmy Kimmel is—every night he hits me … I guess his ratings are terrible… He’s not a talented guy,” Trump said in March 2024, which would become a consistent claim in the months to follow. Reacting to Kimmel’s suspension the following year, Trump posted to Truth Social, “Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible.”

As Stephen Colbert’s Late Show was axed by CBS a few months prior in what some saw as a quid pro quo to seal the deal on Paramount’s merger with Skydance (which needed approval from Trump’s FCC), Trump also claimed, “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” He also called for the firings of late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.

While Kimmel’s show grew its viewership, others in late-night did not fare as well in 2025. Every other show—including Fallon’s Tonight Show, Meyers’ Late Night, and Colbert’s soon-to-end Late Show—lost total viewers, continuing the late-night viewership trend of the last decade.

Still, Colbert remained the network TV’s late-night leader with an average of 2.55 million viewers compared to 2.01 million for Kimmel. Fallon was in distant third with 1.32 million.

Trump is no stranger to hosting a low-rated show, as he hosted the least-watched Kennedy Center Honors broadcast ever in December. The Center’s new VP of Public Relations argued that “comparing this year’s broadcast ratings to prior years is a classic apples-to-oranges comparison and evidence of far-left bias.”

Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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