Jimmy Kimmel had his sleep interrupted on Thursday morning when he woke to find a camera pointed in his face.
The late-night host aired the video during his monologue on Thursday night, revealing that his wife woke him up to alert him to Donald Trump’s latest Truth Social post, calling for ABC to fire the host, which he said, “better be soon!”
A shirtless, squinty-eyed Kimmel is bundled up in the covers as his wife, and Jimmy Kimmel Live executive producer, Molly McNearney, tells him, “Donald Trump wants you fired again.”
“I haven’t even been fired once. How can I be fired again?” Kimmel asks her sleepily.
McNearney fills him in, “He’s calling for you to be fired because you’re unfunny and you’re low-rated.”
Kimmel replies, “Well, those are good reasons,” as McNearney tells him, “Let’s get out of bed and deal with this.”
“So then I unearthed myself from all 30 of our pillows, and I grabbed one of the 25 pairs of reading glasses off my nightstand, and I see the following,” Kimmel says, returning to his monologue and reading Trump’s post: “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!!! President DJT.”
Kimmel replied, “If incompetently presiding over not just one of, but the lowest rating in history is the reason I should be fired, we should both be out of a job. Because you’re not doing too good either!”
Both President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have been on a crusade to get Kimmel off the air, permanently this time, following his temporary suspension last year, for joking about Trump’s age as he quipped the first lady had “the glow of an expectant widow.”
The shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner happened days later, and MAGA set its sights on Kimmel in the aftermath, arguing the joke made light of the president’s assassination attempts. In a rare move for Mrs. Trump, she posted to X to call for ABC to stop “protecting” the host as he “spreads hate.”
“A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him,” Mrs. Trump wrote, declaring, “Enough is enough.”
The message activated the president, who’s since joined his wife in calling for the end of Kimmel’s show.
Despite revealing that he’d lost some sleep, Kimmel has taken the blowback in stride, telling the first lady during his monologue on Monday, “I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do. And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.”
