President Donald Trump has inadvertently revealed why he launched his war against Iran, Jimmy Kimmel pointed out Monday night.
The Jimmy Kimmel Live! host had harsh words for the president’s “desperate” strikes in the Middle East, calling the new offensive a ploy for re-election.
Kimmel recalled Trump’s 2012 tweets, which have resurfaced in the wake of the weekend’s first strikes against Iran, in which he repeatedly accused then-President Barack Obama of wanting to start a war with the Islamic Republic “in order to get re-elected” and because he is “desperate.”
“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate,” Trump said of Obama in a November 2011 interview. “He’s weak, and he’s ineffective. So the only way he figures that he’s going to get re-elected, and as sure as you’re sitting there, is to start a war with Iran.”
Trump doubled down on this theory several times, writing on X in 2012, “Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin—watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate."
Kimmel used Trump’s words for Obama against him on Monday night, quipping, “At least we know why he did this.”
“When your best friend was a pedophile, and you’re losing bigly in the swing states with an election coming up, what do you do? I’ll tell you what you do. You fire the weapons of mass distraction,” the late-night host quipped.
The late-night host dubbed the Pentagon’s “Operation Epic Fury” as “Operation Epsteino Distracto.”
Trump has said his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein ended in the mid-2000s and that the Justice Department’s Epstein files releases have “completely exonerated” him, but the scandal, and the administration’s handling of it, have continued to anger his MAGA base.
Kimmel also ripped into Trump’s repeated promises to “prevent World War III″ and end all looming, global threats of war. The late-night host played a montage of the many times the president promised to end conflicts, including his recurring assurance that he could settle the war between Russia and Ukraine “in 24 hours.”
“Well, you’re 0 for two, I guess,” Kimmel said to cheers from the audience.
The self-proclaimed “peace president” has now ordered more attacks against a greater number of countries than any other president in modern U.S. history, including strikes on Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, in addition to Iran in June and this month.
Trump, 79, has fashioned himself as anti-war, both during his 2024 re-election campaign and his presidency. On the night he was re-elected, Trump vowed, “I’m going to stop wars.” He has echoed variations of this sentiment consistently, saying in his inaugural address last year, “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”
The president has gone as far as to insist he is a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming he has ended seven international conflicts.
