Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has admitted that he lost half of his fan base because of his constant jabs at Donald Trump.
Kimmel, who just signed a three-year contract extension for his show, appeared on a podcast called Naked Lunch this week, where he revealed that the ABC network bosses warned against his continuous trashing of Trump and his supporters. However, Kimmel said that he didn’t heed their advice.
“There was at one time, maybe, I don’t know like right around the beginning of this whole like Trump there where… that was kind of hinted at,” Kimmel told hosts Phil Rosenthal and David Wild. “But I just said, ‘Listen, I get it. I don’t disagree. I mean, you’re right.'”
“I have lost half of my fans – maybe more than that,” he added. “Ten years ago, among Republicans, I was the most popular talk show host, at least according to the research that they did.”
“I just said, if that’s what you want to do, I understand and I don’t begrudge you for it, but I’m not going to do that. So if you want somebody else to host the show, then that’s fine. That’s OK with me. I’m just not going to do it like that.”
“They knew I was serious,” said Kimmel. “I just – I couldn’t live with myself.”
The comedian added that he hopes to be on the air when “Trump goes to jail.”
Kimmel also angered many people in his (now former) fan base not just over the comments he made about Trump, but the comments he has made about those who chose not to get the Covid-19 vaccination.
In one of his segments, he suggested that unvaccinated people shouldn’t be given a bed in a hospital ICU if they need it, jabbing at them for “gobbling horse goo.”
On the same podcast, Kimmel couldn’t resist heaping praise on Joe Biden, saying that he’s “a decent human being”… apparently the only requirement to be the President of the United States.
“He’s a nice old man who quite plainly cared about people through his whole life,” Kimmel said about Biden. “He’s certainly not evil. If you believe that, you’ve got some real problems.”
Biden hasn’t seemed like such a “nice old man” as he’s been trying to divide the country by labeling MAGA Republicans as the greatest threat to our democracy.
