‘It was a terrible night’: Jimmy Kimmel reacts to Trump winning the 2024 election
This presidential election has brought TV hosts close to tears, and for good reason. The fate of America was at stake and now it’s seemingly been decided. Donald Trump, a convicted felon who can barely string two sentences together, has been elected president again.
Like all of us, Jimmy Kimmel has been left severely disappointed and discouraged by the election results. He’s spent plenty of time this year trying to warn people about the dangers of a Trump presidency and got called a “loser” by Trump in return. (Everyone Trump doesn’t like is a “loser”; that’s simply the toxic way he views the world.) So he was visibly upset while giving a monologue about the election results on his show on Wednesday, November 6.
During a bit when Kimmel pretended to pack up to leave the U.S., he began his monologue with jokes. After briefly pretending to leave, he said, “Let me tell you, that was the worst Taco Tuesday of my whole life. We had the choice between a prosecutor and a criminal, and we chose the criminal to be President of the United States. More than half of this country voted for the criminal who is planning to pardon himself for his crimes.”
He then referenced one of the most controversial plot points of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. “Donald Trump is like the Emperor from Star Wars—he’s old, he’s evil, and he keeps coming back with no reasonable explanation whatsoever,” he said. Sadly, though Emperor Palpatine was defeated by a woman in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, life didn’t imitate art and a woman could not defeat Donald Trump in the election. Much of America is simply too misogynist and too racist to consider a Black woman.
Kimmel cracked another joke—”Kamala Harris called Trump today. She conceded and then explained what the word conceded means”—but it simply wasn’t the time for joking anymore. Seemingly near tears, Kimmel said, “Let’s be honest. It was a terrible night last night.” He then began listing the people who stand to lose the most under a Trump presidency. It was, to say the least, incredibly depressing.
“It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go, for health care, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech. It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on Social Security, for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO, for the truth and democracy and decency.”
Then Kimmel turned his attention to the people who did vote for Trump. “It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him, too. You just don’t realize it yet,” he said. Certainly, we expect an influx of “I never thought leopards would eat MY face” stories soon, where people suddenly understand Trump will enact cruelty on anyone.
Kimmel went on, “But it was a really good night for Putin and for polio and for loveable billionaires like Elon Musk and the bros up in Silicon Valley and all the wriggling brain worms who sold what was left of their souls to bow down to Donald Trump.” That last comment probably refers to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who once claimed to have a worm in his brain. Currently, people are terrified about the prospect of anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. having control over people’s health in the Trump administration.
Kimmel neatly summed up the way millions of Americans are feeling right now. There’s a lot of despair and hopelessness around. As a Brit, seeing all this devastation from prominent Americans is heartbreaking. It really was a terrible night.
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