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The ongoing spat between Jimmy Kimmel and President Trump shows no signs of cooling down.
Launching into his first show of 2026, the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host remarked on Trump’s role as the inaugural sitting U.S. president to present the 48th Annual Kennedy Center Honors in 2025. The event, however, drew only 3.01 million viewers on CBS, marking a historic low for the broadcast, as reported by Deadline.
“Over the break, Trump took the stage as an awards show host,” Kimmel informed his audience. “After bragging about his hosting prowess and claiming he’d outshine me with stellar ratings, he ended up presiding over the least-watched Kennedy Center Honors ever.”
Kimmel quipped further, “I wouldn’t want to be the White House intern tasked with removing and consuming those headlines from the newspapers.”
The comedian also took the opportunity to remind Trump of a previous statement about leaving office. “If memory serves, he mentioned he would resign if he couldn’t top my ratings,” Kimmel noted. “He said, ‘If I can’t surpass Jimmy Kimmel, then I shouldn’t be president.’ Well, fair’s fair. Time to head back to Mar-a-Lago.”
Kimmel is referring to a statement Trump made ahead of the awards ceremony in which he criticized other hosts. Trump said he “watched some of the people that host. Jimmy Kimmel was horrible, and some of these people. If I can’t beat out Jimmy Kimmel in terms of talent, then I don’t think I should be president,” per Deadline. Kimmel has not hosted the Kennedy Center Honors.
Trump has taken several opportunities to criticize Kimmel’s hosting skills, whether it’s on late night or at the Oscars.
In 2024, Trump ranted on TruthSocial about the “horrendous” job Kimmel did hosting that year’s Oscars ceremony, writing, “Stupid Jimmy Kimmel, who still hasn’t recovered from his horrendous performance and big ratings drop as Host of The Academy Awards, especially when he showed he suffered from TDS, commonly known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, to the entire World by reading on air my TRUTH about how bad a job he was doing that night.”
And in 2025, Trump gloated after Live was preempted for almost a week by broadcaster Sinclair over his comments regarding Charlie Kirk’s death. Later, when the show returned to air, Kimmel wasted no time in continuing his almost daily criticisms of Trump’s administration.
Trump demanded ABC take action against Kimmel’s “totally biased coverage” in another post on TruthSocial.
“Why does ABC Fake News keep Jimmy Kimmel, a man with NO TALENT and VERY POOR TELEVISION RATINGS, on the air?” he ranted. “Why do the TV Syndicates put up with it? Also, totally biased coverage. Get the bum off the air!!!”
Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs on weeknights at 11:35/10:35c on ABC.
