What To Know
- Jimmy Kimmel addressed conservative critics who blamed him for Rudy Giuliani’s hospitalization due to a joke he made last week.
- A Newsmax panel suggested Kimmel’s jokes were inappropriate and ‘abhorrent.’
- Kimmel mocked the accusations on his show and sent his well wishes to Giuliani.
Jimmy Kimmel took a swings at his conservative critics on Monday night (May 4) after they tried to “pin” Rudy Giuliani’s recent hospitalization on him.
On Monday’s edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the late-night host spoke about how the former New York City mayor was hospitalized over the weekend and said to be in critical condition after a bout with pneumonia.
“When I read this, I really thought, I said, ‘I wonder if they’ll try and blame this on me,’” Kimmel said. “And then, sure enough, one of these podcast bozos points to a joke I made about Rudy on Thursday about him being a vampire, and then suggests I might actually have some inside knowledge of what’s going on in Trumptown there.”
Kimmel was referencing MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson, who posted on X on Sunday, “After making Trump assassination jokes, Jimmy Kimmel joked about Rudy Giuliani last week, saying he ‘rose from the grave.’ It was just announced tonight that Rudy was hospitalized and is in critical condition. Why is Kimmel always joking about death?”
It came a week after Donald and Melania Trump called for Kimmel to be fired after he made a joke about the first lady having “the glow of an expectant widow” two days before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting.
After Johnson’s tweet, Kimmel said, “It became a thing and resulted in this Newsmax panel formed to somehow pin this on me.”
In the clip, one Newsmax panelist asked, “Is this supposed to be comedy?” Another added, “He’s really not funny. It’s abhorrent, what he’s doing under the gauze of comedy.”
Kimmel picked up on that strange phrasing, appearing underneath a sheet of gauze held up by stagehands in Groucho masks. “Right. In fact, I’m under the gauze of comedy right now,” he quipped. “The gauze gives me psychic abilities. Every day in the morning, I wake up, I make coffee, and then I look into the future to see which events have yet to occur, and then we write jokes we know are going to make trouble.”
He continued, referencing Giuliani’s 2020 press conference mix-up, “For the record, I hope Rudy Giuliani lives another 100 years. He earned that outside the dildo shop. That was the funniest thing any person has done this century!”
You can watch Kimmel’s full opening monologue in the video above and let us know your thoughts below.
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Weeknights, 11:35/10:35c, ABC