“Jimmy Kimmel Live” hit the airwaves on Wednesday night with a sharp take on the election, spelling out during host Jimmy Kimmel’s Wednesday monologue all that was lost when Donald Trump was re-elected as president: “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 and democracy and decency. And it was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him. And guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him too. You just don’t realize it yet.”
On the flip side, “it was a really good night for Putin and for polio and for lovable 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,” he added.
Kimmel noted that the choice for president came down to 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. I guess this election wasn’t rigged.”
And yet, he noted that Trump had pre-emptively declared that this election was going to be rigged. “Isn’t it remarkable that this time, the fix wasn’t in? Last time the Democrats cheated, this time we chose not to, I guess?” Kimmel said. “I don’t know. Now this Donald Trump, he’s like the Emperor from ‘Star Wars.’ He’s old, he’s evil, and he keeps coming back with no reasonable explanation whatsoever.”
Kimmel had been very vocal in his support of Kamala Harris and in warning viewers against voting for Trump — even airing a special monologue he had crafted for Republican voters to watch. “Be honest, last week, did you guys sent that monologue to a Republican like I asked you?” he quipped.
Kimmel commended Harris for gracefully conceding her loss in the election, something Trump refused to do in 2020. “In America, there’s an election, and then they count the votes, and if the Democrat loses, they call to congratulate the winner,” he said.
“You know what I’m going to say, something that Trump would never say unless it favored him: The people voted, and this is the choice we made,” Kimmel added. “In January. Donald Trump becomes president, and that’s that he won. Doesn’t mean we give up, but it also doesn’t mean we storm the Capitol because we don’t like the result.”
Kimmel said it’s been hard to find any silver lining in what has happened, but he hopes maybe once Trump fails to deliver on his promises, people may finally see through his ways. “We’ve been through this once before, and yes, this time, it is probably going to be worse, maybe a lot worse,” he said. “But I also think that maybe we will look back and realize that in the long run, this is what we needed to wake us up. Maybe the people who care so much about him need to find out how little he cares about them.
Maybe this time, he’ll shock us and actually do some productive things. He won’t, probably, but he could. Or maybe the only good part of all this is he can’t run again in 2028. Maybe next time, the Republicans will nominate an orangutan for President. Why not at least make it fun.”
Kimmel then ended this portion of the monologue by getting a bit personally dark: “My only request to President-elect Trump is that he let me share a prison cell with Taylor Swift. I’m really good at making bracelets, and I think we get along just fine. We’ll see how funny that is in six months, when the great talk show host roundup begins.”