Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel ripped into President Donald Trump and his supporters during his monologue Tuesday night, after Trump held a press conference in the afternoon to address and defend his initial reaction to the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend.
Taking cues from fellow late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers, all of whom delivered their own anti-Trump monologues this week, Kimmel called the president “completely unhinged” and said he would feel more comfortable if Cersei Lannister, from HBO’s hit show Game of Thrones, were running the country.
“The wheels are off the wagon and hurtling through space,” Kimmel joked.
The ABC host insisted he understood why Trump garnered so much support during the 2016 campaign.
“You were unhappy with the way things were going. You wanted someone to come in and shake things up. You didn’t want business as usual,” he said. “And then this guy shows up riding down a golden escalator. He’s not a part of the political establishment, in fact, he’s the opposite of that. Let’s roll the dice. Let him get in there and run the country like a business.”
But after listing a litany of items in which Kimmel said Trump had messed up — including the so-called “ban on Muslims,” his feud with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, his transgender military ban, and his game of “chicken” with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — the host said it was clear that Trump supporters “picked the wrong guy.”
“He is, by every reasonable account — and I’m using his own favorite words here — a ‘total disaster,'” Kimmel said. “But you’ve been trying to ignore it, because you don’t want to admit that these smug, annoying liberals were right. It’s the last thing you want to do. But the truth is — and deep down you know you made a mistake, you know this is true – you made a mistake. You picked the wrong guy.”
Kimmel then proposed that the country should designate Trump King of America, a situation in which he could enjoy the status of leadership without any of the actual responsibility or power.
“We need to set him up in a castle, maybe in Florida, lead him to the top, and then lock the door to that castle,” he joked. “Everyone can call him ‘Your Highness…’ maybe we give him a scepter, and that’s that. He can sit there watching Fox and Friends, maybe chip a few golf balls out the window of his tower. There’s no way he turns that deal down. And we need to get creative here. Because enough is enough.”
Watch Kimmel’s full Tuesday night monologue above.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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