On Tuesday, the President of the United States of America defended neo-Nazis—again.
Yes, what was supposed to be a press conference on infrastructure quickly devolved into a street-corner shouting match between POTUS and the press, as Trump went completely off-script and launched into an angry, passionate defense of the white nationalists who marched on Charlottesville, Virginia. President Trump placed a great deal of blame for what happened on the “alt-left”; once more equated the racists who invaded Charlottesville in an effort to provoke public incident with those opposed to their racism, offering that there is “blame on both sides”; alleged that there were “very fine people on both sides”; compared Robert E. Lee to George Washington; and questioned whether the “alt-right” even exists. It was a complete disaster.
While The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert branded the presser “the seventh circle of hell,” Jimmy Kimmel went a step further.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I’m not joking when I say: I would feel more comfortable if Cersei Lannister was running this country at this point,” said Kimmel.
The Jimmy Kimmel Live! host dedicated his entire monologue—which ran over 12 minutes—to Trump’s truly insane press conference.
“It was supposed to be a press conference about infrastructure, and it ended with our president making an angry and passionate defense of white supremacists,” said Kimmel. “It was like if your book club meeting turned into a cockfight. It really was remarkable.”
“I feel like I can say this with reasonable certainty: the president is completely unhinged,” he added. “The wheels are off the wagon and hurtling toward the moon right now.”
Kimmel, who famously delivered a tear-filled plea for Obamacare following the near-death of his infant son, even compared Trump’s presser to “when Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear off.”
One of the more farcical statements Trump made during the presser concerned his relationship with the facts. Now, Trump is about as faithful to facts as he was to his first wife, and yet, during his red-faced tirade, he claimed that his first Charlottesville was incomplete because, “unlike you and unlike the media, before I make a statement I like to know the facts.”
The comedian couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s right. He’s very careful about that. Like the fact that Ted Cruz’s father killed JFK, and Obama was born in Kenya. He’s a stickler for the facts,” cracked Kimmel.
But he didn’t stop there. Kimmel analyzed every embarrassing statement in Trump’s speech. There was Trump’s claim of “very fine people on both sides,” to which Kimmel threw to a horrifying clip of hundreds of white supremacists in Charlottesville marching with tiki torches and chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” (For the record, Jews comprise less than 7 million of the nearly 327 million people in the United States.)
“So here’s the thing: if you’re with a group of people and they’re chanting things like ‘Jews will not replace us’ and you don’t immediately leave that group, you are not a ‘very fine’ person,” said Kimmel, using Trump’s own phrase against him.
He was beside himself when Trump, after the presser, plugged his Virginia vineyard—and even more disgusted when former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke thanked Trump for his speech today on Twitter.
“I think we might need an alt-president right now,” Kimmel said. “You know, everybody’s been asking, ‘Do you think Trump’s going to last four years?’ I’m wondering if any of us are going to last four years.”
The final four minutes of his monologue served as a plea to Trump voters, with the late-night host imploring them to just own up to the fact that they were wrong about this phony “working-class hero” who’s done an incredible amount of damage to the country’s credibility in his six-plus months in office.
“It’s not getting better, it’s getting worse,” said Kimmel. “Now, he does need to go.”
