Donald Trump has even more choice words for Jimmy Kimmel.
In a Sunday appearance on Fox News’ MediaBuzz, the former president addressed the viral moment at the Oscars earlier this month where Kimmel, who was hosting, all but paused the ceremony to read Trump’s scathing “review” aloud to the whole audience. (Adding, for good measure: “I'm surprised you’re still up. Isn’t it past your jail time?”)
Prompted by Fox host Howard Kurtz, Trump took a moment to delight in his own TruthSocial post—“I said some other pretty good things”—before getting into the Kimmel-bashing.
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“Jimmy Kimmel is—Every night he hits me,” the former president complained. “I guess his ratings are terrible. He’s not a talented guy. I hear he hits me all the time. So I figured I’d hit him because I thought he was a lousy host.”
For anyone keeping score at home, Kimmel’s late night show, on which Trump is admittedly a frequent and easy target, is doing just fine in the ratings, frequently outpacing competitors like Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert. His Oscars raked in record viewership as well, with Nielsen reporting this week that 19.5 million people tuned in to the telecast, the highest number in four years.
Trump said he “never expected” Kimmel to walk his post out onto the stage, especially not right before “the big one”—a reference to the presentation of the award for best picture, the night’s top prize.
“He reads exactly what you read,” Trump told Kurtz. “And now the big story is that they all begged him not to do it. ‘Don’t do it.’ He probably—stupidly, you know, he had to act in a short period of time, like minutes, right?”
Kimmel claimed after the ceremony last Sunday that he’d been begged by its organizers not to read Trump’s words out. “They’re like, ‘You’ve got a little bit of time’ and I was like, ‘I’m reading the Trump tweet,’” he told Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos. “And they’re like, ‘No, no, don’t read that.’ [I was like] ‘Yes I am.’”
“I said: ‘This guy’s even dumber than I thought,’” Trump recalled of his reaction to the moment. “The thing went viral. It’s been all over the world now, and all he had to do is keep his mouth shut.”
