“There’s a question I get asked a lot,” Jimmy Kimmel said at the top of his late-night show Thursday night. “Now that we have this president, people ask, ‘Is it easy now? It must be easy to write jokes, there’s so much material, the jokes must write themselves.’ And it’s not true. We still write the jokes ourselves. And in fact, in a way, it makes it harder to be funny when nonsense and stupidity is pouring on your head at all times.”
“So the jokes do not write themselves,” he continued. “Or should I say, they did not write themselves until today, when Kanye West visited the White House.”
From there, the host dedicated nearly his entire monologue to the spectacle that was Kanye and Trump in the Oval Office. “This was something special, OK?” Kimmel said. “Why they decided to allow cameras into this meeting, I have no idea.”
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“Even the people who love Donald Trump should be like, well, maybe he’s not the best when it comes to decision-making after this because not only was this a crazy conversation for this White House, this is the kind of conversation that would typically be held between people wearing hospital bracelets,” he added.
As some highlights from Kanye’s rant ran, the screen displayed Trump’s inner thoughts, including “So this is a black person…” and “Starting to regret the hats.” When it ended, Kimmel said, “Yeah, that’s the president of the United States sitting quietly while an irrational madman rants and raves at him. Now he knows how we feel every morning when we wake up to him.”
“Donald Trump is such a monumental narcissist that any famous person who puts on a red hat gets a visit and plenty of time for one-on-one,” he said, before playing more footage from the sit-down. “Kanye went on for quite some time. He praised the president’s male energy and implied that Donald Trump is the strong, supportive father figure he never had,” Kimmel added. “Eric and Don Jr. were like, yeah, join the club.”
“This ranting and raving, this is the kind of thing that happens on the subway in New York, not in the Oval Office,” Kimmel said before joking, “It was like Trump was sitting across from his own Twitter account come to life.”
“What do these celebrities think they’re accomplishing with Trump?” he asked. “I mean, you go in, you take a picture, you talk, he agrees immediately with what you say and then he forgets all about it. The only thing he retains is how much you like him, and Kanye likes him. In fact, Kanye loves him.”
After showing the moment Kanye got up from his chair to hug Trump, he declared, “Ladies and gentlemen, our 45th and 46th presidents of the United States.”
