On Thursday night, Jimmy Kimmel escalated his feud with NBC over their questionable decision to give in to President Trump’s demands and air a town hall with him at the same time as Joe Biden’s over on ABC. Given that Trump’s interview would also air on MSNBC and CNBC, the ratings-obsessed commander-in-chief would surely garner bigger ratings and also siphon viewers from his opponent.
“Presidential debate number two was scheduled for this evening but instead we got two dueling town halls—Joe Biden on ABC, Donald Trump on NBC,” explained Kimmel on his late-night show. “NBC pulled a very sneaky move. After Trump refused to participate in a virtual debate, they swooped in and gave him his own hour opposite Joe Biden. While many are wondering why NBC would schedule this at the same time as Biden’s town hall instead of on another night—or even just in another time slot so we could see what both candidates have to say—the answer to the question is: NBC sucks.”
He added, “You should never watch that channel. It was a real Peacock-block, is what it was.”
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Of course, Donald Trump and NBC go way back. The network bailed Trump out of financial doom with The Apprentice, crafting his false persona as a thriving businessman in the process, and broadcast his Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants. During the 2016 presidential election, they let him host Saturday Night Live and had their late-night host Jimmy Fallon play with his hair.
So, when Trump spent the day in the lead-up to the town hall mocking NBC and the town hall’s moderator Savannah Guthrie, it rang rather hollow given their cozy relationship.
“Even though Trump spent a lot of this afternoon cryptically claiming that NBC was setting him up with this town hall, it was a beautiful reunion,” cracked Kimmel. “Seeing him back in primetime was like taking a time machine back to 2004, when he was just a blowhard reality-TV host and nothing more.” “And not only did we get a trip back to the past—we also got a glimpse of what Trump and NBC have planned for their future together,” Kimmel continued, before throwing to a mock montage of Trump berating contestants as a judge on NBC’s America’s Got Talent.
Sadly, it’s not so far-fetched.
