Last month, comedian Jimmy Kimmel devoted nearly his entire late-night monologue one evening to Ted Cruz’s “despicable” and idiotic defense of Trump’s baseless election challenge. It’s an empty crusade that Cruz, despite having the president call his wife ugly and accuse his father of being involved in the JFK assassination, has gone all-in on—presumably in the cynical hope that he could one day become the candidate representing the MAGA side of the Republican Party in 2024.
And on Wednesday night, after President Trump incited a treasonous assault on the Capitol, wherein his followers effectively held the Halls of Congress hostage for a number of hours while backup police and the National Guard were nowhere to be found, Kimmel addressed the lawless insurrection.
“Thank you for joining us for the treason finale of the Donald Trump era. This was one of those days that I always assumed was behind us. This is not the sort of thing I ever imagined would happen in this country in my lifetime,” announced Kimmel.
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He continued: “The president of the United States, because he is too angry, too insecure, and too incompetent to deal with the fact that he lost an election—a fair election; an election that was no different than any other election; an election that he lost be 7 millions votes and 70 electors—turns an angry mob against members of Congress and his own vice president, not to mention endangering the Capitol Police, those blue lives he claims matter so much to him.”
Calling him “Benedict Arnold,” Kimmel segued to the rally Trump spoke at earlier in the day, where he sparked the storming of the U.S. Capitol, telling his loyal MAGA-heads, “And after this, we’re going to walk down there, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down ... to the Capitol and we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women… And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.” (Portions of the Trump rally crowd later invaded the Capitol.)
“His speech was historic: never before have so many people gathered to watch a president masturbate,” joked Kimmel.
He then focused his attention on the others who enabled the storming of the Capitol. “The police were very laid-back compared to the Black Lives Matter protests. Some were seen taking selfies with the criminals; others seemed to welcome them through the gates. It was a terrible day in the history of this country,” offered Kimmel. “Our president and the scumbags that kept this ‘stolen-election’ charade going—and that’s you Josh Hawley, that’s you Ted Cruz—either intentionally or just wildly irresponsibly lit these fires to start a war just to distract us from the fact that Donald Trump lost the election.”
“Ted Cruz, this guy doesn’t even believe the election was stolen,” he added. “He knows better than that. He’s so hungry for political power. He’s so desperate to be liked and supported by these nuts who think Joe Biden is a Chinese agent and Satan is trying to force them to wear masks to the mall so that one day he can be president, he’s willing to roll the dice on a civil war.”
He concluded: “These people are not Americans. There is no ‘we the people.’ There’s ‘me the people.’”
