Jimmy Kimmel on the Trump administration: ‘They’ve hit peak ridiculous’

A picture


Late-night hosts roasted King Charles’s state visit and Donald Trump trying to push the cost of his $400m gilded ballroom on to taxpayers.Tuesday was “another weird day”, said Jimmy Kimmel on his most recent show.“There’s so much nonsense – and I mean that in a very literal sense of the word: non-sense happening.And at the same time, there are also so many awful and scary and flat-out unbelievable things going on.The world has been turned upside down, mostly for no good reason.

“And so today we got a visitor, one of the very few people who might actually be able to tip things even slightly in a positive direction.” That would be King Charles, in town with Queen Camilla for a rare state visit.“Trump has a particular affinity for the royal family, and so in Washington, they pulled out all the stops to welcome the king and queen,” Kimmel noted before footage of Washington streets accidentally lined with the Australian flag instead of the union jack.“Somehow, they screw everything up,” Kimmel laughed.“There’s a literal false flag operation going on there.

”In prepared remarks to welcome the royals, Trump mentioned his mother Mary McLeod, a Scottish immigrant who was married to his father Fred Trump for 63 years.“That’s a record we won’t be able to match, darling,” Trump then said to his wife, Melania Trump.“I’m sorry, it’s just not going to work out that way.”“Wait a minute … did he just make a joke about his death? My God.You should be fired for that,” Kimmel marveled, just days after Trump and Melania called for him to be fired over his joke that the first lady glowed “like an expectant widow”.

“Only Donald Trump would demand I be fired for making a joke about his old age, and then a day later go out and make a joke about his own old age,” Kimmel added.“Just when you think they’ve hit peak ridiculous making a big thing out of this joke, they then top themselves and charge – criminally charge! – former FBI director Jim Comey, who Trump doesn’t like because he did his job and investigated him.” The Trump administration formerly charged Comey with obstruction of justice and making a false statement, both of which were tossed from court.This week, they charged him with threatening the president’s life for posting a photo on Instagram of seashells on the beach spelling out “86 47” with the caption “cool shell formation on my beach walk”.The image could be interpreted as “86ing” (the restaurant term to throw something out) the 47th president, but “Trump’s pets in the DoJ are claiming this is some sort of threat or call to violence”, Kimmel explained.

“Even he should be embarrassed by this,” he added.“That is not a threat.That is a piece of art your aunt with a beach house would buy on Etsy.”On the Daily Show, Josh Johnson dug into more fallout from the White House correspondents’ dinner shooting over the weekend, which shook up the DC elite though resulted in no injuries.“First of all, terrible week for light-skinned dudes,” Johnson said next to a photo of the suspected attacker, Cole Allen, handcuffed and prone on a hotel room floor.

“You had this guy going for the president and chewing carpet, Klay Thompson cheating on Megan Thee Stallion … no pressure but Drake, this album’s gotta be fire.It’s all on you.” (The Canadian rapper’s next album, Ice Man, comes out in May.)“But that was just my takeaway,” Johnson continued.“Republicans had another, somehow dumber takeaway.

”Johnson then played clips of Republican senators who have used the thwarted attack as momentum to push legislation to fund Trump’s proposed gilded $400m ballroom with taxpayer money.“Four hundred million dollars?! That’s our money!” Johnson fumed.“Why do we have to pay for this? We didn’t try to shoot the president!“This is the administration that is obsessed with government waste,” he continued.“I can’t believe they dissolved Doge right before Trump demanded a $400m ballroom.It’s like how the Michael Jackson movie ended right before he starts molesting.

You just went ahead and skipped all the important stuff, huh?“We live in such a crazy time now that events don’t even need to be connected to each other,” he added.“Someone tried to kill the president, so now we’re going to build a ballroom!”Johnson, at least, wasn’t that surprised.“Honestly, as soon as I heard about the ballroom, I knew we would end up paying for it,” he said.“Trump is the type of dude to wine and dine you, and then forget his wallet.”And on Late Night, Seth Meyers also touched on King Charles’s state visit to the White House “in honor of America’s 250th anniversary, as well as the 280th anniversary of their hands”, he joked next to photos of their very old-looking hands.

Sunday marked Melania Trump’s 56th birthday, which her husband did not acknowledge on any of his personal social media accounts.“Look, it was a crazy weekend,” said Meyers.“I would be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was too busy if he hadn’t found time to congratulate Lee Greenwood on the birth of his grandchild” in a post on Truth Social.“And apparently the baby is already sick of that song,” he added of the God Bless the USA singer.And in other non-political news, the music streaming platform Spotify announced that its most streamed album of all time, with more than 20m streams, is Bad Bunny’s 2022 masterpiece Un Verano Sin Ti.

“And if you’re wondering what that translates to, about 38 cents,” Meyers quipped.
trendingSee all
A picture

NatWest faces £140m hit from Iran war as UK growth slows and inflation rises

NatWest said the economic fallout from the conflict in the Middle East could cost it £140m amid slowing growth and rising inflation even as it reported profits ahead of expectations.Overall, the FTSE 100 lender booked a £283m impairment charge and said that almost half of that was because of a reassessment of its economic forecast to “reflect increased geopolitical risk and weaker equity markets”.The bank said it expected its base case for UK gross domestic product growth to be only 0.4% this year, half that forecast by the International Monetary Fund earlier this month.NatWest reported a 12% year-on-year increase in operating profits to £2bn in the first three months of the year, up from £1

A picture

UK house prices jump despite impact of Middle East conflict

House price growth in the UK has surprised estate agents and economists by jumping in April at the fastest annual pace in 11 months, according to Nationwide.The UK’s biggest building society said its mortgage data showed that house prices unexpectedly rose by 3% in April on a year earlier, from 2.2% in March, leaving the typical UK property worth £278,880.House prices also rose for the fourth consecutive month, increasing by 0.4% in April after a 0

A picture

Meta threatens to shut down social networks in New Mexico over child safety court case

Meta has threatened to block access to Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp in New Mexico, which would be an unprecedented move in its home country. The ultimatum, made in a court filing this week, comes after the company was found liable and fined $375m for child safety failures in a landmark lawsuit brought by the state’s attorney general. The second phase of the suit, known as the remedies phase, is scheduled to begin on Monday and will determine what actions the tech giant is obligated to take in response.Should Meta lose the second phase of trial, which will begin on 4 May, it would be compelled to introduce a series of reforms to its products. The New Mexico department of justice argues these changes would make Meta’s social networks safer for underage users in the state

A picture

Judge cuts off Musk’s AI doomsday talk as his testimony ends in OpenAI case

Elon Musk’s court case against Sam Altman continued on Thursday, after a day of contentious exchanges during OpenAI’s cross-examination of the Tesla CEO. Musk faced more combative questioning throughout the morning, in a glimpse of what may await other prominent witnesses set to take the stand.Witness testimony and evidence has revealed formerly private emails, text messages and diary entries surrounding the formation of OpenAI, giving a behind-the-scenes look at how the tech behemoth was created. Many of the tech industry’s most powerful players are named as witnesses and will give their accounts on the origins of Musk and Altman’s bitter feud. Altman will testify later in the trial, which will last three weeks

A picture

Chess: England fail to win senior team world medals for first time in five years

England finished out of the medals for the first time in five years in this week’s world senior team championships for over-50s and over-65s, played at Durres, Albania, as the US, fielding a largely former USSR squad, retained the over-50 gold medals, while a nominally German team, which also included a former Soviet star, won the over-65s event.The US victory was clear but had a controversial aspect in the team’s use of package deals, which are forbidden in Olympiads but still allowed in senior events.Fide World Senior Teams Championships ran from 19-28 April in Durres, AlbaniaAge 50+1 USA 1 – 15 match points (25.5 game points)2 Italy – 15 (23)3 Kazakhstan – 14 (27)4 England 1 – 13 (24)5 Iceland – 12 (23.5)6 Hungary – 11 (21

A picture

Robo athletes miss the point of sport – there is no drama without emotion | Emma John

It hurts to miss an unmarked shot in basketball. And it certainly seemed to pain the Alvark Tokyo shooter, halfway through April’s Japanese league game against Shimane Susanoo Magic. As the ball bounded off the rim, the player wheeled away, head lowered, eyes downcast. The disappointment looked glaringly real.Which is interesting, because it was not