President Biden made his in-house interview debut as a sitting president on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Wednesday night. If that sounds like a lot of moderators on a “first,†it is. Technically this isn’t even Biden’s first time being interviewed by Kimmel, but it was still a get. Biden was in L.A. for the Summit of the Americas, and what better way to drive neocons up the wall than have Public Enemy No. 1 interviewed by (Inexplicable) Public Enemy No. 2.
But the Fox News crowd was wrong about it being a puff-piece interview; Kimmel grilled POTUS on gun control like he was a rack of ribs. Kimmel opened with a question on gun control, namely, where is it? “You find people who are worried, I believe, that if they vote for rational gun policy, they’re going to be primaried,†the president said. “And they’re going to lose in a hard-right Republican primary.â€
Biden went on to talk about how well he gets along with Mitch McConnell: “He’s a guy that, when he says something, he means it.†Kimmel immediately countered with McConnell’s conflicting statements on when it is or isn’t chill to confirm a Supreme Court justice. Biden also pushed the insulin price cap, which got a huge pop in the audience. But for most of the discussion, Kimmel and Biden ping-ponged along the same general vectors: Do Something, Vote for Me to Do Something, We Already Did.