Jimmy Kimmel told his studio audience that he was going to do something a little different on October 30: a monologue specifically meant to be sent to the Republican in your life, urging them to not vote for Donald Trump in next week’s presidential election. To anyone who’s watched literally any episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! over the past eight years, a monologue about Trump’s many failings doesn’t seem, on the surface, like something different. But this monologue was 19 minutes and opened with an earnest insistence that this wasn’t meant to be “our usual roast of Trump or some kind of liberal virtue signaling, none of that.†He addressed Republicans who don’t watch his show currently but who might remember him from The Man Show, saying, “we had a pretty good relationship back then. The beer, the trampolines, right? We had fun. But now times are less fun. We’re a week away from an election and we are very divided. Not just because of Donald Trump — because of people like, if I’m being honest, me. I do a lot of mocking and belittling, and it isn’t always productive.â€
It’s a pretty self-aware olive-branch moment, although, he immediately follows it up by saying that if you’re watching this, it could be because “you’re just open-minded and not afraid to hear somebody who might not agree with you,†which unfortunately plays right into right-wing ideas of Democrats as condescending and existing within an echo chamber of their own. Anyway. Kimmel spends the next 17-or-so minutes playing clips of Trump sounding paranoid, or stupid, or lying (“Either he doesn’t care about the truth or he has a hard time understanding what the truth is, both very bad optionsâ€), from his deflection of questions about health-care policy, to his rattling off of conspiracy theories about sex-change operations being done on minors at school, to incoherent ramblings about windmills, windows, and the wind as a concept. Kimmel calls Trump “the exact meeting point between QAnon and QVC†and plays a reel of all of his product shilling in recent years for things like collectible trading cards and Trump Bibles.
He ends by listing off a bunch of Establishment Republicans who have refused to endorse Trump this election and bringing out his sidekick, Guillermo, an immigrant who became an American citizen. They raise a toast to “our fellow Americans,†and Kimmel ends the toast with these inspiring words: “God bless America. We’ll be back with Hugh Grant.â€
So: Have you sent this to a Republican in your life yet? Did they absolutely love it? Did they go out and buy a Harris x Walz camo hat? And more importantly: Has Kimmel sent it to the Republicans in his life yet? What thinketh Ben Stein?