After a “hell of a couple of weeks,” Jimmy Kimmel presented some “exciting news” at the top of his eponymous talk show on Monday, touting a new YouGov poll that gave him a 16-point lead in favorability over President Donald Trump.
“I am more popular than the president of the United States,” Kimmel said as The Independent’s headline about the poll appeared on-screen.
“I lead Trump by 16 points,“ Kimmel continued after huge cheers from the audience. ”I’m at plus three, he’s at minus 13.”
“At this point, finding a toenail in your salad has a seven-point lead over Donald Trump,” Kimmel joked.
“I hope [Trump] doesn’t see this,” Kimmel quipped about the poll. “You know I don’t like to upset him. But I think he might be upset, because the White House put out a statement this afternoon...”
Kimmel proceeded to read a statement from White House press spokesperson Anna Kelly that said Kimmel “prays every night to garner a fraction of [Trump’s] support... Sad!”
“I like sad with an exclamation point,” Kimmel replied. “It would make a nice T-shirt with Trump’s face on it, wouldn’t it?”
Kimmel added, “You know what else is sad? That the President of the United States has a lower approval rating than Diddy and diarrhea.”
The survey, conducted by YouGov, asked respondents if they held favorable opinions of both men.
When asked about Kimmel, 44 percent said they had a favorable opinion of the comedian, while 41 percent said they did not. Fifteen percent said they were undecided, giving Kimmel a net favorability of +3.
When asked about Trump, 41 percent had favorable views, in contrast to 54 percent who said they did not, and 5 percent were undecided, giving the president a -13 net favorability.
Trump was delighted last month after ABC announced that Kimmel’s show had been taken off air “indefinitely,” due to comments he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, accusing Republicans of using the death to score political points.
However, after just six days, Kimmel was reinstated with the show’s parent company, Disney, saying it had “thoughtful conversations” with Kimmel over the comments, which it described as “ill-timed.”
The YouGov poll also asked respondents if they believed that the comments were enough to warrant a suspension, with more than half (55 percent) saying no, and 30 percent saying yes.
Kimmel’s return to the air was watched by 6.3 million viewers — more than tripling the late-night show’s normal TV viewership. His comeback monologue also went viral, accumulating more than 14 million views on YouTube and 5.7 million views on Instagram the day after it was broadcast.
In the monologue, Kimmel was choked up and visibly emotional as he explained his intentions in last week’s episode.
“I do want to make something clear, because it’s important to me as a human, and that is you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” Kimmel said. “I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”
The comedian went on to tell his audience he had sent love to Kirk’s family and asked for compassion.
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