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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Entertainment
Guardian staff

Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s Truth Social: ‘The social media equivalent of a RadioShack’

Jimmy Kimmel on Melania Trump turning 52: ‘Birthdays are tough for Melania – she’s made the same wish for the past 20 years, never comes true.’
Jimmy Kimmel on Melania Trump turning 52: ‘Birthdays are tough for Melania – she’s made the same wish for the past 20 years, never comes true.’ Photograph: Youtube

Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel acknowledged Melania Trump’s 52nd birthday on Tuesday evening. “Birthdays are tough for Melania – she’s made the same wish for the past 20 years, never comes true,” he joked. “The tears keep extinguishing the candles before she can blow them out.

“I don’t know what kind of gift Trump gave her, but he did send her a beautiful email today that started ‘dear supporter,’” Kimmel added. “Birthdays are depressing for a lot of people. Can you imagine being Melania? Every year they sing happy birthday, then she spends the next 10 minutes watching the gibbon she married wolf down a whole cake.”

Kimmel also ragged on Donald Trump’s app Truth Social, “which is such a disaster he himself hasn’t even posted on it for 11 weeks”.

Though he will probably be allowed to return to Twitter under Elon Musk, who bought the company for $44bn this week, Trump has said he will not go back to the bird app. (His account was banned after the 6 January attack on the Capitol.) But “he 100% will go back on Twitter”, Kimmel predicted. “And then this dumb new company he conned everybody out of their money for will become, I guess, the social media equivalent of a RadioShack.”

“A RadioShack that is run by Devin Nunes,” he added of the former California congressman, who claimed on Fox News that Truth Social has gotten more engagement than both Twitter and Instagram. “‘Engagement’ means the four people who are on it have been liking each other’s posts.”

Dr Deborah Birx, the former White House Covid response coordinator to Trump, has published a tell-all book called Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late. “Which is a lot of words for someone who never spoke up at all,” said Kimmel.

In the book, Birx calls the press conference in which Trump advised Americans to drink bleach as a Covid treatment a “tragedy”.

“It’s amazing – all it took for the people to finally say something was an advance from a book publisher,” Kimmel mused.

Trevor Noah

On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah also mocked Truth Social, which has “so far been a total bust”, with 500,000 daily users. “To put it in perspective, Twitter, the thing that it’s supposed to be replacing, has 217 million daily users,” Noah said. “So Truth Social is ‘competition’ for Twitter the same way that guy on the plane was ‘competition’ for Mike Tyson.”

Trump has posted on Truth Social just one time, for its launch two months ago. “Think about how crazy that is!” Noah exclaimed. “People, when he was on Twitter, Trump would send, what, 50 tweets every time he went to the bathroom. But now? He hasn’t posted in two months? I’m just saying, man, someone needs to get this guy some prune juice stat.”

Noah also cited reports that a lot of Republicans would be secretly thrilled if Trump never returned to Twitter, “because they don’t like the drama that he would create”, Noah said. “And it makes sense. You remember what it was like when he was on Twitter – he would say something, he would tweet something random like ‘Congress should make it illegal to speak Spanish,’ and then all day reporters would be tracking down Republican senators in the hallway. Remember, they’d chase them and be like ‘do you agree with the president that it should be illegal to speak Spanish?’ And the senators would have to come up with new ways to answer without answering.”

“I’ll be honest, though,” Noah concluded. “The only reason I would want Trump back on Twitter – the only reason – is because I know, yes, it would probably lead to another term and it would destroy the country, but I just really want to see his Wordle scores.”

Seth Meyers

And on Late Night, Seth Meyers recapped former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s endorsement of Musk’s purchase of Twitter, saying he supported Musk’s “mission to extend the light of consciousness”.

“Well, I feel a lot better knowing that Twitter wasn’t in great hands before,” said Meyers.

In other news, Joe Biden said he had tried to congratulate Emmanuel Macron for his recent election victory, but couldn’t reach him because the French president was “at the Eiffel Tower having a good time”.

“Oof, that’s gotta hurt. That’s not even a good lie,” said Meyers.

And officials in New York are reportedly considering a proposal to allow pizzerias and other restaurants to sell cannabis-infused foods. “Oh, they only come here if they’re already high – said Papa John’s,” Meyers joked.

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