With The Late Show, Late Night, and the Daily Show all on vacation on Monday night, Jimmy Kimmel alone recapped the Los Angeles Lakers’ seventh NBA title and the president’s most recent antics.
Monday marked the holiday formerly known as Columbus Day, now Indigenous Peoples’ Day – a fitting occasion for Trump to declare himself Covid-free, as the president and the 15th-century explorer “actually have a lot in common”, said Kimmel. “They both spread disease, and they both failed spectacularly at what they were hired to do.”
The “contaminator-in-chief” was in Florida on Monday night to host a mask-less rally, which he claimed was OK-ed by doctors. “That’s good news, though – it’ll be nice to get back to having a president who’s only mentally ill,” Kimmel deadpanned.
Since returning to the White House after a weekend stay at Walter Reed medical center, Trump has spun his bout with Covid, which was treated with top-of-the-line medical care, a personal team of physicians, and an intense therapy regimen – into a narrative of invincibility. The president called into Fox News over the weekend to brag that he felt “good, by the fact that the word immunity means something, having really a protective glow means something.”
“It’s not a protective glow, though,” Kimmel responded. “That is Hawaiian Tropics mango-scented tanning mousse that you’re seeing.”
And “if it sounds like Trump is trying to position himself as some kind of superhero now, um, listen to this,” Kimmel added, referencing a New York Times scoop over the weekend that Trump had discussed with advisers an idea for a laughably theatrical exit from Walter Reed hospital: a stunt in which the president would appear frail as he exited the hospital, only to rip open his button-down shirt to reveal a Superman T-shirt beneath as a show of strength.
“This is not a joke. This is what he wanted to do,” Kimmel said of proposed stunt. “Whoever talked him out of this, I would like to bang you right on the head.
“What would happen when he reveals the S on his chest – would the country erupt in applause?” the host wondered. “Most likely, he would try to fly and wet his pants or something. Who thinks like this?”
