Officials of former President Donald Trump say the petty tyrant was so outraged by Jimmy Kimmel’s searing monologues at his expense that they were forced to try to muzzle the late-night host.
According to several ex-White House officials who spoke with Rolling Stone magazine anonymously, Trump forced them to call on top executives at Disney (which owns ABC and is the network that airs Jimmy Kimmel Live!) to demand that Kimmel stop bashing the president.
A Trump staff member said the former president felt Kimmel was “very dishonest and doing things that [Trump] would have once sued over.”
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Another former White House official told Rolling Stone there was “At least one call was made to Disney [that I know of],” adding, “I do not know to who[m], but it happened. Nobody thought it was going to change anything but DJT was focused on it so we had to do something … It was doing something, mostly, to say to [Trump], ‘Hey, we did this.’”
The campaign to shut down Kimmel was all in vain, despite efforts by his staff.
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In 2019, The New York Times reported that Trump went after Kimmel after the host famously cracked:
“If he [Trump] sat in the White House all day quietly working on things, I would almost never mention him, because it’s not interesting. But today — not even today, before 10 a.m. today, before 10 o’clock this morning, his former campaign chairman was sentenced to prison for the second time in a week, he called himself the most successful president in history and he tweeted to let people know his wife hasn’t been replaced with a body double. I’m not supposed to mention that?”
In 2017, The Washington Post reported on the ever-growing list of late-night comedians who ripped Trump regularly over a tsunami of emails offering to arrange a meeting with a “Russian government attorney.”
The Daily Show’s then-host Trevor Noah hysterically said: “People, at this point, it’s not a high-level conspiracy … This isn’t ‘House of Cards.’ This isn’t even ‘Veep.’ It wouldn’t even qualify for ‘Blue’s Clues.’”
Trump is notoriously thin-skinned, making up childish names for political opponents and terrorizing those he believes are disloyal.
The twice-impeached ex-world leader said he’s “entitled to a revenge tour.” We imagine Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis should gird his loins and be prepared. Trump has already called him “Meatball Ron,” “Ron DeSanctimonious,” and “Shutdown Ron.”
Let the games begin.