Jimmy Kimmel launched into his Monday evening monologue with both fists swinging. He took aim at former President Donald Trump’s dinner a week ago at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump broke bread with Kanye “Ye” West and a guest Kimmel referred to as “racist rando,” aka the notorious Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
The late-night host explained that after the meeting, Trump took a ride on the denial train, posting three back-to-back comments on his “imaginary social media site” Truth Social in an attempt to “distance himself” from the dinner and alleging he “didn’t know Nick Fuentes.”
“Only Donald Trump would defend himself by saying, ‘I was only planning to eat with one antisemite,’” Kimmel joked.
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Kimmel also referred to a comment Trump made to Axios claiming that the dinner was “intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest I had never met and knew nothing about.” Kimmel joked that that is the “same thing he says whenever Eric [Trump] comes over to eat.”
Kimmel went on to say that Ye said the dinner got tense when he started talking about running for president in 2024. Trump began screaming and “insulting Kim Kardashian.”
“I would have loved to be a fly on the ketchup-covered walls for that conversation,” Kimmel said. “That moment when Kanye asked Trump to be his running mate. No amount of money I wouldn’t give to have seen that. It’s terrifying to think of Trump as president again, but it’s amazing to think of him as vice president.” Kimmel explains that Trump would have to stand up and clap behind the real president and sit down when he or she spoke. “We’d get to watch him die inside every minute of every day.”
Kimmel added that “according to Kanye, Trump was very impressed by his white power pal.” At one point in the dinner, Kimmel says, Fuentes told Trump he loves when the ex-president gives “off the cuff” speeches, as opposed to those using a teleprompter. Trump reportedly said, “He gets me.”
To which Kimmel retorted, “You’re not that hard to get. We all get you. You’re like HPV. It’s only a matter of time.”
“But just to recap, Kanye West went to Mar-a-Lago to have dinner with Donald Trump, which sounds like the beginning of a joke,” he said. “And as his plus-one, he brought a well-known white supremacist Holocaust denier, and Trump claims he didn’t know about.”
Kimmel then asked the audience, “Which is worse? Having the guy over for dinner or having no idea you’re letting a racist rando into a house that was, until very recently, full of unguarded top secret documents? Two words typed into your phone, and you know you’re eating with a scumbag. And Trump is the guy who claims Joe Biden is slipping. Sitting down with a Ku Klux Klanye sharing a chocolate souffle.”
And through all of this recent news that a former U.S. president sat down to dine with two infamous antisemites, not only has Trump himself refused to denounce them, the House GOP members have been all been totally mute on the topic.
As Daily Kos’ David Neiwert explains, Fuentes and his white nationalist clan view the dinner and the fallout afterward as a “propaganda victory.”
“It will be read by them as another sign that they are successfully infiltrating the far-right flank of mainstream GOP politics. So will the silence from many Republican leaders since Trump’s dinner with Fuentes,” writes Greg Sargent for The Washington Post.
Kimmel ended his Trump, Kanye, and Fuentes dinner bit with these wise words: “If Kanye asks to come over for dinner, say no.”
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