Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel answered the president’s explanation for his party’s midterm collapse with two words, and his studio audience did the rest.
Kimmel, 58, spent his Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, monologue on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” picking apart President Donald Trump’s “60 Minutes” interview with CBS News correspondent Ross Douthat.
Trump told the program, “I’m a religious person, so in theory, I go to heaven,” and “I don’t want to go to hell.” The interview aired Sunday, Nov. 8, according to Kimmel. The host did not leave the question open. “Well, you are going to hell,” he said.
Kimmel then reached for Trump and Satan’s relationship in Season 27 of “South Park.” “You are going to open your eyes and pray you’re watching South Park. You will be in hell,” he said.
Kimmel expanded his warning about what the president might do next, describing two paths: checking out to Mar-a-Lago and golf, or going “nuts like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.” “I don’t think we’re prepared for the amount of insanity that this drama queen president is about to pump on us,” he said.
The White House hit back, and Kimmel read the statement from spokesperson Davis Ingle aloud in the same monologue. “Jimmy Kimmel’s case of Trump Derangement Syndrome is so advanced that it has completely rotted his peanut-sized brain. He’s far more entertaining when you’re laughing at him than with him. But unfortunately, his real talent is his failing ratings,” Ingle said. Kimmel’s reply: “Sick burn, bro.”
“You’re Like Dog Hair”
Kimmel had opened his Wednesday, Nov. 4, episode on Trump’s account of the midterms, a day after Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in the Nov. 3 elections.
“And, in the face of defeat, he is doing what he does best, blaming everyone other than him,” Kimmel said. He then read the president’s written line back to the audience: “He absolved himself of all responsibility. He wrote, ‘I wasn’t on the ballot. And if I was, we would have won in a landslide.’ Oh, shut up. Just shut up, please.” Cheers, whistles and applause followed.
“I mean, give us a break for one day and shut that ridiculous mouth. You are such a spoiled child. Did you ever learn anything about manners or sportsmanship or simple common decency? Nothing is ever your fault,” he said. Kimmel rejected the premise outright, telling the president, “You were on the ballot. You’re like dog hair. You’re on everything.”
He called the not-on-the-ballot theory “such crap” and said Republicans lost nearly everywhere outside the deepest red territory, reading the losses back one handpicked candidate at a time: Darline Graham, whom Trump picked to run in South Carolina; Ken Paxton, whom Trump backed in Texas; and Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio, where Trump “went all in.” Trump also ran Thom Tillis out of the Senate, Kimmel said, and Republicans would still hold the Ohio Senate seat they lost on Nov. 3 had Vice President JD Vance not been chosen as running mate.
Kimmel told Trump he had infected every nook and cranny of American life and divided the country like no one before him, leaving a single moment of unity — voters banding together on Nov. 3 to get rid of him. The audience burst into noise and clapping again.
He Called It a Blue Tsunami
On the Nov. 3 episode, Kimmel called the result a blue tsunami and worked in a Red Wedding joke, a nod to the massacre scene in “Game of Thrones.” Democrats flipped at least seven Senate seats, and several states, including Texas and Kansas, went blue for the first time in decades. Republican Speaker Mike Johnson is set to lose his post, with Democrat Hakeem Jeffries expected to replace him.
“Pod Save America” hosts Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor were his guests that night. Favreau’s verdict was the beginning of the end of the Trump era. Kimmel doubted it, citing his long study of the president as his basis for believing Trump won’t go away gently, and he worried about Trump getting “even crazier.”
A Slumber Party of One
Kimmel’s prescription for the 80-year-old president, whom he nicknamed “Nappy Gilmore,” is resignation. He told Trump to quit already, saying nobody wants him in the job, not even Trump himself, and floated an exit plan of a billion dollars’ worth of crypto and an island — Epstein’s Island, he suggested.
Vance taking the oath in Trump’s place does not worry him. Vance went from calling Trump the American Hitler to calling him the greatest president of his generation, Kimmel said, and can flip back, describing the vice president as a very good flipper with no spine. The lesson of the election cycle, he said, is loyalty: Trump has no allegiance to anyone or anything, a Democrat who was never really a Democrat and then a Republican who isn’t a Republican. Kimmel put it plainly: “The only party he leads is the slumber party, and he’s the only person in it.”
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.
