Jimmy Kimmel Exclusive Interview on Trump and the Future of Late Night

T
he president and the richest man on the planet hate Jimmy Kimmel. You would think that would bestow on him a resistance status that at the very least grants a private office in the upper reaches of the Masonic Temple in Hollywood, where Jimmy Kimmel Live! is shot live on tape four nights a week.

This is not the case. The talk-show host’s workspace is very public, with an assistant’s desk next to his and two more staffers peering in from the other side of a large wall of glass, much like his producers did in his early days as a shock jock. The only secluded corner holds a bathroom and a closet containing a cardboard box full of worn ties that his idol David Letterman sent him upon his retirement.

“I wore one, but they’re so long,” says Kimmel, who had a Late Night T-shirt under his suit when Jimmy Kimmel Live! debuted in 2003.

His arms disappear into the box.

“You’ve got to take one.”

For a decade, Kimmel was happy to be a Letterman disciple, projecting a just-snarky-to-be-here vibe, pulling pranks on Matt Damon and his own Aunt Chippy. There were chats with sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez, who was promoted, in Lettermanesque fashion, from security guard to on-air talent. It all befitted the Vegas-raised Kimmel, who before all of this was best known for co-hosting Comedy Central’s The Man Show with Adam Carolla, a program that either celebrated or skewered the frat-boy lifestyle.

Then, the rise and fall and rise of Donald Trump changed his life. A new Kimmel emerged. This one — initially propelled by anger at Trump and the Republicans’ approach to health care and gun violence — savages Trump nightly, leading the president to make calls to Disney in 2018, urging it to rein him in. (Disney did not.) 

Now, Kimmel has Elon Musk in his sights. A few days after we talked, Kimmel derided Musk after he’d begged for civility following a wave of Tesla vandalism and expressed bewilderment about why folks were mad at him.

“Well, let me see if I can explain it for you,” said Kimmel. “When you pull out a chain saw to celebrate firing thousands of people, they get mad. My God. I mean, this poor guy. You do one, maybe two Nazi salutes, everybody gets all bent out of shape!” Musk responded by labeling Kimmel “an unfunny jerk.” 

Kimmel and I talked in his office for two and a half hours after a March taping of his show. We made a pledge not to talk about Trump for the whole time. We sort of failed, but Kimmel did manage to work Howard Stern, Michelangelo’s David, and stalker culture into one cogent soundbite. Dad-rock talk about Kimmel’s good friend Huey Lewis’ first band, Clover, has been edited out for space.

Your office has two staffers looking in. It’s hard to imagine Letterman having this kind of setup.
There’s no alone time. If I have a private call, it’s taken in the bathroom.

Are you feeling OK? During yesterday’s taping, you appeared to be in some physical distress.
I had some very serious stomach cramping. It just came upon me suddenly. You came close to seeing me shit my pants onstage for the first time. It’s weird, whatever is going on always stops when I take the stage. If I’m hiccuping, it stops. Sneezing, it stops. But diarrhea waits for no man.

“I don’t think anybody should be canceled.
I really don’t.”

I see your clarinet over there. I know you’re pretty good, but how the hell did you make that your instrument of choice?
Well, I didn’t choose it. It chose me. And I don’t say that the way Jimi Hendrix might say it. I say it the way Jimmy Kimmel would say it, which is, I thought it was a trombone. I wanted to play the trombone, and thought a trombone when I was 11 years old was called a clarinet. So I signed up for clarinet class, and I got to the class, and some kids had their instruments. I told the band teacher, “I’m in the wrong class. I’m supposed to be in the clarinet class.” And he said, “This is the clarinet class.” I said, “No, clarinet.” I did the trombone motion with my hand. And I remember him laughing so hard. He goes, “No, that’s a trombone.” And I said, “Oh.” And he said, “We’ll rearrange your schedule.” And I was like, “OK.” And I went home and my mom had bought me a clarinet, and my parents never bought anything. And I didn’t know you could return things. So I felt too guilty to say “No, I wanted to play the trombone.” So I just said, “I won’t change the schedule, and I’ll play the clarinet.” And here we are.

I hate to do this, but let’s start with Trump.
Donald Trump? Who’s that? Yeah, used to be you think of me, you think of Guillermo or Matt Damon [not getting on the show]. Now it’s Trump. 

I think most comedians have a strong sense of justice, and he violates that so frequently. I know we should be hardened to it by now, but I’m not. It is shocking to me; it seems like a comic-book villain. He seems like the kind of character that would flame out after a few years, but the fact that he’s still with us is remarkable.

A year ago, I would’ve said I’m hoping to show people who aren’t paying attention to the news what’s actually going on, and hoping to change things that way. Obviously, that didn’t have enough impact before the election, so now I see myself more as a place to scream.

From a comedy point of view, there are some advantages, right?
You don’t have to set the joke up, because everyone knows everything about him, so you go right to the punch line. [The problem is] he’s somebody that a lot of people don’t like. They don’t want to hear his name. But there’s always material. Some days, he gives you so much that you’re throwing things away that would’ve been the biggest event of the entire Bush presidency. I try not to get too deep in the weeds. I have to remind myself that this is not an exposé, it is a comedy show.

When did you realize, “Oh, shit, this is serious and no longer just ridiculous”?
It was 2016, and I had Hillary Clinton on. I said to Hillary during a commercial break, “I hope Trump gets the nomination. I think he’ll be a slam-dunk for you.” And she said, “Be careful what you wish for.” I’m not in the group of people who thought he might win.

Listen, when O.J. was found not guilty, I was just absolutely shocked. I had that same feeling. I had this faith in America that was shaken, and I still am not over it. I thought that when it comes down to it, this country, we do the right thing. That’s obviously in the past.

You saw this up close in 2017. Your son was born with a serious heart condition while the Republicans were trying to repeal Obamacare. What made you go public about such a personal thing?
There were a few things. I was sitting in the hospital; I was watching them debate this in Congress. I was watching them decide on whether Americans would have access to health insurance or not. And I am looking around this hospital and seeing all these kids and families that are obviously poor. And the idea that if these people were your next-door neighbors, you’d do anything you could to help them struck me. Health care is boring, and most people don’t understand it, so I just wanted to humanize it the best way I possibly could.

You had Sen. Bill Cassidy on the show to explain your son’s condition, and he promised that any health care bill would pass “the Jimmy Kimmel test” and preexisting conditions would be covered. Then the Republican bill came out and that didn’t happen. Were you surprised?
I was surprised. When I spoke to Bill Cassidy on the air, I thought, “This man is a doctor. He understands this better than most politicians,” and I felt that he was going to seize that moment and make himself a hero to Americans by doing the right thing, and I was quite surprised that he didn’t. And thank God John McCain did. I will always be grateful to him.

I wonder if that experience gave you insight into the Republican Party during the Trump years in terms of, they are not going to display a moment of courage even when it seems like it is in America’s best interest.
Well, they’re so scared of him, I think even more so now than they were the first time around, because he’s so vindictive and there’s no length to which he will not go to punish you. I just don’t understand how Americans can support what he’s doing and the stupid stuff that he gets hung up on, like transgender sports and the stuff that affects almost no one. 

I know politicians do this; they pick little things they know are going to push your buttons, and those are the things that they go with, but this is an extreme that we’ve never seen before. There’s no decency. It’s just a bunch of animals, and it’s disgusting. 

I mean, on the Fourth of July, I still put up a flag, and I’m never going to stop doing that, because I’m never going to let them have that symbol. It’s not their flag; it is not a MAGA brand.

I wonder if you see Elon Musk in a similar light in the sense that, like Trump, he gives so much material. 
Well, he’s kind of the same as Trump in a lot of ways. I mean, he supported Obama and then Hillary, and now it’s convenient for him to support Trump. And to me, those are the worst people. I don’t think Trump believes in any of it, and I don’t think Elon Musk believes in it. I think Elon Musk sees this as a great way to accrue a lot of power and make a lot of money, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. 

Here’s where I realized Elon Musk was a very bad person and a dangerous person: When Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, an elderly man, was viciously attacked, his first reaction was to repost a brazenly false story suggesting that it was a male prostitute that did it. That’s when I realized, “Oh, this is a bad person. There’s no depth to which he will not stoop.” An old man was hit with a hammer and that’s his first reaction. It’s vile.

“On the Fourth of July I still put up a flag. I’ll never stop doing that. It is not a MAGA brand.”

Do you think Trump has actual true believers? Stephen Miller?
Yeah, he’s a scary motherfucker, that guy. 

Tucker Carlson?
Oh, he’s a complete phony. He’s an opportunist. When you look at Tucker Carlson, you go, “OK, this is a smart guy.” And then you see him over in Russia in a supermarket holding up fruit and going, “This apple is only 12 cents. In America, you’d pay 50 cents for this apple.” And you go, “Yes, but the minimum wage in Russia is a dollar an hour.” And what he’s doing there is acknowledging his fans are not too swift, and he doesn’t care.

We published a story in 2023 that Trump was phoning ABC calling for you to be fired. You seemed pissed and yet amused. 
I think it’s funny. I like when he admits I’m bothering him. Here at the show, where we put a lot of work into lampooning him, for him to acknowledge our work is one of the few things he does that I appreciate. If he ignored us, it wouldn’t be as much fun.

One thing I like to think about is whether this ruins having been president for President Obama. Being president used to be a big deal. It’s really been cheapened. Maybe it’s how Johnny Carson and David Letterman felt when we all got talk shows.

You grew up in Las Vegas in the 1980s. Was that weird or normal?
It was a very normal place to grow up, and also a very abnormal place to grow up. And I didn’t really understand that until I moved away. I played Little League and I was an altar boy, and we went to church every Sunday. But also, on the weekends, we would go for the $1.99 steak dinner at two o’clock in the morning. I’d walk around downtown Las Vegas with a video camera doing interviews with tourists, and then we’d go home and we’d watch it, and then we’d tape over the same tape and do it again the next weekend because that was our only VHS tape.

Do you remember your first Vegas show as a kid?
I went to one with my buddy Cleto, who’s my bandleader now. We went to see this show called Splash. There was water on the stage, and the women were topless. But the opener was Frank Gorshin, who played the Riddler on Batman. He was a stand-up comic. You could see he was dead inside opening for Splash. I remember they gave us two Heinekens, and we were pretty hammered by the time Frank wrapped up a set. We gave him a standing ovation at the end. He just glared at us. 

I also saw Siegfried and Roy at the Frontier Hotel, and the elephants onstage were urinating so forcefully that they were splashing these Japanese businessmen in the front row. They didn’t seem happy.

Tell me about your earliest comedy memories.
I had an audio-cassette recorder, and before Letterman came on, I would watch Carson. And specifically when Bill Cosby was hosting for Johnny. I taped the monologue and I transcribed it, because I wanted to see what it looked like. But I didn’t have any intention of being a comedian, and that never occurred to me. I had a “LATENITE” license plate and had a Late Night birthday cake because I love Letterman so much, not that I thought I could do it someday.

“Comedians have a strong sense of justice, and Trump violates that.”

Your family seems to have been an essential part of your comedy upbringing. Many are on the show.
My Aunt Chippy has always been a source of great amusement for me. I have these old notebooks where my cousin Sal and I wrote a bunch of fake Aunt Chippy quotes, which seemed like things she would say — like, “Frank, goddammit, I’ll punch you in the face, knock all your teeth out, and make it into a necklace.” I remember my mom would scare my dad in the shower. She’d scare him and laugh really hard at it. My mom used to pretend she was dead. She’d lay on the ground, pretend she was dead until we cried. And then I found out my Aunt Chippy would do it too! And then my grandfather told me his mother would do it to him. And I was like, “Look at this. This is a deep sickness. It deserves a psychological examination.”

Your Aunt Chippy is in a hilarious skit where she doesn’t understand why her taxi doesn’t have a driver [it’s Waymo]. But my favorite is when your cousin Micki is scared first by a wax dummy of you and then by your human form, which she thinks is a wax dummy.
Micki is great. Because she will believe anything. She’s trusting. I once told her that there’s a place called Ice Cream Town and it’s got all these different stores. And you go to one store, it’s the scoop-of-vanilla-ice-cream store. And then you can go across the street to the other store if you want chocolate syrup. And then there’s the cherry store. And she’s like, “Oh, my God, this sounds great.” Meanwhile, if you really think about it, realistically, it’s a huge pain in the ass. She’s very sweet, and in her own way, very smart, but also very, very gullible.

Cousin Sal has been with you for years, and now he’s multi-platforming in every direction. 
Let me tell you something. I had dinner with Barack Obama the other night, and we spent a solid 15 minutes talking about Cousin Sal. He listens to the Bill Simmons and Cousin Sal podcast. And it was blowing my mind. I couldn’t believe it, because my cousin Sal is, first of all, one of the most unusual and funniest people you’ll ever meet in your life. And Obama was talking about “Parents’ Corner” [where Sal talks of his travails raising three boys]. The closest person I could compare Sal to that people would get is Bill Murray, in that he has impulses and acts on them, even if they’re completely antisocial, and they’re always funny.

Are you continuing the prank tradition with your own kids?
Oh, yeah. This weekend we’re putting up signs in our neighborhood that say “We’ve lost our chimpanzee,” and warning people not to get too close to it, but if you see it, call us. We’re going to put them up on the telephone poles in the neighborhood. And I got a burner phone number, so if people call they’ll get a response.

Radio seemed to be your gateway drug into comedy.
That was where it was for me. The radio show I did when I was in high school on a college radio station, we had a fake rap band. We would make songs that were funny. And I made a lot of crank calls that I would tape, and Cleto was learning to play the piano, so he’d learn certain tunes and we’d make up funny songs for them. And that’s when I thought, “Yeah, this is what I want to do. I want to be like Howard Stern.” 

Radio is still the best medium, because they can’t see you, and it’s very freeing, in the same way actors are more comfortable in a costume, playing a character. Really, you can say whatever pops in your head and be really loose.

Your early radio days were marked by various dismissals and other shenanigans. Tell me about some of your most infamous experiences.
Looking back at the time, each time I was fired, I felt a grave injustice had been done. I now completely understand why each one of those adult men fired this young asshole who came in and immediately started fucking with them directly. I was mistakenly under the impression that as a listener, as an employee, you love hearing a disc jockey make fun of his boss.

My first radio station was in Seattle. We had a guy named Larry Sharp who was the program director and the afternoon guy. And that was the best, because he was also on the air, so the listeners knew who he was. When he’d drag us into the office to yell at us, we’d secretly tape him and then play it back on the air the next morning and make fun of him. We called him Shar-Pei, because he looked like a wrinkly shar-pei dog. We just never stopped fucking with the guy.

Then there was our program director in Tucson, Arizona. I had a hot dog, and I decided to put it in his desk, and closed the desk as I was leaving. And then the next morning, his office was unlocked, and I went in there to see if it was still in the desk. It wasn’t in the desk, but it was in the trash can. So, I took it out of the trash can and put it back in the desk. And then he started locking his door. So, we were able to lift the panels of the ceiling and climb over. And as we’re climbing over, it fell through. We destroyed his office. The whole wall unit came down. The office was completely destroyed because we went in there to put this hot dog back in his desk, and we’re like, “Oh, fuck, we’re going to get fired for this.” So, we just closed the door. And when he came into work, he’s like, “What the fuck happened?” We acted like we didn’t know what had happened. We were eventually fired from that job. I remember one thing he said. He said, “I love corporate rock.” And he said it in a serious way. And I remember thinking, like, “Oh, what a dipshit this guy is.”

Howard Stern is one of your heroes, and is now a friend. How did you meet him? 
When I started on The Man Show, Comedy Central hired a publicist for us for the show, and I said to him, there’s just one thing that I want to do. Because I’d already been on Letterman, I wanted to be on Howard Stern. And he’s like, “Oh, OK. All right.” It took years. And we were on the show, on the phone. It was me and Adam Carolla, we were on together. And he seemed to like us OK on the air. And then Adam started filling in, in the spot that eventually became Artie Lange’s spot. And he and Adam started to become friendly. And I was a little bit jealous, because Adam wasn’t necessarily really even a fan of the show.

Still, to this day, I listen to him every morning. I think his show is better than it has ever been. I am humbled by him. He’s one of my very good friends, and he’s one of the few people I can really turn to when I need advice, because he’s been through all of this stuff and then some.

Often, after you go after Trump hard, his defenders will post one of your bits from The Man Show, whether it’s you asking women “What’s in my pocket” or ogling them from behind. They call you a hypocrite. Is that fair game? 
Yeah, it’s fair game. I think it’s kind of funny, because the very people who are using those videos as an example of why I’m a horrible person were probably the biggest fans of the show at that time. We did the show a little tongue-in-cheek. I mean, if you really watch the show, we are making fun of ourselves through almost the whole show. It was not meant to be taken literally that men are superior to women, but for some people, it was. I just didn’t realize until the last season that what the show was really about was the friendship between me and Adam Carolla, the chemistry that was there. It was meant to be Homer Simpsonesque. But you can pull things out of context and then they are taken literally. And that’s just how it goes.

There seems to be a constant redrawing of what is acceptable in comedy today.
I don’t put limits on what I laugh at. But for me personally, as I’ve grown older, as I’ve matured, I won’t make a joke that I wouldn’t make if a person of that color or persuasion was in the room. That’s how I look at it. I think a lot of the outrage is completely manufactured, and it’s like, a lot of these people who are angry aren’t really angry. I think these liberals who’ve done such a good job of viciously attacking comedians are a big part of the reason why Trump is the president right now.

What do you mean?
I just think human beings in general, when you see something that makes you laugh and you see a bunch of other people laughing, and then somebody steps in with their arms folded and goes, “That’s not funny, and here’s why that’s not funny,” it just doesn’t give you a good feeling about a person. And you want to say to that person, “Lighten up.” There’s no black and white when it comes to comedy. There is no line. The line is different for every person. Dave Chappelle can say things that somebody else might not be able to. I don’t think anybody should be canceled. I really don’t.

“I think a lot of the outrage is completely manufactured.”

This isn’t a cancel-culture question, but your friend Adam spread a lot of misinformation about the L.A. fires in January. Did you have any urge to pick up the phone and call him on it?
I know he’s a good person. I also know his house was right in the middle of those fires. So, he’s coming from a point of view that a lot of people aren’t coming from. And I know that he has preconceived notions, true or false, about the people who run this city and who run this state. I’m not the kind of person who will cut someone out of my life just because we don’t believe the same thing. It doesn’t mean I won’t try to make my case. I’m not going to end the relationship because of that. I know people who do and who feel that way, and I respect that, too. I know it’s just hard for them. There’s no hope for us if we stop talking to each other. When you have deep ties to somebody, you can’t just cut it off.

From your mom to your wife, Molly, who’s the head writer for your show, women have played a significant part in your comedy, which some might feel is odd for a guy whose breakthrough was The Man Show.
You gravitate to what you’re comfortable with. And for me, my mother was the class wit of her huge high school in Brooklyn. My Aunt Chippy, as you know, is really just a very, very funny person. My sister is a comedian. There are a lot of very funny women in my family. That’s what I’m comfortable with. I would never be in a relationship with a woman who isn’t funny. I don’t think a woman who isn’t funny would even have any reason to be attracted to me. 

My wife is very bright, very ethical, and also is very funny. And I think that that’s a rare combination. And to be able to run some of these half-baked notions I have by her and vice versa, and to kind of figure them out before I come into work, is a great thing to have. And I’m sure I abuse it. I mean, there are times where I will actually make noise to wake her up because I think of something funny that I want to share, and I can’t wait. Like a child. But there are lines. I recently changed my wife’s license plate to “WE B JAMMIN,” and she didn’t love that.

I talked to James Corden eight years ago about the breakdown of the late-night audience, and here we are again. CBS recently canceled After Midnight. How do you see the landscape in 2025?
ABC pays me. So ideally, in an ideal world, everybody would watch [our show] on ABC. But it’s just not how it works. It’s very easy to watch it on YouTube. People can watch anything at a moment’s notice now, and in late night I find most of the people are watching me the next day. That’s the next day in the morning. But if you look at YouTube, and you look at all the shows, more people are watching our late-night television than ever were. And that is what any comedian wants.

In the past couple of years, you have talked of retirement. Do you revisit that every year?
I’ve realized that there’s no point in talking about it. It upsets the people I work with.

“I won’t cut someone out of my life because we don’t believe the same thing.”

I did a story about Tom Petty on his last tour and saw a bunch of shows. And he’d play great for two hours and then need the next 46 hours to recover. When I talked to him, he hinted that at least part of it was that he still loved to play, but so many people were depending on him for jobs that he felt a responsibility to keep going. I wonder if you feel that.
Oh, absolutely. It’s a huge part of the responsibility. There are a lot of people who won’t have jobs when I retire. That definitely weighs on me. But the reality is I’m not going to do this forever. At a certain point, it is going to have to end. I also know there’s not one person who works here who would resent me for retiring. I think they know that when I’m done, I’ll feel like I have done this as long as I possibly can. But you always feel like the bandleader, that when you stop everyone is going to have to find new jobs.

You can get very emotional on air, whether talking about your son or your monologue after Trump was reelected. Have you always been so open with your emotions?
I cried on the last Man Show, which is kind of funny. I just have a hard time keeping my emotions within. My father is like that. And honestly, it’s embarrassing to me. And I know a lot of the women that work here would be like, “Oh, I think it’s great. It shows a good side of you.” But if I could turn it off, I would. 

I try to attach these events to real people, and that’s what I did after the election, and I just know how much misery is in store for so many people and how unnecessary it is. I mean, we had plenty of problems before him. The idea that we’ve now created a whole new set of problems seems so counter­productive, and it’s just disheartening. It overwhelms me, just thinking about the realities; it can hit me pretty hard.

Tonight on the show, you did a bit about lame Democrats doing some kind of Congress warrior-ninja video. It was cringe. What are the Democrats doing wrong, or what could be done differently just to get them back in the game? Or do we just need to let Trump blow himself up for the first six months or year of his second term?
I think there’s got to be some combination. It’s just like, I know for sure that there are charismatic, intelligent, even funny people [in the Democratic Party]. I mean, Jasmine Crockett, one night, I’m playing a clip of her being hilarious. And the next night she’s participating in this. It looks like a video that the PTA would make to entertain at the luncheon. And it’s just got to be better than that. 

Say what you want about Trump, we played a clip in rehearsal of Biden’s State of the Union address and Trump’s State of the Union address. The energy in the room, it’s like the difference between golf and wrestling. There’s just a huge amount of energy in the room, and it’s undeniable.

And when people ask me why they think Trump won, I really believe the reason more than anything is he’s so much more famous than Kamala Harris. He is a celebrity. He is a star. He is the most famous person in the world. And it’s hard to compete with that.

Let’s try to end on a happier note. You recently went to Italy with Howard and your wives. He became quite reclusive during the pandemic. How did you persuade him to go?
It’s very simple. He wanted to go. He can’t admit this stuff, even to himself. Of course he wants to go to Italy. But for Howard, it takes a long time. He’s got to get there. And I think he had a great time.

We were looking at the statue of David sculpted by Michelangelo himself. At a certain point, Howard and I realized that every single person in the room had turned their cameras to us and were photographing us looking at David. And it was the weirdest fucking thing, to be in another country and to suddenly steal the attention away from David.

STEPHEN RODRICK is a senior writer at ­Rolling Stone. He wrote about the devastating L.A. fires in the March issue of the magazine.