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Tag: joke
Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel Skewers Trump Over Oscars Joke Tantrum (VIDEO)

Donald Trump attacked late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel in an early morning all-over-the-map social media post Wednesday. That night, Kimmel told his audience that he learned about Trump’s latest attack on him from all the text messages waiting for him when he woke up.

“Usually, like, I'll have maybe four,” he said. “I had 100 because it appears that I once again ruffled the feathers of our Kentucky Fried former president who is—apparently, with all that's going on—still smarting from my joke about him at the Oscars."

After reading Trump’s Truth Social screed out loud, Kimmel joked, "My first thought is I'm impressed by his use of the word 'vaunted.' He was even able to spell it correctly, which is really good!" He added, "But literally everything else is not just wrong, but ‘maybe we should be worried about him’ wrong. Like, ‘maybe we should take the keys away from grandpa’ wrong."

Kimmel then fact-checked Trump’s rant.

He conceded that Trump calling him "stupid Jimmy Kimmel" was a debatable fact. But he took issue with Trump’s claim that Kimmel is not only bad at hosting the Academy Awards, but he was somehow responsible for the show’s “big ratings drop”—a “weird” assertion, Kimmel said, because ratings were up this year.

Does the late-night comedian suffer from “Trump derangement syndrome,” as the Donald claims?

“There's only one person who suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Kimmel said. “His name is Donald Trump."

Kimmel noted that a big part of Trump’s attack on him seems to be rooted in his inability to distinguish Kimmel from Academy Award-winning actor Al Pacino.

"Now, don't get me wrong,” he said. “I wish I was Al Pacino. I'm just not."

As for Trump’s insistence that Kimmel’s wife, along with people behind the scenes of the show, were begging Kimmel to not read Trump's Truth Social attack live on air during the Academy Awards broadcast, Kimmel gave this hilarious blow-by-blow account of how that all went down.

What happened is they showed me what he posted. I looked at it. I said, “Oh, I'm going to read this.”My wife went, “Oh no.”
I said, “Oh yes.”

And that was that. That was the whole story.

Kimmel said he wasn't planning to accept hosting duties again, even though he's been asked, but now that Trump weighed in on it, he has to consider it.

"You know what? Maybe you can watch on the TV in the rec room at Rikers with all the guys," he said.

And since it clearly still bothers Trump, Kimmel played the clip of him making fun of Trump at the Academy Awards by reading out Trump's attack on him.

Kimmel then reminded the audience that his show received better ratings than Trump would have you believe, with a graph showing that ratings have increased in the two years Kimmel has hosted.

"I just want to say that that is not 'down.' You want to know what 'down' looks like?” Kimmel asked, before putting up a graph showing stock plummeting. “This is the value of Truth Social stock, your company. That's 'down.'"

Zachary Mueller is the senior research director for America’s Voice and America’s Voice Education Fund. He brings his expertise on immigration politics to talk about how much money the GOP is using to promote its racist immigration campaigns.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Sparsely Attended CPAC Ridiculed As 'Shell' What It Once Was

Sparsely Attended CPAC Ridiculed As 'Shell' What It Once Was

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — an annual summit of far-right activists, pundits and elected officials — used to be regarded as the beating heart of the conservative movement. However, one columnist recently said CPAC has now become a "joke" given its meager attendance.

According to Daily Beast senior columnist Matt Lewis, CPAC, which is hosted by the American Conservative Union in Washington, DC, has lost its luster as newer, hotter competitor conferences have emerged in recent years. Far-right group Turning Point USA, for example, attracted roughly 20,000 attendees for its "AmericaFest" event late last year. To further illustrate his point, Lewis linked to a tweet by 2024 CPAC attendee Steven Senski, who posted a photo of a sparsely attended CPAC forum featuring rows of mostly empty chairs.

"I've seen bigger Tupperware parties," Senski wrote.

2024 marked the 50th annual gathering for the American Conservative Union — which is led by far-right activist Matt Schlapp — yet the slim attendance numbers suggest that the summit no longer packs the punch it used to. This may be partially attributed to the sexual harassment allegations against Schlapp. In 2023, Carlton Huffman, an ex-staffer for former Georgia US Senate candidate Herschel Walker, accused Schlapp of grabbing his crotch and inviting him to his hotel room while he was visiting Atlanta. Huffman is seeking $9.4 million in damages for both alleged sexual battery and defamation.

"[J]ust as the Republican Party has become smaller (and weirder) in the Trump era, so too has the conservative movement," Lewis wrote. "Add all these things up, and CPAC is a shell of its former self. As Jimmy Kimmel put it, this year’s CPAC looks to be 'a who's who of who won’t accept the results of the election.' (Sadly, he was right.)"

Still, CPAC still played host this year to numerous high-profile Republicans who are seeking to become former President Donald Trump's running mate, assuming he wins the GOP's presidential nomination this summer. Reps. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) spoke at this year's conference, along with Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R).

CPAC 2024 was also host to numerous election deniers. One booth featured a January 6-themed pinball machine that glorified disproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. CNN reported that the game "has seven different modes: 'Stop the Steal,' 'Fake News,' 'Peaceful Protest,' 'It's a Setup,' 'Babbitt Murder,' 'Have Faith' and 'Political Prisoners.' The conference ends today.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz: Occupy Wall Street More Mainstream Than GOP Presidential Candidates

Occupy Wall Street has been pilloried by the Republican presidential contenders as a radical movement of hippies out of touch with the working class. Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz visited the Boston protests today and made a very different case:

Ten hours and about four blocks from where over 100 Occupy Boston protesters were arrested early this morning, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz signaled a further embrace of the Occupy Wall Street movement by the Democratic Party.

“Occupy Wall Street are expressing frustrations of middle-class Americans,” she said during a press conference at the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s headquarters on Summer Street. The movement, she implied, was more in touch with average Americans than any of nine GOP presidential candidates.

If it wasn’t exactly an endorsement of the demonstrations — Wasserman Schultz did take pains to note that while most of the Occupy Wall Street protestors were behaving peacefully and appropriately, there were exceptions — it was a profound statement nonetheless, showing just how far apart the parties are on the issue.

Democrats have been increasingly lending their support for the sit-ins, and even President Obama has described the protests as reflecting Americans’ unhappiness with the economy.

The Republicans, in contrast, are virtually united in their disdain. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney called the protesters “dangerous” last week, and when Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, was asked about the protests, he said, “If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.” (Although one Republican candidate, Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana, has embraced Occupy Wall Street, he has not yet been invited to a single debate and doesn’t even garner an asterisk in polls of early states

Some Questions For Dick Cheney

Book-tour media rules for former Vice President Dick Cheney, who is out promoting his new memoir (The following is a list of interview questions that Mr. Cheney has agreed to answer forthrightly.):

1. What’s the title of your new book? Do you think you’ll sell more than Tina Fey?

2. Did you enjoy cowriting it with your daughter Liz?

3. Is Liz a good writer? Does she work on a Mac or a PC? Which of you two was in charge of spell-checking?

4. How’s that dog of yours? Isn’t it a yellow Lab? Are they crazy or what?

5. Do you and former President Bush chat very often? Did you send him an early copy of your book? Maybe an audio disk, or a download for his Kindle?

6. How’s your health these days? Did you get to do some trout fishing this summer in Wyoming? All things considered, do you prefer rainbows or cutthroats?

7. Do you miss being the second-most powerful person in the whole world? What’s the toughest thing about retirement? Did they give you a decent health plan or are there, like, ridiculous co-pays?

8. Who’s your favorite commentator on Fox News? And what’s your most enduring achievement as vice president?

9. On a scale of one to 100, how dangerous to the future of America and the free world is President Obama? How long would it take our country to be overrun by jihadists and North Koreans if a Republican isn’t elected to the White House in 2012?

10. Can we take a peek at your portable heart machine?

(The following is a list of questions that Mr. Cheney might answer partially, with varying degrees of deception, or not at all.)

1. In your memoir, you seem resentful toward Colin Powell. Is this because he was an actual soldier with leadership experience in the first Gulf War and possibly he knew what he was talking about, whereas you never put on a uniform in your life and had no freaking clue?

2. Would you be willing to go on the Jay Leno show and let yourself be waterboarded if you thought it would sell more books? What if Condoleezza agreed to get in the tank, too?

3. Why do you suppose nobody else in the Bush administration wanted to spontaneously bomb Syria except you? At that point, did any of your close friends or family members suggest an extended vacation? A brain scan?

4. During all those White House meetings about Iraq, did anybody ever mention what would happen to our nation’s economy if a war were launched at the same time taxes were being slashed? If so, how many seconds did it take you to change the subject?

5. Did you have trouble keeping a straight face when you kept insisting that Saddam Hussein had an “established relationship with al-Qaida?” Was it satisfying to know that many Americans were misled into believing that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks?

6. Any thoughts on those nonexistent weapons of mass destruction?

7. Why did you keep ranting about WMDs years after the CIA and the military had given up looking? Was this a period when your medication was being adjusted, or were you just spuriously trying to justify the U.S. invasion?

8. Speaking of which, remember when you went on TV and predicted that American troops would be “greeted as liberators”? Is it possible you were drunk at the time?

9. And, oh yeah, remember when you declared that the Iraqi insurgency was in its “last throes?” Way back in 2005? Of all the dumb things to come out of your mouth, where does that whopper rank?

10. Does the number 4,465 hold any special meaning? Would you be surprised to learn that’s how many American troops have been killed in Iraq since the occupation? Just out of curiosity, have you taken a stroll through Arlington National Cemetery lately?

11. Finally, Mr. Vice President, when is the last time you were right about anything?

(Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132.)

(c) 2011, The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services Inc.