Jimmy Kimmel is open to the idea of having conflicting voices on Jimmy Kimmel Live! — even President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, Oct. 8, the 57-year-old late-night host took the stage for In Conversation With Jimmy Kimmel during Bloomberg Screentime at NYA Studios in Hollywood, Calif.
He spoke with moderator Lucas Shaw about being suspended from the air following controversial remarks he made about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, returning to TV screens after the president publicly called for him to be fired.
He told Shaw that a variety of factors played a role in the decision to discuss politics more, saying, “I think maturity is part of it. I think you figure out who you are.”
However, he added that he had always had an interest in politics, even if it wasn’t something he covered much professionally.
“Even as a kid, my parents are very liberal; I’ve been a Democrat since I was a little boy. I think the first political cartoon I ever drew was of Jimmy Carter and John Anderson. I was like 12 or something,” he recalled.
Continuing, he said, “And I’ve always been interested in politics, but I was never a particularly political person….maybe you didn’t have to be back then. I think this is a very different situation that we’re in now. And also my job as I see it is to talk about the news of the day, and these are the big stories of the day pretty much every day.”
Kimmel went on to acknowledge that there is so much more political news breaking these days, which he attributed in part to Trump’s heavy media presence.
“He’s on TV all day, every day, so he gives us a lot to use, to deal with. That’s unusual. That’s not how it used to be,” he explained. “You hear him, you see him, he’s just presented himself so frequently, and it’s just more digestible.”
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Since returning to air in late September, Kimmel hasn’t held back on his attacks on Trump, 79, and other conservative politicians, including Vice President JD Vance, whom he dubbed Vice President Maybelline.
During the Tuesday, Oct. 7 episode of his show, he blasted Trump over a birthday note that the president allegedly wrote to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. Referring to him as the “Doodler in Chief,” Kimmel said that the president sounded like “the dumbest member of a crime family.”
In turn, Trump hasn’t held back on insulting Kimmel.
On Truth Social, he celebrated after his show was indefinitely suspended, writing, “Great News for America: The ratings-challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED.”
“Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible,” Trump continued.
Insisting that he was fired, Trump said Kimmel had a “lack of talent” during his state visit to the United Kingdom.
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Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel during the Bloomberg Screentime event in Los Angeles
Jimmy Kimmel at his Bloomberg Screentime event.
Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty
“Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great man named Charlie Kirk,” Trump said. “Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person; he had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago.”
But despite the heated back and forth, Kimmel told Shaw that he would be keen to have Trump appear on his show.
“I’d love to have Trump on the show for sure. Yeah….I’ll ask him,” he said.
Regarding his comments about Kirk, Kimmel said that he believed they were “intentionally and…maliciously mischaracterized.”
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President Donald Trump speaks to senior military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025 in Quantico, Virginia.
Donald Trump.
Alex Wong/Getty
During his first monologue back on air, Kimmel addressed the comments, saying that he never wanted to “make light” of Kirk’s fatal shooting.
Shaw continued to ask Kimmel if there were conversations amongst his team and ABC about how he would address the situation during his comeback episode.
“The spirit of what I’m going to say rather than specifically what I was going to say,” he told Shaw, adding, “It was something really that had to come from inside me.”
“It had to be truthful, and I had to lay it all out there and just be honest about what I was feeling and what I’d experienced. And I think I did. And I think that it probably went about as well as it could go. I knew that it wasn’t going to be perfect and there were always going to be people that didn’t like it and didn’t accept it. But the important thing to me was that I was able to explain what I was saying and what I was trying to say,” he continued.
