On Monday night, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel responded to the uproar over him showing a deceptive video about Vice President Mike Pence and subsequently mocking Pence. In the rant, Kimmel engaged in whataboutism targeting the Trump administration, mocking Christians, accusing some Trump supporters of hypocrisy, and concluding with a list of charges against Trump that would not be out of place in a Democratic Party campaign ad.
Kimmel began by recalling what had occurred last week:
Thursday night, I showed a video. It was one of these embarrassing photo-ops of Mike Pence, the vice president, carrying boxes delivering PPE to a facility for senior citizens. It was a publicity stunt to show how much they’re doing, but that happens in politics, okay, fine. The trouble started because at one point in the video after awkwardly lugging a heavy box to the door, Mike Pence finds some empty boxes in the back of the van. Why there were empty boxes in the back of the van, I don’t know, but he finds them and he says, “Can I just carry the empty ones just for the camera,” which turns out he was joking. How anyone can tell when Mike Pence is joking, I don’t know, I don’t know, but he was joking. I didn’t know because I’d only watched part of the video.
Kimmel couldn’t resist taking another shot at Pence:
It turns out there were 29 minutes of this on C-Span that apparently indicate he was joking about carrying the empty boxes for the camera, which again I didn’t know because I don’t have the mental endurance it requires to watch Mike Pence deliver boxes for 29 minutes on C-Span. But I should have watched the whole thing, I guess.
Then he turned to the people who had slammed him for his actions vis-a-vis the video:
Bottom line is: I was wrong; he was joking. I didn’t know, I made a mistake, and when I found out I was wrong, I acknowledged it by taking the video down and tweeting an apology — of sorts — to the best of my ability. Apologizing to the Trump administration for spreading untruth is like apologizing to Barry Bonds for using steroids. It’s hard. But the outrage from the MAGA hats, the outpouring of venom was disgusting. Stupid, too. But mostly disgusting. Some of these lunatics have the audacity to use the word “Christian” in their bios, but that didn’t stop them from wishing death on me, on my family, on my son. Some of them said they hope my son dies. They threatened my wife.
Kimmel then used the accusation against him that he had used a doctored video to segue to an attack on Trump:
There were hundreds of horrible, hateful, sometimes violent, Twitter and Facebook posts because I showed what they kept calling a doctored video, which was not a doctored video by the way. We didn’t do anything to it. We didn’t doctor the video. Doctors are the people Donald Trump doesn’t listen to. And doctored videos are something Donald Trump posts all the time. Some of his paid campaign ads are doctored videos that had to be removed for violating the rules about that sort of thing.
Then he worked in an attack on some Trump supporters:
But these people who blindly pledge their allegiance to Donald Trump instead of this country are so — their hypocrisy runs so deep, they don’t even seem to be aware of it anymore. It’s like when an Uber driver wears too much cologne.
Then he leveled a snide accusation that people associated with Pence aren’t thinking about the tragedy of thousands of people dying from the coronavirus:
The communications director for Mike Pence’s campaign tweeted all day about this Friday, all day, it’s the only thing he tweeted about. And I got an email from the vice president’s office requesting that I apologize on air. On Twitter wasn’t enough, I guess; they wanted it on air, because this is what they’re thinking about while thousands of Americans are dying every day. Jokes from late-night talk show hosts.
Kimmel then reverted to some whataboutism:
But okay, you know what, it was my mistake. I do apologize to the vice president, again for spreading misinformation about him. Spreading misinformation is their thing and I stepped on their toes.
And another attack on Pence:
But now that I’ve done that, I would like the vice president, since he asked me to apologize, to ask his boss, who lies every time there isn’t a McNugget in his mouth, to apologize for the following perversions of decency and democracy. Mike Pence has stood by and warmly enabled with a smug little twinkle in his eye these things for four miserable years.
Then the list that could have come from a Democratic Party campaign ad:
We would like an apology for: separating thousands of migrant children from their parents, inviting the Taliban to Camp David, siding with Vladimir Putin over US intelligence, calling neo-Nazis “very fine people,” using campaign money to pay off a porn star, mocking a 16 year old climate activist, mocking Christine Blasey Ford, obstruction of justice, ignoring warnings on Coronavirus, downplaying the dangers of coronavirus, mishandling the coronavirus, we still don’t have tests for the coronavirus, why are we opening the country when we have no tests for coronavirus, there are about 15,000 more. But let’s start with apologizing for those and we’ll get to the rest.
.@jimmykimmel explains he’s the victim of his false Pence video: “The outpouring of venom was disgusting. Stupid too, but mostly disgusting. Some of these lunatics have the audacity to use the word ‘Christian' in their bios, but that didn’t stop them from wishing death on me."
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