Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘A code orange de-mental emergency going on here right now’

Late-night hosts unpacked the Trump administration’s continued attempts to distract from and underplay the Epstein files.

Jimmy Kimmel

It took barely a glance at Donald Trump’s social media posts on Tuesday for Jimmy Kimmel to know: “We’ve got a code orange de-mental emergency going on here right now. I mean, he’s gone. He’s totally gone.”

The host focused in particular on the US president’s meltdown over the $4.6bn Gordie Howe International Bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan, which Trump falsely claimed had been built with “virtually no US content”.

Trump threatened to block the opening of the bridge, named after the Canadian-born Detroit Red Wings hockey legend, scheduled to happen later this spring.

“Come on, Canada, you know how this works,” said Kimmel. “Pull out the Sharpie, cross out the Gordie Howe, write in the Donald Trump and everybody can relax, alright?”

“And of course, all of this, every bit of this, is an effort to distract us” from Trump’s name appearing in the Epstein files more than 1m times, according to representative Jamie Raskin, who has reviewed the unredacted files.

“There’s only 3mt pages in the whole thing,” Kimmel noted. “That’s more than Harry Potter gets mentioned in all seven Harry Potter books.”

Also in the Epstein files is Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, who claimed that he and his wife cut ties with Epstein in 2005, after the financier made an “inappropriate” remark and the couple decided to “never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again”.

However, unsealed emails indicate that Lutnick visited Epstein’s island in 2012, seven years after he allegedly cut ties with him. Asked at a congressional hearing, Lutnick admitted that he “did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation” with his wife and four children.

“What a fun dad!” Kimmel quipped. “Where do you want to go, kids? Want to have lunch with the most notorious pedophile in American history?”

“The fact that you brought your family to Epstein island is not the point,” Kimmel added. “It’s super crazy, but it’s not the point. The point is you lied about never being in the room with ‘that disgusting person’ ever again. Not only were you in the room with that disgusting person, you sailed to his island for lunch.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, then asked about references in the files to the fact that Epstein had expressed interest in one of Lutnick’s nannies. Lutnick claimed he had “no idea about that … whole thing. I don’t recall it having anything to do with me, and I don’t know.”

As Kimmel noted, but one Republican, senator Thomas Massie from Kentucky, has called for Lutnick’s resignation. Meanwhile, Republicans such as representative Lisa McClain, from Michigan, fume publicly about immigration, blaming Democrats for fostering crime fear-mongering with lines such as “let’s villainize the ICE agents and let’s celebrate the people who are raping your children!”

Kimmel had not patience for it: “Can you imagine how ignorant these people are, screaming about pedophiles and rapists while members of their own party seem to be doing everything they can to protect the pedophiles and the rapists in the Epstein files?”

The Daily Show

And on the Daily Show, Jordan Klepper also mocked Lutnick’s about-face on Epstein, after saying multiple times on a podcast that he was “gross”.

“There’s no way that seven years after saying he would never see Epstein again that he visited him on his private island!” Klepper said facetiously, before replaying Lutnick’s testimony that he only visited Epstein Island for lunch.

“Was eating with a sex criminal your only option for lunch, Howard?” Klepper mocked. “You couldn’t have tried making a PB&J just once?”

“And the fact that you went there on a boat makes it so much worse,” he added. “I mean, if you ran into him at a Potbelly’s and he said ‘sit down,’ I would understand. But you actively navigated a ship toward the man. You’re out there shouting: ‘Captain, raise the sails and set a course for Pedophile Island!’”

“Howard, look man, I don’t think I could be more disappointed.” Except Lutnick then went on to say, as a defense, that he also brought his wife and four children and nannies along with him. Said a stunned Klepper: “‘I went to Epstein Island but don’t worry, I brought my kids’ isn’t the excuse you think it is. Good God, man.”

According to Lutnick, the family “had lunch on the island, that is true. For an hour, then we left, with all of my children.”

“Father of the year over here!” Klepper joked. “Just to be clear: Howard Lutnick went from ‘I never saw that gross man again’ to ‘OK, I did visit his island’ to ‘Hey, back off, I left with all my kids, OK? I counted them. I’m the good guy here!’”

“Maybe I shouldn’t be too harsh on Howard,” he added. “Let he who has never sworn he cut ties with a convicted sex offender only to later dock his private yacht onto a private sex island for a quick lunch before continuing his family vacation with not one but multiple nannies cast the first one and done.”