Jimmy Kimmel returned to late-night on Monday after his winter break, and he used his first monologue of 2026 to tease Donald Trump in regards to the low rankings from the Kennedy Center Honors broadcast.
“You already know he hosted an awards present over the break,” Kimmel mentioned on the prime of Monday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Reside!” broadcast. “After boasting about what an awesome host he’s and the way a lot better he’s than I’m and the way enormous his rankings can be, Trump hosted the bottom rated Kennedy Heart Honors telecast of all time.”
The Kennedy Heart Honors, held on Dec. 7 and hosted by Trump, averaged 3.01 million viewers, in accordance with a report from Nielsen Reside + Identical Day Panel + Huge Knowledge. That represents a 25% decline from 2024’s numbers, which set a report low with 4.1 million viewers.
“Boy, I’d hate to be the White Home intern who needed to tear that headline out of all of the papers and eat ’em,” Kimmel added. “You already know, as I recall, he mentioned he’d step down if this occurred. He mentioned, ‘If I can’t beat out Jimmy Kimmel, then I don’t suppose I ought to be president.’ Hey, a deal is a deal. Again to Mar-a-Lago you go.”
Trump was the primary sitting president in historical past to host the Kennedy Heart Honors, which rejoice “people whose distinctive contributions have formed our world,” in accordance with the group’s web site. The 2025 honorees have been George Strait, Sylvester Stallone, KISS, Michael Crawford and Gloria Gaynor.
The president has developed a fixation on the Kennedy Heart throughout his second time period. In December, he renamed the historic forum “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Heart for the Performing Arts.” The identify change was met with important uproar, and a number of other scheduled acts canceled their performances within the fallout.
