A president’s explanation for his party’s midterm wipeout drew a two-word answer from one of television’s loudest critics, and the studio crowd erupted into cheers, whistles and applause.
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, 58, told President Donald Trump to “shut up” in the opening monologue of his ABC show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, a day after Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in the Nov. 3 elections.
“And, in the face of defeat, he is doing what he does best, blaming everyone other than him,” Kimmel said. “He absolved himself of all responsibility. He wrote, ‘I wasn’t on the ballot. And if I was, we would have won in a landslide.’ Oh, shut up. Just shut up, please.”
“You Are Going to Hell”
Kimmel, whose show airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET, kept at it Monday, Nov. 9, turning to Trump’s 60 Minutes interview with CBS News correspondent Ross Douthat, which aired Sunday, Nov. 8. Trump told Douthat, “I’m a religious person, so in theory, I go to heaven,” and “I don’t want to go to hell.”
“Well, you are going to hell,” Kimmel answered. Pointing to Trump and Satan shacking up on Season 27 of “South Park,” he added: “You are going to open your eyes and pray you’re watching South Park. You will be in hell.”
Kimmel then read aloud a statement he attributed to White House spokesperson Davis Ingle: “Jimmy Kimmel’s case of Trump Derangement Syndrome is so advanced that it has completely rotted his peanut-sized brain. He’s far more entertaining when you’re laughing at him than with him. But unfortunately, his real talent is his failing ratings.” His reply was mocking: “You know what? You should enter a rap battle spitting dope rhymes like that.”
He gave the president two paths from here — checking out at Mar-a-Lago, or going “nuts like Jack Nicholson in The Shining,” with Trump as “a raccoon in a duffel bag.” “I don’t think we’re prepared for the amount of insanity that this drama queen president is about to pump on us,” Kimmel said.
Reading the Losses Name by Name
Back on Nov. 4, Kimmel called the president’s not-on-the-ballot theory “such crap” and said Republicans lost nearly everywhere outside the deepest red territory. He read the losses back one handpicked candidate at a time: Darline Graham, whom Trump picked to run in South Carolina; Ken Paxton, backed by Trump in Texas; Vivek Ramaswamy, in Ohio, where Trump went all in; and Thom Tillis, whom Kimmel said Trump ran out of the Senate. Republicans would still hold the Ohio Senate seat lost Nov. 3, he told Trump, had the president not chosen Vice President JD Vance as his running mate.
“I mean, give us a break for one day and shut that ridiculous mouth. You are such a spoiled child. Did you ever learn anything about manners or sportsmanship or simple common decency? Nothing is ever your fault,” he said. “You were on the ballot. You’re like dog hair. You’re on everything,” Kimmel said.
Trump infected every nook and cranny of American life and divided the country like no one before him, Kimmel said, allowing him one moment of unity: Nov. 3, when voters banded together to get rid of him. The audience burst into noise and clapping again.
A Blue Tsunami and a Red Wedding
On his Nov. 3 show, Kimmel called the result a blue tsunami and joked that the Red Wedding had begun, a nod to the massacre scene in “Game of Thrones.” Democrats flipped at least seven Senate seats, and several states, including Texas and Kansas, went blue for the first time in decades. Republican Speaker Mike Johnson is set to lose his post, with Democrat Hakeem Jeffries expected to replace him.
“Pod Save America” hosts Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor were his guests that night, and Favreau called the outcome the beginning of the end of the Trump era. The cheers did not settle Kimmel’s own nerves. He said he has studied the president long enough to doubt he will go away gently, and he worries Trump will get “even crazier.”
Take the Crypto and Quit
Kimmel’s prescription for the 80-year-old president, whom he nicknamed “Nappy Gilmore,” is resignation. He told Trump to quit already, said nobody wants him in the job, not even Trump himself, and suggested an exit plan: take a billion dollars’ worth of crypto and buy an island, perhaps Epstein’s Island. “The only party he leads is the slumber party, and he’s the only person in it,” Kimmel said.
Vance taking the oath in Trump’s place does not worry him, he said. A man who went from calling Trump the American Hitler to calling him the greatest president of his generation can flip back, Kimmel said, describing the vice president as a very good flipper with no spine. His lesson for viewers from the election cycle was about loyalty — and Trump, he said, holds no allegiance to anyone or anything: a Democrat who was never really a Democrat, then a Republican who isn’t a Republican.