Jimmy Kimmel continues to find humor at President Donald Trump’s expense.
On Friday, Sept. 26, the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host, 57, joked about the president’s recent visit to the United Nations headquarters on Tuesday, Sept. 23, where Trump reportedly encountered “a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”
Kimmel shared an Instagram photo of his longtime sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez, 54, riding an escalator with his luggage while waving at the camera. The caption read, “Headed to Brooklyn! Escalator is working great!”
During Trump’s visit, he and First Lady Melania Trump had to walk up an escalator that suddenly stopped. During his speech, Trump criticized the U.N. for the malfunction.
“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that, on the way up, stopped right in the middle,” Trump said, earning laughter from the audience. “If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen. But she’s in great shape. We’re both in good shape, we both stood.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(499x0:501x2):format(webp)/Guillermo-Rodriguez-Jimmy-Kimmel-donald-trump-092625-1-3c47d26bf9d04a6f94e0851e2af440b5.jpg)
Kimmel’s escalator joke came after his Wednesday, Sept. 24, response to Trump’s comments about the return of Jimmy Kimmel Live!
“You know, a lot of people watched our show last night,” Kimmel said during his monologue.
“I did hear from one very special friend, moments after we taped our show last night, the mad red hatter wrote, ‘I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back,'” Kimmel read from Trump’s Truth Social post. “You can’t believe they gave me my job back? I can’t believe they gave you your job back! We’re even.”
The Instagram post also followed Kimmel’s Thursday, Sept. 25, monologue, in which he humorously thanked Trump after the president celebrated the temporary pulling of Live! by Disney’s ABC the previous week.
After the show was suspended on Wednesday, Sept. 17, following Kimmel’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting, ABC reinstated it on Tuesday, Sept. 23. Kimmel’s return episode drew 6.26 million viewers via traditional television (preliminary Nielsen ratings), three times the average audience. The monologue video on the show’s official YouTube page has amassed 22 million views as of Friday, Sept. 26.
“We had our second-highest rated show in almost 23 years on the air,” Kimmel said. “And I want to say, we couldn’t have done it without you, Mr. President. Thank you very much.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2):format(webp)/donald-trump-un-speech-0-092325-a38e443825c84494aa699e5d534097e3.jpg)
Kimmel also touched on the show’s upcoming move to Brooklyn next week, joking that they were “on the move so the FCC can’t get us.” Jimmy Kimmel Live! will air from the Brooklyn Academy of Music from Monday, Sept. 29, through Friday, Oct. 3.
The show’s hiatus lasted six days. It began on Sept. 15 after Kimmel, whose late-night program premiered in 2003, commented on Kirk’s fatal shooting. On Sept. 17, Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr expressed frustration with Kimmel’s remarks. ABC temporarily pulled the show, while Sinclair and Nexstar preempted it. Nexstar is the largest local broadcast and digital media company in the U.S., and Sinclair is the nation’s largest ABC affiliate group.
On Friday, Sept. 26, both companies confirmed they would end preemptions and resume airing Jimmy Kimmel Live!.