Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s TV ubiquity: ‘It’s like the Jerry Lewis telethon’

Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump’s war on plastic straws, Pete Hegseth’s “diet woke” renaming of Fort Liberty and the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl parade.

Jimmy Kimmel

Donald Trump had a busy schedule on Tuesday – “he was on TV from morning until night,” Jimmy Kimmel reported on Tuesday evening. “It’s like the Jerry Lewis telethon with this guy.

“All day, reporters in there, he’s taking questions, he’s having meetings, all the most important stuff,” Kimmel deadpanned. Such as: canceling the penny, changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico and ending the scourge of paper straws.

Kimmel could only laugh at a video of the White House staff secretary, Will Scharf, explaining the plastic straw executive order to Trump. “I like that nerd who has to stand next to him and pretend these are like serious things – ‘For too many years, seatbelts have been beeping until you buckle up. This executive order will free us from their tyranny.’”

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Trump explained the order as: “These things don’t work, and I’ve had them many times. On occasion, they break, they explode. If something’s hot, they don’t last very long.”

“Wait a minute, I’m with him on it not lasting very long, but they explode?” Kimmel exclaimed. “His straws are exploding? How hard is he sucking?

“The reason we switched to those admittedly terrible paper straws in the first place is because plastic straws wind up in the ocean and they kill marine life, which is I guess another argument Trump, a well-known hater of sharks, doesn’t buy,” Kimmel continued. As Trump put it: “I don’t think that plastic is going to affect a shark very much, as they’re munching their way through the ocean.”

“Like Pac-Man, they’re just munching their way through the ocean,” Kimmel laughed. “That degree in marine biology is really coming in handy.

“The fact of the matter is: Trump loves plastic,” Kimmel concluded. “Most of his wives are made of plastic. We’re going to have a lot of plastic in our future.”

The Daily Show

On The Daily Show, Jordan Klepper checked in on Pete Hegseth, “Trump’s top cabinet member, if you go by blood-alcohol level”. Hegseth got the job “by promising to go to war against woke”, and on Tuesday, “he won another decisive battle” by reverting the name of Fort Liberty to Fort Bragg. The name was changed in 2023 as part of efforts to cut military honors for Confederate soldiers.

“Bragg is back!” Hegseth bragged in a video of him signing the order.

“Yeah, suck it, libs!” Klepper joked. “You didn’t want this military base to honor a traitor to America? Haha, too bad! Woke is dead, and Confederate general Braxton Bragg is alive.”

Except, in a memorandum, the Pentagon explained the decision was in honor of a different Bragg – Roland L Bragg, who fought in the second world war. “Whoa, wait, you renamed Fort Bragg after a different Bragg?” Klepper wondered. “So after all that bitching about not giving into woke history, you’re basically admitting that we shouldn’t name military bases after Confederate generals. Well, it’s a good thing woke is over, because I think I can say this now: that’s a pussy move, Hegseth.

“Either commit to honoring a Confederate general, or don’t,” he added. “But trying to find some kind of name loophole is just silly.”

Seth Meyers

And on Late Night, Seth Meyers recapped news that Trump spoke with Vladimir Putin to try to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, which Trump says never would have happened if he had been in office. “Because if Trump was president, we would’ve invaded Ukraine,” Meyers added.

In other news, Time Magazine released a new cover showing Elon Musk sitting behind the president’s Resolute Desk. “Well, you’re going to have to make a slight change if you want Trump to see it,” said Meyers next to a mock-up of the cover rebranded as Penthouse.

Trader Joe’s announced that the grocery chain would be limiting egg purchases to one dozen per customer per day. “Though, if you’re going through that many eggs, I’m guessing you’re used to being limited?” Meyers quipped.

And the Philadelphia Eagles are set to hold their Super Bowl victory parade on Valentine’s Day, “in what’s being called the ultimate test for Philadelphia boyfriends”, Meyers joked.