Jimmy Kimmel went for the jugular following Elon Musk’s recent comments about him. On Thursday, the billionaire behind Tesla, SpaceX and X took to his social media site to write, “Kimmel is an insufferable nonsense propaganda puppet.”
“At least my children like me,” the ABC host shot back on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” earning shocked groans from the audience.
Earlier this week, Vivian Jenna Wilson, Musk’s 20-year-old daughter who is transgender, announced on Threads that she will be moving abroad following the election of Donald Trump. In a series of posts, she also called her father a “delusional and grubby little control freak who hasn’t matured as a person for 38 years.”
This is far from the first time Wilson has spoken out against Musk. Wilson cut ties with her father in 2022 and has since called him an absentee father and a “serial adulterer.”
Back on ABC, Kimmel obviously took issue with Musk’s description of him. “The guy who paid people $1 million a day to vote for Donald Trump is calling me a propaganda puppet?” he said. “Listen, Kermit. You bought Twitter. You bought a social media platform that is literally a propaganda machine.”
The comedian then admitted that if he spent two weeks trying to come up with a four-word descriptor of Musk, he couldn’t do better than “insufferable nonsense propaganda puppet.” Kimmel also pointed out the number of publications Musk has labelled as “propaganda” over the years — a list that includes The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR and the Associated Press.
He then read what “your buddy” Donald Trump said about Musk before the X owner gave him $100 million. In a post from 2022, Trump posted that Musk came to him asking for help on his “many” government-subsidized projects, including “electric cars that don’t drive long enough,” “driverless cars that crash,” and “rocketships to nowhere.” Trump then continued, writing, “I could have said, ‘Drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it.”
“I’m sure his little hand will fit nicely in your sockhole,” Kimmel concluded. Watch the full “JKL” monologue, above.
