Jimmy Kimmel frequently mocks and insults Donald Trump during his nightly “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” monologues. But on Monday’s episode, he delivered what might be one of the meanest things he’s ever said about the disgraced former president: that his 2024 presidential campaign is “the political equivalent of when Michael Jordan played for the Wizards.”
That almost hurt our feelings. Damn that’s cold.
“You know, we make a lot of fun of Donald Trump because he’s a fool,” Kimmel said after bringing up Trump’s appearances in New Hampshire and South Carolina over the weekend. “But one thing you can say about him, he really has his finger on the pulse of this country.”
“He knows, what your average Joe cares about, and what Americans want most from our leaders right now, is for somebody to do something about this accursed windmills,” Kimmel said, before playing a clip of Trump at one of his rallies repeating his incredibly weird lies that wind power is dangerous.
“He is literally Donald Quixote. It’s not even a metaphor anymore. He’s battling windmills,” Kimmel joked — and if you’re not familiar with the novel “Don Quixote,” it involves a senile old man who becomes convinced he’s a medieval knight and tries to go on quests. And at one point his delusional mind mistakes windmills for giants.
Kimmel remained as confused as you probably are about Trump’s weird hatred for windmills.
“Why? I mean, I guess if I had a combover like that, I wouldn’t like windmills either, but it’s too much,” Kimmel said.
Kimmel noted how Trump barked that should Florida governor Ron DeSantis run for president in 2024, he’d consider it “a great act of disloyalty.” “And, you know, loyalty means everything to the guy who cheated on his third wife with a porn star and thought it might be cool to hang his vice president,” Kimmel said.
Kimmel ran down some more of the weird and dull things Trump said, from his claim that the National Archives is somehow a “radical left” group, to his rambling about the Taliban. And after seeing clips of this stuff, Kimmel said it looked kind of pathetic.
“I have to say, watching him out there campaigning again … It’s kind of sad. It’s the political equivalent of when Michael Jordan played for the Wizards,” Kimmel declared, obviously referring to the NBA legend’s decision to come out of retirement in 2001 to play for the Washington Wizards where he delivered the worst performance of his basketball career.
Specifically, Jordan retired after the 1997-98 season having effectively played the greatest games of his life — and possibly the greatest in NBA history — during his 12-year association with the Chicago Bulls, delivering a total of six championships, including in his final season playing for them. It’s a legendary period that nothing in the NBA has since topped.
But with the Wizards, after initially giving a strong showing, he was injured and ultimately only played 60 games for the team — notably, for the first time in his NBA career, a team Jordan played for didn’t make the NBA finals.
Watch that sick burn and more in Jimmy Kimmel’s full monologue above.