On Tuesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Kimmel wasn’t remotely cool with the prospect of Donald Trump returning to Twitter — or with the logic used by the person who might make it happen.
Of course by now you’ve heard Elon Musk apparently thinks that Trump’s “permanent suspension” from Twitter was “morally bad.” Trump was pushed off the social media platform after he encouraged his followers to literally overthrow the government, by inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot, rather than accept the results of the 2020 election.
And so, if Elon Musk actually goes through with his quest to buy Twitter, he says he will allow Trump to return. Great.
“Speaking of babies,” Kimmel said during his monologue, “Elon Musk says that if his deal to buy Twitter goes through, he will reverse the ban on our infant former President Donald Trump. Musk said banning Trump from Twitter “was a morally bad decision to be clear — and foolish in the extreme.”
“Oh good,” Kimmel continued. “We have the part-time DJ who makes flamethrowers and cars that fart in charge of morality now. The guy who named his kids Roman numerals will make sure they don’t do anything foolish!”
But this was a jumping off point for Kimmel to talk about some of Trump’s more recent situations. “If Trump does go back on Twitter, he’s gonna need a phone. Which he claims he doesn’t have.”
Kimmel was talking about how Trump, who has been held in contempt by a New York judge for not turning over four cell phones related to the investigation into his corrupt finances and business dealings, claims he’s not defying the subpoena, he just doesn’t have them.
“So far he’s been fined $150,000, which that’s, you know, silencing porn star money, that’s serious money,” Kimmel joked. (He was of course referring here to Stormy Daniels.)
“Trump claims he no longer has the phones… nor does he have two flip phones that he carried, or a Samsung phone that he brought to the White House,” Kimmel said. “This is the only phone he has right now.” At which point he displayed a photo of a novelty hamburger-shaped telephone.
“You know, some people might believe” Trump’s excuses, Kimmel continued. “It’s suspicious when phones all of a sudden go missing.” Then Kimmel played a supercut of all the times Trump criticized Hillary Clinton for destroying 13 of the phones she used while serving as Secretary of State.
(Now Trump believes this is sinister, but Hillary was actually engaging in best practices for ensuring sensitive information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.)
The supercut ended with Trump saying “you don’t hammer them, you just throw them away when you’re done” and “just throw out your phones, you start all over again,” after which Kimmel said: “It’s just what he does with his wives too.”
Kimmel did say he believed Trump’s claim that he hasn’t used a phone or a laptop for work in more than a decade.
“I can’t imagine him sitting at a laptop doing work. Here’s how I bet Trump works. He probably has some former strip club bouncer works [sic] for him, named like, Vinnie St. Cleveland or Bobby Cabbage or something, who stands outside his bathroom with a briefcase full of diet coke while Trump shouts things like ‘put an offer in to buy the Indian Ocean through the door. And then Vinnie or Bobby will use a burner phone to call some Republican with an ulcer who has to explain that the Indian Ocean isn’t for sale. And by the time he’s finally done Trump’s already asleep and by the time he wakes up, it’s time to climb into a golf cart and eat a pie,” Kimmel joked.
There’s more and you can watch the whole monologue above now.