On Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel took a look at the days biggest viral moment, the wild, 25-minute interview CNN’s Anderson Cooper had with the mayor of Las Vegas, Carolyn Goodman. Among other things, Goodman advocated for reopening all of the city’s casinos and hotels so it could serve as a “control group” for the rest of the country, and kept saying weird things only to immediately deny having said them.
Cooper’s visibly exasperated reactions were as much a draw on social media as Goodman’s strange ideas. And so Jimmy Kimmel spent a chunk of his monologue going in on Goodman.
It’s a tough interview to describe without really going into detail, so if you missed this whole thing and wanna know what’s up, you can check out the full interview on CNN.com here. Or just watch the samplings that “Jimmy Kimmel Live” pulled up during the monologue, which you can watch in the embedded video above.
“As ridiculous as this president is, he’s not alone. He got a run for his money today from the Mayor of Las Vegas, who — well, let’s put it this way. R. Kelly was watching this interview and said, ‘This woman is nuts.’” Kimmel said. “Mayor Carolyn Goodman revealed her lunacy to Anderson Cooper and the whole country today. She believes that Las Vegas is ready to open the casinos now.”
Then “Jimmy Kimmel Live” played a clip of Cooper asking how people would be able to practice social distancing in a casino, where everything is jammed in and people are constantly touching everything.
“That’s up to them to figure out. I don’t own a casino,” Goodman replied in the clip.
“If you watch that back, you can see the moment where Anderson’s soul leaves his body,” Kimmel joked.
“It was a long interview. She went on and on. She was like, you know that dizzy neighbor you try to pretend you don’t see when you’re pulling into the garage? The gist of what she was saying was, why should we treat this virus any differently from anything else?”
The next clip up had Goodman downplaying the coronavirus because, more or less, there are other diseases out there. “A neighbor of mine died from West Nile [virus],” Goodman said in the clip. “Because the swimming pool on the next property was filled with mosquitoes and the people who had abandoned the house left the pool full.”
“Oh. Well then you’re right,” Kimmel said after the clip. “We should reopen Vegas. Reopen the casinos and drain the pools! Somehow, she was elected last year with more than 80% of the vote in Las Vegas. And I can see why. Mayor Goodman has a lot of thoughts, and the one thing those thoughts have in common is that none of them make any sense.”
Kimmel ended this portion of his monologue with this summation: “Somehow, Las Vegas elected every lady you’ve ever seen at a ‘Baywatch’ slot machine to be their mayor.”