The big story on Wednesday, obviously, was that CNN released one of the audio tapes that Michael Cohen recorded of a meeting with Donald Trump back before the election in 2016. And so of course Jimmy Kimmel spent a large chunk of his monologue on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Wednesday night cracking jokes about it.
“Really, for any other president, a tape like this — on which we hear his voice, his married voice, suggesting that his lawyer pay a Playboy Bunny $150,000 in cash to keep her quiet — for any other President, there would be an address to the nation tonight,” Kimmel said before describing how that would go.
“He would be sitting at a desk, arms folded, serious face. He would apologize to his wife, his family — possibly Jesus. I don’t know. We might even have to get Barbara Walters involved. But for this President, there’s no statement. For him, it’s just Wednesday.”
But Trump did have something to say about the whole thing, because he always does. And that response is what Kimmel joked about next.
“And his response, of course, is what his response always is: to kill the messenger,” Kimmel said. “He went after Michael Cohen on Twitter this morning. He wrote, ‘What kind of a lawyer would tape a client? So sad! Is this a first, never heard of it before? Why was the tape so abruptly terminated (cut) while I was presumably saying positive things? I hear there are other clients and many reporters that are taped – can this be so? Too bad!’ ”
Kimmel, of course, found Trump’s musings to be quite amusing. Specifically the part where Trump asked, “What kind of lawyer would tape a client?”
“I have the answer,” Kimmel said. “A not-too-bright, shady double-dealing lawyer, who was hired by an even shadier, even double-dealier and not-too-bright man. The kind of lawyer you hired, and employed, for more than ten years! That’s what kind of lawyer.”
Then Kimmel noted the real point here.
“And what makes the tape such a big deal is that it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump knew about the payments to Karen McDougal,” he said. “Which means that when he said he had no knowledge of this transaction, he lied.
“And you know what that means. If he lied, it means we have to lock Hillary up. I mean it’s time.”