White House Hits Back at Jimmy Kimmel After He Calls on Trump to Resign

On Friday, the White House spokesman Davis Ingle told Fox News Digital that Jimmy Kimmel's case of what he called Trump Derangement Syndrome had advanced so far that it had "rotted" the host's "peanut-sized brain." The line was the latest in an exchange that began after Tuesday's midterm elections, and it answered a monologue in which the ABC late-night host told President Donald Trump to resign.

Kimmel delivered that monologue Wednesday night. He had spent the week on Trump-focused material, and on Tuesday he celebrated what he described as a Democratic "blue wave." On Wednesday he took on the president's claim that Republicans would have done better had Trump himself been on the ballot. "That is such crap," Kimmel said. He argued that Trump was on the ballot, comparing him to dog hair that gets on everything and has "infected every nook and cranny of our lives."

Kimmel accused the president of dividing the country as no one had before. He added that the one time Trump had brought people together was the day before, when voters "all teamed up to get rid of you." He also called Trump "Nappy Gilmore" while showing an image in which the president appeared to be asleep during a White House meeting.

Then came the call to resign. "Quit already, just quit. Nobody wants you," Kimmel said, adding that even Trump no longer wanted the job. He suggested the president take his "billion dollars' worth of crypto" and buy an island, and then asked, "Maybe Epstein's island?"

Kimmel was also answering an earlier statement. Earlier in the week, after the election, Ingle had given Fox News Digital a statement calling the host a "no-talent loser who has beclowned himself with tanking ratings." That statement also said Kimmel was so devoid of talent that no one with common sense would watch him except to laugh at him. On air, Kimmel said that was "kind of the point of the show," and that he had apparently "beclowned" himself again. He called the spokesman "Danny Dingle" and said that today seemed like a bad day to call him a loser.

Ingle's Friday reply kept to the same register. He said Kimmel was "far more entertaining when you're laughing at him than with him," and that "unfortunately, his real talent is his failing ratings." He closed with a jab of his own: "This statement took more brain cells to write than the average Jimmy Kimmel joke."

Fox News Digital also sought comment from Christian Toto, a media commentator and editor of Hollywood in Toto. Speaking Wednesday, Toto said Kimmel had long ago traded comedy for activism and called him a "DNC apparatchik" pushing party talking points. He said the week's midterm response was nothing new. What was new, in his view, was the tightrope Kimmel is walking with ABC, which he said wants sizable budget cuts to keep the show afloat. Toto predicted the two sides would reach a compromise because the show's "propaganda purposes" outweigh financial concerns for network executives, but asked, "for how long?"

That budget question is the part of the story to watch. The insults have gone back and forth for several days, but ABC's decision on the show's finances is the one development that could change what Kimmel's program looks like. So far, neither the network nor the White House has been reported as saying anything further.