One of the most representative high-profile dregs of the Donald Trump era got exactly what he was looking for on Wednesday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. That’s because pillow pitchman (currently without retail representation), Republican piggy bank, and staunchly buffoonish supporter of every election conspiracy theory in the land Mike Lindell and host Kimmel both decided that giving some 18 minutes of air/YouTube time to their—let’s call it—“debate” about Donald Trump’s legacy (and the nonexistent election fraud that sent the former president back to his more suitable role as Florida golf resort greeter) was a good idea. It went about as well as could be expected.
Kimmel, who’s had a Mike Lindell impersonator (uncanny Bernie Sanders impersonator and comic James Adomian) aping the Minnesota-based entrepreneur and farcically inept Twitter rival on his show for weeks, noted to his guest, “A lot of people didn’t want you to come on this show.” Kimmel cited both liberals and conservatives alike among those urging both parties to not do this thing that they did. To which list one might add, “those concerned that a clearly deluded kook be given network airtime,” and “just anyone utterly exhausted that bumbling conspiracy theorists have entered into the mainstream political discourse.” At any rate, Jimmy Kimmel, for all his late-career political awakening, was not really the person to puncture Lindell’s precarious soap bubble of garrulously held delusion, as it turns out.
Kimmel adopted a chummy, “I’m just worried about you” tone, bringing up his guest’s past battles with serious addiction and Lindell’s obvious naiveté when it comes to, well, everything except pillows, as he attempted to urge Lindell toward some version of reality. Producing a big red game show buzzer for his desk in deference to ABC legal, Kimmel smilingly prodded Lindell over the Trump loyalist and documentarian’s proximity to some genuinely ugly stuff, all of which Lindell hand-waved away as conveniently above his CEO pay grade. That Oval Office memo clearly advising martial law as part of Trump’s plan to steal the 2020 election? “Oh, that’s not mine,” Lindell explained, blaming his position as what Kimmel called “paper mule” on some darned lawyers. That time he gave $50,000 to other noted Trump sycophant, QAnon-loving lawyer Lin Wood, to bail out white supremacist double-murderer Kyle Rittenhouse? Darn lawyers again, as Lindell gabbled out something about Wood’s “foundation” taking his cash and using it on behalf of the Kenosha killer without his knowledge. (Kimmel got Lindell to admit that he never asked for his money back, if he, indeed, was so against that sort of thing.) Lindell also complained about being labeled a racist just for supporting Donald Trump. Who is a racist.
Anyone looking for a decisive gotcha moment (from either the “rigged election!” or “living in actual reality” side) was disappointed, as Kimmel essentially allowed Lindell (in studio despite bragging about not being vaccinated against COVID) to repeat his beyond-debunked nonsense, only offering up Kimmel’s signature brand of bro-smirky jabs as counter-argument. And while it might have been unseemly should Lindell have been unwise enough to submit to an interview with someone with more of a taste for late-night blood like John Oliver or Stephen Colbert, this appearance did nothing to cover either Lindell or Kimmel with dialectical glory. Kimmel danced between chary mockery of Lindell’s past substance abuse problems, and genuine concern that the in-over-his-head pillow magnate is going to “be out dressed as Spider-Man on Hollywood Boulevard at the end of this.” Meanwhile, Lindell got to use ABC’s time to spout the sort of libelous nonsense that’s seen him sued for $1.6 billion. (Lindell did mention suit-bringers Dominion again, but, don’t worry, Lindell claims his pal Alan Dershowitz says he’s totally fine.)
So here we are, 100 days after President Joe Biden was rightfully and legally sworn in after what Kimmel vainly tried to get Lindell to admit was “the most secure election in history,” with a late-night host and a pillow salesman sloppily re-litigating the ongoing right-wing coup for the yucks. (Adomian came out as his disheveled and bloodied Lindell, to the actual Lindell’s delighted amusement.) Kimmel told Lindell, “I believe that you are sincere. I also believe that there’s something going on from the crack,” and joked about neophyte filmmaker Lindell’s recent Razzie awards. Lindell ranted about being in hiding (but not because of paranoia), those nefarious Chinese hackers, and Facebook fact-checker and “fake news” journalist Alan Duke, who Lindell claimed “decides what’s true or not in this country.” Everyone had a big, pally laugh at Adomian’s antics. Kimmel got his ratings. Lindell got his exposure. “I think it’s important that we talk to each other,” Kimmel said at the outset, and maybe he’s right. At least he didn’t ruffle Lindell’s hair.
86 Comments
I only read this, but didn’t watch it because gross. Kimmel just sucks and shouldn’t have given him air time. This was stupid and made worse by Kimmel putting his staff at more risk by having an unvaccinated covid denying idiot in studio. Kimmel you suck even if the My Pillow guy sucks more.
RIP king of chugging beers…
Ziggy Zocky Ziggy Zocky Hoy Hoy Hoy!
That’s me, everyday!
Why hello Ms Dunst.
Not sure what point you are making but Kimmel spent seemingly all of 2016 to early 2021 teabagging Trump over and over in his monologues. For the last couple years he basically didn’t talk about anything else, as far as I can tell (I’m not a regular viewer, but I’ve watched many clips and read a couple short articles on it, including here). Whatever kind of professional relationship they may have had, it’s not that anymore. Actually I was surprised by how hard he went in–you would think Kimmel’s fan base would be rather right-leaning (especially given some of the guys he pals around with), and the traditional late night shows are not usually so devotedly political.
If people hadn’t normalized Trumpish behavior up until 2016 by inviting him to comedy shows and showing us that he’s just a funny lovable buffoon, he might not have ended where he did.Which might be forgivable as they can claim they didn’t know how bad he was going to be – if they didn’t repeat the mistake now and invite Trump cronies to show what funny lovable buffoons they are.
What behavior did Trump engage in before 2016 that people “normalized”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations
Quote showing that prior to 2016, Trump’s misconduct was normalized?
Fallon practically had his tongue up Trump’s ass, so what is your point? People can be cordial with other people they don’t agree with (Michelle Obama and George W. Bush) for example.
Interesting choice.If you’re cordial to Michelle you promote going veggie.If you’re cordial to W, you promote lying to your own nation and the UN to start an unjustified war and torture POVs.And let’s not talk about what you support by being cordial to Trump’s accomplices.
What lies did Bush tell? When did Bush torture POVs (or POWs, which I assume is what you mean)? And “unjustified” is your opinion.
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/06/lie-after-lie-what-colin-powell-knew-about-iraq-fifteen-years-ago-and-what-he-told-the-un/How fast we forget.
Or try to, to make the GOP look not like a bunch of criminals.
Quote showing Bush lied?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
Quote showing that Bush tortured POWs?
apart from all the other things FrankN.Stein posted, the Bush administration literally changed language in scientific studies to completely undermine climate change science so they could pretend that we didn’t know it was human-caused.
So the shitty thing was shitty.
The years Jimmy Kimmel spent giving America teary-eyed monologues and the basic likeability he has managed to exude through decades of d-bag antics helped put him into the “resistance” bracket when he’s really just another extremely wealthy figure who sees opportunities like the above to hold onto that wealth and play into the same system that made him rich and famous. It’s another variation of Stephen Colbert (someone I would imagine is a genuinely nice and decent person) palling around with the loathsome Sean Spicer at an awards show and giving right wing extremists a platform on his late night program.Given the dire straits of news these days, I get the temptation to search high and low for a modern-day Murrow, but late night is not the realm of journalists, or heroes; no matter how progressive the politics of the host (or celebrity impersonator), the pile of cash men like Mike Lindell and those enabling him are sitting on wins out.
What reason is there to believe Kimmel or Colbert giving nutjobs a platform helped them? I don’t recall Spicer getting a big boost in popularity from his awards show appearance.
It probably helped with his Dancing with the Stars appearance (unless that was already in the works), but I agree he was too small-time to have as much of an impact. Lindell probably benefits more.
It normalizes their behavior by saying you can be a sack of shit white supremacist liar but when all is said and done the people who ostensibly fight against you publicly will still yuk it up with you, so really isn’t it just harmless political differences after all?
oh Jimmy…I’m sure some people watched this for its train wreck potential, and it sounds like for the most part they were rewarded, but why do you have to give anyone associated with T***p or even the GOP any oxygen? Is your integrity worth a mild ratings bump? I watched Boehner on Colbert out of morbid curiosity (and to see why he hates Ted Cruz beyond the obvious “he’s Ted Cruz”) and had to turn off after he began unapologetically defending and even complimenting Blanche, Cheney, etc. while being unable to muster anything nice about Obama. (This from a guy who claims to have learned all he needed to know about politics and diplomacy from his dad’s Ohio bar. Go fuck yourself John Boehner.)
Well, it went somewhat different than what I was expecting—-the interview was cordial (mostly, the part that I was expecting), except when Kimmel tried to score points by gloating over how Lindell didn’t know what IP stood for. The problem was, Kimmel looked snarky when Mr. Pillow revealed he knew what IP meant, if not what the actual acronym stood for.And the stupid decision to have the “Mike clone” come in and mock Lindell….not sure whose idea that was to have him come in and disrupt the conversation, but it looked extra bad when Lindell laughed and went along with it.Perhaps the worst part of the night was when Kimmel appeared flustered and unprepared, failing to challenge even the most basic of PillowBoy’s outrageous claims—-like how Lindell met Trump in 2016 and thought “this is a guy who keeps all of his promises!”.Just a really odd interview and an inexplicably bad job on Jimmy’s part. He ended up looking childish (such as the random snipy zingers about Lindell’s crack addiction, which Lindell took in good spirits) AND letting the cokehead look reasonable and affable.Boo.
Did it start with “First off, literally no one should take you seriously?” No? Fail.
people who play the “we need to talk to each other” card when interviewing dipshits like Lindell or Milo Y remind me of the lawyers who rush to defend scumbags because “everyone deserves a legal defense.” That may be, but it makes me wonder why you in particular feel the need to do it, because I’m going to assume it’s just a cheap grab for something far less noble than principles.
Publicity baby! My father was a court officer for NYS for 25 years, and the worst of that lot was this guy Eric Naiburg (the guy who defended the Say You Love Satan killer, Amy Fisher and other sorts) and everyone hated the fucking guy. All the COs would make it a point to harass him when he would try to sneak cigarettes on the court property.
I see Milo and ask “Y not?”
Yep.I have a friend who worships the ground that Bill Maher walks on. I pointed out to him that “pay lip service to a problem then bask in smugness” doesn’t exactly move the needle. Any needle, really.
i been wondering who maher’s demographic was these days.
caught a bit of his ‘new rules’ last week where he talked about ageism being the last acceptable prejudice. i think i might have actually groaned out loud, so…yeh.
My buddy is a damned smart dude, but he’s also an anti-natalist (which is kind of like being “anti war”: good luck chasing that horse, I guess? I mean, the barn’s on fire and the horse is on another planet, but go get ‘em?), so he veers into the “everything’s fucked, might as well laugh” territory.And it’s like, “Okay. I’ll laugh at someone who is actually funny.”
I was a huge fan of Maher back in the days of “Politically Incorrect”, and especially loved him after Dennis Miller went around the bend.But, man, the past decade (or more?), I literally, physically cringe the few times I decide to give him a watch. He has become what he railed against during those early years: vaguely misogynistic, comfortably rich, mildly racist, corporate/elitist white guy.
“pay lip service to a problem then bask in smugness” sums up that guy perfectly. nicely done.
I can’t even hate-watch Maher any more. His bullshit fat-shaming of the entire country last year (harping on the fact that obesity tended to correlate with worse cases of Covid-19 to burnish his vegetarian bona fides) got super annoying especially when he started inviting anti-vaxxers and naturopaths on the show to agree with him. I don’t dispute the data but you can only climb one mountain at a time; trying to make America “healthier” during a pandemic is absurd.This year his whining has gotten much worse (guess he has to get more creative without T***p around and it’s making him lazy and cranky), culminating in a super-bitchy show at the beginning of the year complaining about why we continue to make such a big deal about racism (egged on by some black podcaster who agreed with him).
Yep.Like…the entire show is smug self-satisfaction in search of crowd response. Thassit. That’s all he’s got.And, like…I can get that shit on Facebook.
and even when T***p was president his material was getting pretty lame, almost vaudevillian in its staleness. He needs to hire some new writers and maybe bring on some more Ben Afflecks who will openly challenge his bullshit (because it is fun when someone nails him and all he can do is yell back “SHUT UP YOU BIG DUMB IDIOT” because that’s all he’s got).
There’s not much to talk about when it comes to Lindell. If he has conclusive proof that there was election fraud, and he’s refusing to share it, then clearly he’s not interested in talking. If he doesn’t have it, then he’s lying, and there’s not point talking to him.
exactly. The audience he’s selling this to don’t want evidence, they want to be angry and have their feelings of white grievance validated with these accusations, not necessarily proved. It is impossibly annoying “sparring” with these idiot ninjas who can deflect sincere questions like “if there was rampant voter fraud, WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE???” to focus on some piece of minutia some idiot in their rabbit hole found because we all know that’s where the real truth is found. It’s all so tiresome and tedious and I wish they’d shut the fuck up until they have actual evidence that is not some idiot in his black Oakleys in the front seat of his black pickup truck yelling angrily at his iPhone.
Sounds like dipshits think they’re Rumpole of the Bailey or something.
Skewering an interview subject, in real time while they’re sitting in front of you, is incredibly difficult. At the very least it’s a specific skillset, more precise and specialized than just being able to improv humorous asides in front of a live audience – you need to have complete mastery of the facts backwards and forwards, and the kind of steel trap brain that can catch your subject in logic traps when they invariably lie or try to waive off pointed questions with gibberish. Essentially, you need a journalist to do this kind of work. Maybe a very well prepared Stephen Colbert or John Oliver. Kimmel was not the man for the job (very few are), all he succeeded in doing was providing a platform for a lunatic.
Comedians are often seeking attention, approval from others and applause. Late night talk show hosts comedian probably more so.
Didn’t his thing used to be girls on trampolines or something?
LoL he co-hosted The Man Show with Adam Carola. It was a lot of low brow and frankly misogynistic bits. One of the most (in)famous was ‘girls on trampolines’. I have to say, I was a senior male in high school when the show premiered and was a fan. Then again, I was a senior male in high school. There’s an argument to be made that the intent of the show was to be so over-the-top as to target the absurdity of alpha male culture, the male gaze, etc, but at the end of the day a lot of the “jokes” were about women and there were scantily clad models jumping around on trampolines. I think Kimmel has matured a lot, and I don’t expect him to be infallible or not have a past. I also appreciate that he’s been aggressive in criticizing some pretty heinous behavior from Trump and others, as well as speaking candidly and from a personal place about healthcare from the perspective of a dad with a kid who had some medical issues. I especially appreciate, when you compare him with his old Man Show co-host, that he’s gone in this direction as opposed to Carola’s “why can’t men eat beans and be casually racist and read porn and be real men while scratching their balls” schtick. But at the end of the day, he is an entertainer – no more, no less. If he wants to make a moral point or snipe a bad actor like Lindell, do the work, come prepared, or you just may make matters worse.
Do you remember Win Ben Stein’s Money? I liked him best when he wasn’t the whole show.
I too came of age when the “Man Show” came out an I was NEVER a fan…
One of my few memories of The Man Show was a skit where Kimmel and Corolla set up a booth and a petition with a big sign that said, “Please Help to End Women’s Suffrage”; then they filmed all the people, mostly women, who were happy to sign the petition because they didn’t know the definition of “suffrage” and thought the cause they were supporting was to end women’s “suffering”. I think I vaguely recall that they even had a poster of a woman looking very unhappy (she was suffering, you see) to add to the deceit. I suppose as a woman attending a liberal arts college and taking a course in feminism at the time, I should’ve been offended, but I actually found the skit quite funny and was honestly surprised by how many people, especially women, had no clue what “suffrage” actually meant.
The horror!! Young man likes tits! (like every other straight young (and old) man).
His original thing was helping dummies win Ben Stein’s money haha
Oliver could absolutely do it, and since Colbert ripped GWB to shreds to his face, while he was in office, I think he could do it as well.
Well, the difference there was that he wasn’t actually interviewing Dubya, just mocking him from a lecturn.I still think Colbert and Oliver would have handled this interview much better, or at the very least, been prepared to refute his nonsense.
The British are masters of the confrontational TV interview. Like you said, it’s a particular skill set that involves being extremely well-prepared and having mastery of rhetoric, but being just civil and welcoming enough to get the target to open up and speak candidly. I really don’t think even Colbert or Oliver are good at it, since they’re still trying to entertain.Anderson Cooper, maybe?
I was thinking Jonathan Swan (who is Australian). I enjoyed his interview with Trump and it would have been great if as soon as Lidell sat down, Swan came out, Kimmel welcomed him, and then sat back and let Swan go to town.
jordan klepper
Didn’t Cooper already skewer Lindell?Edit: yep,
I think the only late night comedian who could have adequately handled this job would have been Jon Stewart.
I’m not sure Lindell would agree to being interviewed by Stewart, but yeah.
That’s absolutely not true. Stewart got rolled by Republicans all the time–check out his interviews with John Yoo and Condi Rice.
i mean, it’s a conspiracy theorist on a late-night comedy show on a network channel owned by a giant corporation. does it need to be something more profound than that?
I mean, whatever befell whomever was out there bankrolling Al Qaueda and ISIS should be done to Lindell, as opposed to giving him a guest slot on a talk show.
Somebody obviously prepped PillowBoy pretty well, too. He was a lot calmer and well-spoken than his prior appearances.
Letterman used to be able to do it, very subtly sometimes.Not by having a journalist’s command of the facts, but by raising the conversation to higher principles, or showing the person was a hypocrite.
Jon Stewart could have pulled it off pretty easily, given the subject and source material.
You know that’s not Kimmel, right?
Is there a difference?
Fallon is an insufferable douche?
…and always has been. Right from the start.
I watched the monologue and Adomian was, as usual hilarious. I will not give Lindell a second of my time.
Did he atleast ask him does he fuck his pillows.
I don’t watch Kimmel, but from the picture shown he appears to be back in his studio. But I’m assuming he doesn’t have a studio audience now. And that makes this the best time for someone like Lindell to appear on a show like this. Normally the studio audience would all be against him, laughing at (not with) him, and booing him. So right now someone as terrible as him wouldn’t have to worry about that kind of a reaction from the audience.
He has his crew/staff in the audience for response. Its actually a cool idea, because these late night comics lose a lot of their effectiveness without some kind of audience reaction.
Imagine being naive about everything except pillows. Seems like a pretty swell way to go through life.
Is Kimmel going full Joe Rogan?
I had little interest in watching much of this, but if there’s James Adomian I’ll give it a go.
Man, Lindell is a bit off. I’m not so much talking about his ideas, because as he said, he’s just the mouthpiece. He believes the lie whole heartedly.To sit there and have someone tell you on national tv, to your face… you’re a stupid and insane crack addict with a messed up brain, while a fake you spouts all sorts of nonsense in your face and all you can do is laugh along?Jimmy might be right after all.
I saw his insane interview on Newsmax, where even the anchorman couldn’t tolerate Mike Lindell’s incessant, tongue flapping rambling and left the studio while Lindell continued ranting at an empty chair.From the looks of it, especially that crazy thing that Lindell was doing with his tongue, it seems that he relapsed and was on some kind of stimulant drug during that interview. Which is quite sad when you think about it.
I can’t believe I’m about to say this but … good sport?
I remember carson having sirhan sirhan on after his little knuckleheaded event. good times
First episode of Kimmel I haven’t seen in many months.If more people did that (particularly Nielsen families, or however they measure ratings now), then his producers would get the message…)
You know, I’m all for just letting whomever they want on talk shows and watching chaos ensue. All this “giving a platform,” it’s just blah, blah moralizing, don’t care.
“That time he gave $50,000 to other noted Trump sycophant, QAnon-loving lawyer Lin Wood, to bail out white supremacist double-murderer Kyle Rittenhouse?”Not a white supremacist and acted in self-defence.
“white supremacist double-murderer Kyle Rittenhouse”
I haven’t heard of any evidence he’s a white supremacist, are there are legitimate questions as to whether he has a self-defense claim.