Jimmy Kimmel tears into Trump after being targeted in fundraising email: 'I sit back and laugh'
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel opened Monday, February 23, episode of 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' by reacting to a campaign-style fundraising email sent out under the name of Donald Trump— one that directly attacked him.
“You know, so many things happened over the break. This one hit me personally,” Kimmel began.
“This is over the break. A fundraising email from one of his many money grabs was sent to a number of followers.”
He pointed to the subject line - “DJT: Get Trump out of your mouth” before quipping, “Which is again somehow not a line from the Trump-Epstein files.”
Jimmy Kimmel tears into Trump's email
Kimmel then read from the body of the email.
“‘Hey, did you see it? Rating-starved hack Jimmy Kimmel is back at it again,’” he quoted the email as saying.
As the audience cheered, Kimmel shot back: “Wait a minute. For the record, I was in my house doing nothing. OK?”
“‘He’s on his failing late-night show, which by the way has terrible numbers. Just total disaster numbers, trying to mock you and our movement.’”
The message also claimed “‘The poor guy just loves to have my name in his mouth because he knows that without Trump, he’d have no career at all.’”
“Yeah, he does,” Kimmel joked and added, “Sometimes I stand, sometimes I sit and laugh.”
The email went on “‘While he’s busy reading a teleprompter for a tiny audience of coastal elites, I’m getting ready to address a massive crowd of MAGA patriots at the State of the Union.’”
Kimmel responded “Oh, by the way, we will have a special show tomorrow night to laugh at all the stupid things he says at that MAGA State of the Union.”
Jimmy Kimmel asks 'What even is that?'
The fundraising appeal concluded with a call to action “‘I need millions of MAGA patriots to step up today and show Jimmy Kimmel that his words have nothing on MAGA. Join my MAGA rally blitz now and I’ll add you to my exclusive 2026 MAGA membership.’”
“Well, that is tempting,” Kimmel said. “We could be part of his MAGA rally blitz. What even is that? It’s like something you order at Dairy Queen, right?”
He then questioned “Why is the president in his second term even sending fundraising emails?”
Turning that question into another punchline, Kimmel added: “Maybe, I don’t know, maybe he needs it to pay all the big beautiful tariffs he has to give back now?”
Referencing a recent Supreme Court decision striking down Trump’s tariffs as unconstitutional, Kimmel noted that “the very conservative Supreme Court ruled against him 6–3.”
“This was Donald Trump’s most humiliating legal defeat yet,” he said, before adding another jab referencing one of the president’s past courtroom battles.
