ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel recently joined MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough for an interview that aired on the Wednesday edition of Morning Joe. Throughout the two-part interview, Scarborough and Kimmel would discuss the latter’s career and their mutual loathing of Donald Trump, with Kimmel going so far as to say, “If you're a reasonable person, you should have Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Scarborough portrayed Kimmel as the comedian who only reluctantly got political, “So, you started this show, and then Trump happened. And we all manned the stations. Kind of the same thing with you. Where you didn't want to get political.
After a clip of Kimmel’s October 15 monologue, Scarborough continued, “But you felt a necessity to, especially, because of your son. Can you talk about that?”
Kimmel replied, “Yeah, I mean, I think that was more related to mainstream Republicanism and this idea that, I don't know, that it's not okay to have socialized health care, but it's fine to have socialized education.”
Scarborough likes to portray himself as the principled conservative and claim it is today’s Republicans that have gone wrong, but Kimmel is right: his critique of GOP health care plans is not really a critique of Trump. However, Scarborough was not interested in challenging that.
Instead, MSNBC played a clip of Kimmel from May 1, 2017, where Kimmel declared, “If your baby is going to die and it doesn't have to, it shouldn't matter how much money you make, I think that's something that whether you're a Republican or Democrat or something else. We all agree on that, right, we do?”
Back in the present day, Kimmel elaborated:
None of it really makes sense, and it just so happened my son had open heart surgery, I was just looking at these families and thinking, it's hard enough just to take off from work to come be here all day, make sure somebody is here with your kid, the medical expenses, and then I started taking interest in it. It just so happens, I'm sitting in a children's hospital funded largely by donations, but also by the government, and I feel like I need to make something positive about this very scary thing that happened to our family.”
No one seeks to minimize the horrible situation the Kimmel family found itself in, but Kimmel is not the only father to go through such a situation. Being opposed to socialized health care is not the same thing as being indifferent to babies dying.
In part two of their interview, Kimmel contemplated a Trump victory:
I'm an optimistic person, I'm not hysterical, I laugh when people say, 'Oh, you've got Trump Derangement Syndrome.' If you're a reasonable person, you should have Trump Derangement Syndrome, and by the way, I think he has derangement syndrome about us, too. The fact of the matter is, this is a dangerous person, this is a stupid person, and that's a bad combination.
A little bit later, Scarborough wondered, “What do you think, though, is happening in the country? Where you have two weeks out, and it's one thing to just look at Donald Trump and look at some, you know, senators, but we're actually talking about 70, 75, 80 million people.”
Kimmel mourned, “I think that there are certain news networks, if you want to call them that, who are lying to people. I think that there's a certain generation, of which we are a part, who are used to watching television and seeing the white man in a suit telling us what's going on in the world and believing that what he's saying is true.”
Reaching for a rather strange role model, Kimmel continued, “We grew up with Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings and we did not question that what they were telling us was factual, and a lot of people now are looking at Sean Hannity and whomever else, and they are not questioning whether or not what they're saying is factual.”
Dan Rather and CBS’s scandalous history of fake news aside, Kimmel himself does not always put a high premium on accuracy. He’s attacked those “certain news networks” for putting Trump in context, he mocks alleged red state book bans by citing books blue school districts find problematic, and he brings his wife and writer on to say pro-life laws are killing women.
Here is a transcript for the October 23 show:
MSNBC Morning Joe
10/23/2024
8:39 AM ET
JOE SCARBOROUGH: So, you started this show, and then Trump happened. And we all manned the stations. Kind of the same thing with you. Where you didn't want to get political.
JIMMY KIMMEL [10/15/24]: Many are now seriously questioning whether Trump is healthy enough to be running for president, so what does he do? Well, he does what he always does. He questions whether his opponent is healthy enough to be running for president, Dr. Dolittle Hands was up attacking Kamala's medical records.
SCARBOROUGH: But you felt a necessity to, especially, because of your son. Can you talk about that?
KIMMEL: Yeah, I mean, I think that was more related to mainstream Republicanism and this idea that, I don't know, that it's not okay to have socialized health care, but it's fine to have socialized education.
KIMMEL [5/1/17]: If your baby is going to die and it doesn't have to, it shouldn't matter how much money you make, I think that's something that whether you're a Republican or Democrat or something else. We all agree on that, right, we do?
KIMMEL: None of it really makes sense, and it just so happened my son had open heart surgery, I was just looking at these families and thinking, it's hard enough just to take off from work to come be here all day, make sure somebody is here with your kid, the medical expenses, and then I started taking interest in it. It just so happens, I'm sitting in a children's hospital funded largely by donations, but also by the government, and I feel like I need to make something positive about this very scary thing that happened to our family.
…
KIMMEL: I'm an optimistic person, I'm not hysterical, I laugh when people say, “oh, you've got Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
If you're a reasonable person, you should have Trump Derangement Syndrome, and by the way, I think he has derangement syndrome about us, too. The fact of the matter is, this is a dangerous person, this is a stupid person, and that's a bad combination, and I think what we're forgetting, I keep forgetting it and I have to keep having to remind myself, is he's not just running for president he's running to stay out of prison and that's a pretty powerful thing, he is literally running for his freedom.
SCARBOROUGH: But it seems like everybody sort of manned, for good reason, the, sort of, battle stations, whether you’re talking about democracy. You can even look in the past week where Donald Trump’s talking about arresting his political opponents.
KIMMEL: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: He pressured -- tried to pressure Disney because of your jokes.
KIMMEL: He believes CBS should have their license revoked.
SCARBOROUGH: Because he doesn't like how they edited a 60 Minutes package. How concerned are you about what you do right now may have to change if Donald Trump is reelected?
KIMMEL: Well, it won't change. I am not -- I'm concerned, certainly. I think that it would be so un-American if he were to come after people who are speaking out against him.
SCARBOROUGH: What do you think, though, is happening in the country? Where you have two weeks out and it's one thing to just look at Donald Trump and look at some, you know, senators, but we're actually talking about 70, 75, 80 million people.
KIMMEL: Yeah. I think we're focused on the wrong things, I think we're being focused on the wrong things. I think that there are certain news networks, if you want to call them that, who are lying to people. I think that there's a certain generation, of which we are a part, who are used to watching television and seeing the white man in a suit telling us what's going on in the world and believing that what he's saying is true.
I think that is ingrained in us as Americans. We grew up with Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings and we did not question that what they were telling us was factual, and a lot of people now are looking at Sean Hannity and whomever else, and they are not questioning whether or not what they're saying is factual and what they're hearing is untrue and I can understand why they think what they think because they're being told there's a caravan of migrants coming, and then nobody is following up at the end and saying, oh, “there was no caravan of migrants coming.”
