LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jimmy Kimmel is not any defender of democracy.
No less than he turned down the title when a reporter instructed he may be.
“Those are heavy thoughts and I have a tendency to to reject them,” he said backstage this weekend at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards. “I don’t really feel like I’m defending democracy.”
He mentioned he is doing one thing a lot smaller when he lays into President Donald Trump.
“I’m giving this guy a little poke, and he deserves it, and I enjoy it, and I hope that people enjoy it too,” Kimmel mentioned.
Because the 57-year-old TV character spoke he was holding his fourth Primetime Emmy Award, this one for greatest recreation present host for his helming of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” He is up for one more Sunday for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Kimmel is, undoubtedly although, a defender of Stephen Colbert — and voted for him too.
When his good friend and fellow late-night host Colbert had his “Late Show” canceled in July, three days after criticizing a settlement between Trump and CBS father or mother firm Paramount International because it was looking for administration approval for a merger, Kimmel cursed CBS and shared his love for Colbert. Executives insisted the choice was monetary.
Later he erected a billboard in Los Angeles declaring “I am voting for Stephen,” throwing his endorsement to his opponent of their Emmy race within the speak sequence class.
Kimmel was on an extended trip from ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” when Colbert’s cancellation occurred, however weighed in when he returned final week.
“CBS, rapidly out of the blue, claimed ‘The Late Show’ was dropping $40 million a yr after which miraculously obtained FCC approval to promote their firm, which is what they wished,” he mentioned.
He additionally responded to Trump, who posted on Fact Social, “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next,” Trump wrote. “Has even less talent than Colbert.”
“Oh, you delicate, chubby little teacup, did we hurt your feelings?” Kimmel said on his show. “You want us to be canceled because we make jokes about you. I thought you were against cancel culture.”
One way or the other none of Kimmel’s Emmys are for the late-night present he is hosted for 22 years — although most of his 27 nominations are.
One is for internet hosting the Oscars. Two are for the particular all-star recreations of previous sitcoms he produced between 2019 and 2021, “Live in Front of a Studio Audience.” Requested if he is given any thought to reviving these, he mentioned not with out his associate within the undertaking, Norman Lear, who died at age 101 in 2023.
“It would be too emotional to do it without Norman,” Kimmel said. “I don’t know if my heart could take it.”
He’s additionally a three-time Emmys host — a job that this yr will go to Nate Bargatze when the present airs on CBS.
And he received a daytime Emmy as greatest recreation present host for his work on Comedy Central’s “Win Ben Stein’s Money” approach again in 1999, earlier than the award obtained promoted to primetime.
“After we received that Emmy, we went on the air the identical week ‘South Park’ went on the air, and Comedy Central was not a channel that many individuals watched,” Kimmel said at the Creative Arts Emmys. “And we have been up in opposition to these titans, the identical exhibits we’re up in opposition to now, ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and ‘Jeopardy.’ We didn’t know anybody was watching the present. I believe it was the primary Emmy Comedy Central ever received.”
Requested how lengthy he plans to maintain his present present going, he stored it obscure.
“I’m not prepared to answer that question, but it is something I think about a lot,” he said with a smile. “Each day is a new adventure, and I kind of take them as they come, is that a good way of dodging the question?”
