In his televised return Monday night, following the death of his bandleader Cleto Escobedo III last week, Jimmy Kimmel criticized President Trump for his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein government files in recent months.
The ABC star specifically took aim at Trump’s abrupt about-face on the subject Sunday night. Rather than continuing to oppose the release of the Epstein files, Trump posted on Truth Social urging House Republicans to vote “yes” on a bill requiring the Justice Department to release all of its Epstein files. “We have nothing to hide,” Trump wrote in the message, which Kimmel found amusing.
“I have bad news: there is no “We”. It’s just you, bro,” the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” the host joked. “Dude, if you have nothing to hide, why even hold the vote? Why not just have the Justice Department release the records?” Kimmel then pointed out how Trump’s sudden change in attitude truly was out of character.
“After 10 months of fighting tooth and nail, doing everything he could to keep these files secret, he is now asking for a full release, which is what got all these guys in trouble in the first place,” Kimmel recapped. “Last week, he attempted a last-minute ploy to get Republicans like Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace to back down on the Epstein thing.”
“Lauren Boebert was even summoned to the crisis room to be treated by [U.S. Attorney General] Pam Bondi and [FBI Director] Kash Patel,” he continued. “They tried to persuade her to withdraw her signature from the petition demanding that the files be made public, which is exactly what someone who is completely innocent and has nothing to hide would do.”
As Americans now know, the Trump administration’s attempts to reduce House Republicans’ support for Congress’s pending Epstein files bill have proven unsuccessful. As a result, the president seems to have adopted a new way of handling the files in question.
“Boebert and Mace did not give in to the pressure campaign,” the late-night host explained. “Now Trump has ordered his attorney general to investigate Democrats’ ties to Jeffrey Epstein, which is akin to Diddy ordering an investigation into why there were so many bottles of baby oil in his house.”
Kimmel didn’t finish his Monday monologue before turning to the thousands of Epstein emails released by House Democrats and Republicans last week. “The one that got the most attention this weekend was a reference to Trump ‘blowing up’ a person named Bubba,” Kimmel noted. “Man, he couldn’t even let Hillary have that, could he?”
“This Bubba thing got so crazy that Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, who wrote that email, came forward to clarify that the Bubba he was referring to was not Bill Clinton,” he concluded. “Who is Bubba then? Maybe Gump? Maybe he was a deep-throated shrimp? We don’t know.”
