Those aiming to shame Jimmy Kimmel anew for a seemingly untimely comment made about Rudy Giuliani days prior to the former NYC mayor’s hospitalization are literally missing the joke.
Last Tuesday, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! host joked that “America’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani, rose from the grave” to weigh in (via his Common Sense podcast) on the fallout of his joke about “expectant widow” Melania Trump, which famously pre-dated the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting/alleged President Trump assassination attempt by just two days.
Conservative podcaster Benny Johnson, for one, juxtaposed Kimmel’s “rose from the grave” remark with Giuliani’s recent hospitalization for an undisclosed issue, asking on X: “Why is Kimmel always joking about death?” (The former mayor of New York City remains in critical but stable condition.)
A brief history of Kimmel’s digs at Giuliani, however, strongly suggests that the ABC host was not lightly alluding to the ex-politician’s death, but continuing an ongoing comparison of him to, well, a vampire. And undead vampires, supernatural lore tells us, rise from their graves to make nocturnal mayhem.
- As recently as March 3, Kimmel joked that the mysterious discoloration of the back of President Trump’s right hand was probably the result of a “vampire bite” from Giuliani.
- Last November, Kimmel suggested that Trump had to pardon his former personal lawyer in the middle of the night versus daytime, else “Rudy’s skin would burst into flames.”
- And in a February 2025 JKL monologue, Kimmel likened Giuliani to both The Lord of the Rings‘ Gollum as well as a “sad old vampire.”
Those looking to drum up fresh, “expectant widow”-like drama with the timing of the Giuliani joke likely are unfamiliar with recurring themes in Kimmel’s nightly monologues.
Instead, they’d be more accurate to rewind the proverbial tape six weeks and flag a March 24 JKL monologue, which was admittedly darker.
After playing back a Common Sense podcast segment in which Giuliani lost his train of thought, resulting in many seconds of dead air, Kimmel quipped, “You’re watching the nursing home podcast network,” before saying: “Rudy Giuliani might not be with us much longer, but don’t worry. Trump’s got a whole new generation of thinkers lined up including his newly confirmed Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin.”
