Donald Trump said the quiet part out loud when he promised that, if he is reelected president in November, he’ll use the justice department to take down his enemies. And Jimmy Kimmel is not wrong to imagine that he might be near the very top of that list. So he used part of the 20 minutes he had to sit down with Vice President Kamala Harris Tuesday night to ask a very important question: should he be worried?
“Trump has made it pretty plain that he’s planning to go after his ‘enemies’ or whatever you want to call them,” Kimmel said. “Realistically, what can a president do to, umm, say a talk show host that has been making fun of him… What can he actually do to, like, oh, for example, me?”
While Harris understood that the question was asked partly in jest, she doesn’t seem to think it’s totally a joking matter.
“In all seriousness Jimmy, you’re right to bring this up,” Harris replied. “[Trump] has been very clear he intends to weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies. He admires dictators and says he’ll be a dictator on day one.”
While Harris didn’t exactly answer Kimmel’s question, she did ultimately express her opinion that “the former president is a hypocrite. And will apply one set of standards to himself and another to others.”
Kimmel, clearly in agreement, took it one step further: “He puts the ‘hippo’ in hypocrite.” (You can jump to this part of the conversation at around the 16:45 mark.)
The interview wasn’t all about Trump’s disdain for Jimmy Kimmel Live! and other late-night shows that have spent years poking fun at the former president. Among the more pressing topics the two discussed were reproductive rights, the very real possibility of a nationwide abortion ban, the importance of maintaining the Affordable Care Act, immigration legislation, Trump’s recent felony conviction (during which Kimmel was brought up more than once), and whether Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, “pushed the twin beds in the master bedroom back together” after moving into the Vice President’s Residence vacated by Mike and Karen Pence.
“We brought our own bed,” Harris offered to that last conundrum.
The VP’s visit to Kimmel marks the latest in a series of presidential press stops with late-night hosts ahead of the 2024 election. In February, Seth Meyers hosted President Biden for Late Night’s 10th anniversary show. The next month, Stephen Colbert sat down with Presidents Biden, Obama, and Clinton at a New York fundraiser, which ended up hauling in a reported $26 million for the Biden reelection campaign.
Kimmel is set to sit down with President Biden and former President Barack Obama himself on June 15th at a Los Angeles fundraiser for the president’s campaign. Both Biden and Obama have guested on Jimmy Kimmel Live! four times each.
