Asked to recall her favorite moment on Jimmy Kimmel Live this past year, Molly McNearney answers without hesitation.
“I really loved Jimmy’s response to Trump’s most recent Truth Social post,” she explains, referring to Kimmel’s blistering monologue on Wednesday April 18th, in which he fact-checked a post from the former president in which Trump criticized Kimmel for an Oscars ratings drop that didn’t happen and a Best Picture presentation that he didn’t give.
McNearney is co-head writer and an executive producer on Jimmy Kimmel Live. She’s also married to Kimmel, giving her unique insight into the host’s thinking when he first saw Trump’s post early that morning.
“I had dropped the kids off at school and came home,” McNearney explained in a roundtable discussion with GoldDerby.com this weekend. “He was like pacing—’have you seen? Have you looked at your phone?’ And I was like, ‘What?’ I thought it was something personal in our family. And he was like, ‘we got a Christmas present…’”
“I love watching Jimmy and the writers get energized by things like that,” McNearney continued.
“Because we kind of have to talk about Trump every night just because we’re responding to the daily news cycle, but this one was personal… I love nights like that. I mean, we have too much material on nights like that. It’s great.”
Discussing the same night in a separate interview with Deadline, McNearney added. “I think if Donald Trump had any idea how genuinely happy his insults make Jimmy, he probably wouldn’t do them as much. Because I don’t think—besides our children being born—I’ve ever seen him that happy.”
