For anyone who might not already know where Jimmy Kimmel stands on the upcoming midterm elections, his choice of musical guest for Tuesday night’s midterm-night episode offers a pretty good hint.
As Democrats hope to corral Republicans’ grip on Washington, Jimmy Kimmel Live! will welcome rockers Cage the Elephant.
The elephant, of course, has been associated with the Republican Party since the 1870s, when political cartoonist Thomas Nast helped popularize the animal as a symbol of the GOP.
Kimmel has hardly been subtle about his hopes for Tuesday, either. Earlier this week, he invoked the possibility of a “big, beautiful, blue wave” while urging viewers to vote.
Tuesday won’t be Cage the Elephant’s first visit to Kimmel. The Kentucky rock band has performed on JKL four times over the years, beginning in January 2011 and returning in 2013, 2019, and most recently in May 2024.
For the record, there’s nothing political about the band’s name. Frontman Matt Shultz has offered a few variations of its origin over the years, most famously telling Spin that it came from a stranger the band encountered after a show in Tennessee who repeatedly told him, “You have to cage the elephant.”
The two-time Grammy winners returned this summer with “Beaches in Tennessee,” its first new single in two years, followed in September by “Dying in Reverse.” The band is working on its next album, though no title or release date has yet been announced.
And Cage the Elephant won’t be Kimmel’s only politically appropriate booking Tuesday night. The four hosts of Pod Save America—Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor, and Dan Pfeiffer—will join Kimmel as his interview guests.
As LateNighter reported yesterday, NBC is preempting both The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers for continuous election coverage Tuesday night, while CBS is likewise turning its late-night hours over to its news division.
ABC, by contrast, is sticking with Jimmy Kimmel Live! at 11:35 p.m., giving Kimmel the only traditional broadcast late-night comedy show on the air as midterm results come in.
