Jimmy Kimmel Live! premiered on ABC 18 years ago yesterday. In that time, Jimmy Kimmel has made a lot of Donald Trump jokes. In fact, he’s probably made more cracks about the former-president than any other public figure in his nearly two decades as a late-night host, with the exception of Matt Damon. During Tuesday’s episode, Kimmel looked back at the first Trump joke he told — and yes, “it is about his hair,” he cracked.
The clip comes from the January 13, 2004 episode, where Kimmel is discussing how “it’s going to be the coldest week in two decades on the East Coast. It’s supposed to be minus eight in New York over the next couple of days… It’s so cold in New York, Donald Trump’s combover broke off.” Maybe not the finest joke, but as Kimmel noted, “It was a simpler time.” What was Trump doing in 2004? That was the year The Apprentice debuted on NBC. It’s also when he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “in many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat. It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.” Again, a simpler time.
As for Kimmel’s first Biden joke, that happened in August 2008. “Barack Obama’s freshly-minted running mate, Senator Joe Biden, also spoke tonight. I have to say, after all the name-related problems this campaign has had, why Obama would pick a vice president with the last name ‘Biden’ is beyond me,” he said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with the name ‘Biden,’ [but] it’s like they’re trying to make their ticket sound as much like Osama Bin Laden as possible. We found the two guys in America whose names matched up most closely with the person we hate more than anyone in the world and they put them on the bumper stickers.” Hm, maybe the time wasn’t so simple after all.
You can watch the monologue above.