The key facts
- In the November 3 election, the Democrats won a majority in both chambers of the US Congress.
- On his late-night ABC show, Kimmel called on Trump to resign and criticized his attempts to shift blame for the defeat.
- Trump linked the Republicans' failure to the absence of his name on the ballots and, in a Fox News interview, also to the military campaign against Iran.
Call for resignation after the election
American TV host Jimmy Kimmel publicly called on US President Donald Trump to resign after the Republican Party's defeat in the midterm congressional elections. Addressing Trump on his late-night show on ABC, the comedian said: 'Just leave, just go. Nobody needs you. Even you don't want to be president anymore.' This was reported by Variety, as retold by Life.ru.
Dispute over responsibility for the defeat
The remarks were prompted by the results of the November 3 election, in which the Democrats won a majority in both chambers of Congress. Trump himself attributed the Republicans' failure to the fact that his name was not on the ballots, and suggested that with his personal involvement the party would have won. Kimmel disagreed with this assessment: in his words, Trump actively took part in the campaign, endorsed Republican candidates and effectively became the central figure of the vote, so he cannot distance himself from the party's defeat. In his monologue, the host also accused the president of dividing American society and accompanied his criticism with jokes about his political career and presumed wealth: 'Take those billions of dollars in crypto, buy an island. Maybe Epstein's island?'
Response to the White House's jabs and Trump's explanations
Kimmel also responded to statements from the administration: earlier, a White House spokesperson called the comedian a talentless loser, accusing him of spreading lies and of declining TV ratings. The host noted that after the Republicans' defeat such accusations sound particularly ill-timed, and mocked the fact that the administration has used virtually identical wording about him more than once. Trump himself had earlier said in a Fox News interview that he was somewhat surprised by the election results and had expected a stronger performance from the Republicans; he linked the party's failure in part to the military campaign against Iran, but stressed that he did not consider his decisions to be mistakes.
