Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday slammed Donald Trump and his administration’s attempted spinning of the narrative following the fatal shooting by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother who was killed in Minneapolis.
“This is one of those nights where it’s hard to do a show like this,” Kimmel said at the top of his opening monologue. “It’s hard to find things to laugh at and this is one of those nights.”
“You know, terrible things happen every day,” he continued. “Sad things happen, tragedies, cruelty, injustice, etc. And in most situations, it’s just a bad part of life.”
“But what do you do when something terrible happens and a big group of people, including those who are running our country, tells you it didn’t?” Kimmel asked. “They tell you you’re not seeing what you clearly see. Are you supposed to just accept it and move on? Go about your day. What do we do?”
“It’s important for us to know what happened and what is happening because if we don’t, it’s definitely going to happen again,” he warned.
Kimmel then contrasted the current moment with how leaders once responded to tragedy.
“There used to be a baseline of decency, like when let’s say a beloved director and his wife were murdered allegedly by their own son, a leader would either say something nice or say nothing at all,” he said, referring to Trump’s vitriolic attack on anti-Trump Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, following their deaths.
“Those days are gone,” Kimmel lamented. “Maybe not forever. Hopefully not forever, but for now they’re gone.”
