President Donald Trump’s crusade against Jimmy Kimmel spectacularly backfired after the talk show host’s return to the air generated enormous interest, according to CNN’s top data analyst.
Harry Enten said the average YouTube view count for Jimmy Kimmel Live! is around 240,000, but Tuesday night’s episode, following the show’s brief suspension, had more than 6.7 million views as of Wednesday morning.
“That’s over 25 times the median Jimmy Kimmel video normally gets, and it is by far the largest video in at least six months,” the chief CNN data guru said. “So if Donald Trump’s idea was to give Jimmy Kimmel more press and more viewership, he absolutely did. Of course, I don’t think that is what Donald Trump intended to do.”
Kimmel was pulled off the air following pressure from MAGA figures and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr over comments he made after the shooting of Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel had suggested MAGA was “desperately” trying to paint the suspect as “anything other than one of them,” and mocked Trump for bragging about the construction of his $200 million White House ballroom when asked how he was coping with Kirk’s death.
In an emotional monologue on Tuesday night, Kimmel said it was never his intention to “make light of the murder of a young man” but admitted his earlier comments may have “felt ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both.”
“And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset,” he said.
Kimmel also used his return to the air to make another joke at the expense of Trump and how the president “tried to cancel me.”
“Instead he forced millions of people to watch the show. That backfired bigly. He might have to release the Epstein files to distract us from this now,” Kimmel quipped.
Trump, who still insists Kimmel’s show was pulled off the air because of ratings, did not respond to the monologue directly but fumed about the late night host’s return on Truth Social shortly before Tuesday’s broadcast.
“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his show was cancelled,” Trump wrote. “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do.”
Enten noted that while TV ratings aren’t yet available, Google searches for “what time is Jimmy Kimmel” surged 10,000 percent before Tuesday’s episode.
“You wouldn’t have to check what time Jimmy Kimmel was on if you were a regular viewer. The reason that people were checking what time Jimmy Kimmel was on, because he was potentially pulling in a lot of viewers who normally didn’t watch,” Enten said.
“So no, it was not just on YouTube. There was a ton of interest nationwide, worldwide, in terms of ‘what time is Jimmy Kimmel on?’ because [people are saying] ‘I don’t normally watch him, but maybe I want to take a gander, because maybe I’m interested to hear what he has to say.’”
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