**Jimmy Kimmel and Chris Rock Deliver a Blistering, Unscripted Takedown of Trump on Live Television**
By Sarah Ellison
The New York Times
November 21, 2025
LOS ANGELES — In what may go down as the most incendiary late-night segment of the 2025 television season, Jimmy Kimmel and Chris Rock joined forces Thursday night for an unscripted, 14-minute evisceration of President Trump that left the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” studio audience on its feet and, according to multiple people close to the former president, triggered an hours-long meltdown at Mar-a-Lago.
The appearance began innocently enough. Mr. Rock, making a rare talk-show stop to promote his new Netflix special, strolled out to a standing ovation. Within 90 seconds, however, the conversation had veered sharply from stand-up to scorched-earth political comedy when Mr. Kimmel played a clip of Mr. Trump’s latest rally boast: “Nobody has done more for Black Americans than me, maybe Lincoln, maybe.”
Mr. Rock stared at the monitor for a beat, then turned to the crowd with the deadpan timing that made him famous. “Lincoln freed the slaves,” he said. “Trump freed his co-defendants. That’s not the same résumé line, my brother.”
The audience detonated. Mr. Kimmel, laughing so hard he had to steady himself on the desk, egged him on: “Keep going.”
What followed was a rapid-fire, tag-team assault that veered from policy to personal with the precision of a comedy clinic and the ferocity of a street fight. Mr. Rock mocked Mr. Trump’s recent claim that inner-city crime would vanish if he were re-elected: “Yeah, because when you’re scared of the police, you’re definitely gonna feel safer when the president’s golf buddies are the new police.” Mr. Kimmel countered with a montage of Mr. Trump mispronouncing “Kamala” at three separate events, prompting Mr. Rock to deadpan, “He can’t even say her name, but he’s gonna fix inflation? That’s like me trying to fix your car and I can’t find the steering wheel.”
The sharpest blows landed on the Epstein files controversy. When Mr. Kimmel noted Mr. Trump’s sudden support for unsealing the documents after months of opposition, Mr. Rock interrupted: “Oh, now he wants transparency? The man who won’t release his taxes, his SAT scores, or his actual height suddenly wants full disclosure? That’s not a change of heart; that’s a change of lawyer.”
At one point the two comics riffed off each other in real time:
Kimmel: “He said the country is going to hell.”
Rock: “It’s not going to hell. It’s going to one of his resorts. Same difference: overpriced, half the staff quit, and somebody’s definitely getting grifted.”
The audience roared for nearly 30 uninterrupted seconds, an eternity in live television. Cameras caught several attendees openly weeping with laughter.
By the time the segment ended, the studio was in pandemonium, with Mr. Rock and Mr. Kimmel exchanging a fist-bump as the band played them off with a triumphant riff on “Sweet Caroline” reworded as “Sweet Victory.”
The reaction from Palm Beach was swift and volcanic. Three people familiar with events at Mar-a-Lago described a chaotic scene that began the moment the show cut to commercial. Mr. Trump, watching on a large screen in the dining room, was said to have hurled a remote control, demanded the channel be changed, then demanded it be changed back so he could “see what the two losers said next.” Aides scrambled to draft responses; one senior adviser was overheard asking whether the FCC could intervene for “targeted harassment of a sitting president.” At 12:07 a.m., Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social: “Low-rated Kimmel and unfunny Chris Rock, two washed-up has-beens, are a disgrace to comedy and America. Sad!”
Mr. Rock responded an hour later with a single tweet: “Washed-up? I still got hair, sir.”
By Friday morning the clip had surpassed 31 million views across platforms, briefly crashing ABC’s streaming servers. #KimmelRock was the No. 1 trending topic worldwide; TikTok was flooded with slowed-down replays of Mr. Rock’s “Lincoln freed the slaves” line set to dramatic strings.
For Mr. Kimmel, whose show has become a nightly referendum on the Trump era, the segment represented a high-water mark. For Mr. Rock, who has largely stayed above the political fray in recent years, it was a reminder of his singular ability to distill outrage into laughter sharp enough to draw blood.
Whether the evening will have lasting political consequence is uncertain. But for one electric quarter-hour on broadcast television, two comedians did what congressional hearings, investigative reports, and opposition campaigns have struggled to do: they made the emperor’s nakedness undeniable, and they made millions laugh while doing it.
