{"id":325010,"date":"2025-12-19T17:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/325010\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T17:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:27:07","slug":"jimmy-kimmel-on-a-tumultuous-year-dont-know-what-the-american-way-even-is-any-more-late-night-tv-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/325010\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Kimmel on a tumultuous year: \u2018Don\u2019t know what the American way even is any more\u2019 | Late-night TV roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late-night hosts reflected on a rollercoaster 2025 and Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s combative, primetime year-end address<\/a> to the nation.<\/p>\n

Jimmy Kimmel<\/p>\n

Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> opened his final monologue of 2025 with an emotional reflection on a tumultuous year. \u201cThis has been a strange year. It\u2019s been a hard year,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had some lows. We\u2019ve had some highs. For me, maybe more than any year of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Kimmel, of course, endured a brief suspension<\/a> of his show under pressure from the Trump administration, igniting national outcry over censorship, as well as the death of his childhood friend and longtime band leader Cleto Escobedo. Though the host said he thought the show would be gone forever, he ultimately signed<\/a> a one-year contract extension with ABC.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn behalf of all of us at the show, I just want to say that we appreciate your support, your enthusiasm, and not just for watching. This year, you literally pulled us out of a hole and we cannot thank you enough,\u201d Kimmel told the audience. \u201cI know there are a lot harder jobs, but this is not an easy job to do and sometimes it feels like we\u2019re spinning our wheels. You see so many awful and destructive acts, all this damage we inflict on ourselves on purpose, and it can make you feel crazy trying to wrap your head around these things that are so clearly wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, you grew up reading Superman, and you learn to value truth, justice and the American way, and then you start to realize, especially over the last year, you don\u2019t know where that all went,\u201d he continued. \u201cYou don\u2019t know what the American way even is any more. But when I hear from people who tell me that they watch our show and the shows that my friends and colleagues do on the other channels and that it makes them feel less crazy. It makes me feel less crazy too, and I think that\u2019s an important thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also think it\u2019s important that we as Americans let our friends in other countries who watch the show on YouTube, on Instagram, Hulu, wherever, know that a lot of us are not OK with what is happening,\u201d he added. \u201cThere is still much more good in this country than bad, and we hope that you will bear with us during this extended psychotic episode that we\u2019re in the middle of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kimmel then turned to Trump\u2019s end-of-year message on prime time, which constituted \u201c18 straight minutes of him yelling. It\u2019s like the whole country got to experience what it was like to be Eric in the eighth grade.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd while his delivery was erratic, his message was insane,\u201d he added before several clips that seemed outlandish even for the outlandish president. \u201cThere were so many lies. Eleven factcheckers died watching that speech last night,\u201d Kimmel joked. \u201cAt some points, it was hard to tell if he was giving a speech or having a seizure on TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seth Meyers<\/p>\n

On Late Night, Seth Meyers<\/a> also combed through Trump\u2019s primetime address \u201cin which the president once again tried to convince people that actually, things are great, and if they\u2019re not, it\u2019s the Democrats\u2019 fault\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump claimed, among other things, that other countries were \u201cnot laughing any more\u201d at the US, that \u201cthe worst thing that the Biden administration did to our country is the invasion at the border\u201d and that Democrats were \u201cdemanding\u201d the increase in health premiums. Also: \u201cOne year ago our country was dead. We were absolutely dead. Our country was ready to fail, totally fail. Now we\u2019re the hottest country anywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The whole spectacle made Meyers exclaim: \u201cStop yelling at us, grandpa! If you don\u2019t want us to come home and visit you at the retirement home on Christmas, we\u2019ll happily stay where we are.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, I\u2019m sorry, but if you need to tell people that America is the \u2018hottest country in the world\u2019, that means it\u2019s not,\u201d he added. \u201cIf you\u2019re walking through midtown and someone hands you a flyer that says \u2018the hottest club in Times Square\u2019, don\u2019t go there. It will just be you and 50 dads from Wisconsin trying to figure out how a beer can cost $23.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe speech was so unhinged and so full of obvious lies that CNN\u2019s factchecker had to race through them and still ran out of time,\u201d he concluded. \u201cAmericans are struggling with rising costs<\/a> and a slowing economy<\/a>, and instead of demonstrating empathy and a plan to fix it, Trump\u2019s just scolding everyone through the TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Colbert<\/p>\n

\u201cI think years from now, we\u2019ll all remember where we were when we did not watch Donald Trump\u2019s speech last night,\u201d said Stephen Colbert<\/a> on the Late Show.<\/p>\n

The White House requested that all major national networks pre-empt their 9pm ET programming, a big ask that usually only happens \u201cfor something really big, like George W Bush declaring the war on terror, Obama revealing that American forces had killed Bin Laden, or Joe Biden announcing that the Amtrak dining car now has warm cookies\u201d.<\/p>\n

The big national emergency this time? As Trump put it: \u201cGood evening, America. Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess and I\u2019m fixing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colbert launched into his Trump impression: \u201cAnd it\u2019s gonna be great. Do not be alarmed that the forest has begun to reclaim the White House. And I know there\u2019s no one in this tiny room but me and the cameraman right there, but we\u2019ve made sure to crank up this giant mic so that it covers my waddle.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure what the emergency was here other than his poll numbers, because he just played the old hits,\u201d he explained, including transphobia, crime and \u201cwords such as that just absolutely forbidden\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, words such as \u2018that\u2019 were absolutely forbidden,\u201d Colbert mocked. \u201cUnder Biden you couldn\u2019t say \u2018that\u2019. You had to say \u2018this, but over there\u2019. But under Donald Trump<\/a> we\u2019re finally saying \u2018Merry That-mas\u2019 again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like even Trump might have felt uncertain about his performance,\u201d he continued, because after the combative address, the president reportedly turned to the press and said: \u201cYou think that\u2019s easy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGiving that speech? Yeah, I do,\u201d Colbert responded. \u201cWatching it, on the other hand \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late-night hosts reflected on a rollercoaster 2025 and Donald Trump\u2019s combative, primetime year-end address to the nation. Jimmy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-325010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}