Stephen Colbert gave a surprise shoutout to his late-night peer Jimmy Kimmel on Monday, all to make a point about President Donald Trump’s apparent history-erasing influence over the Smithsonian.
“Here’s what happened,” Colbert explained. “The Smithsonian has a longstanding exhibit on presidential impeachment… In 2021, after the whole ‘Trump sent a mob to storm the Capitol’ thing, they added a label that included content about Trump’s two impeachments.”
Colbert joked, “That kind of pressure explains why the Smithsonian exhibit on the 1960s now says that the Vietnam War was started by Jimmy Kimmel.”
Colbert showed a photoshopped picture of a museum exhibit titled, “The Vietnam War: Jimmy’s Idea.”
He joked further, “Evidently, the whole thing was just a prank that got out of hand.”
Kimmel has frequently attracted Trump’s ire, and is the late-night host who Trump seems to despise the most.
Even in light of Colbert’s cancellation announcement in July, Trump quickly moved on from gloating about Colbert so he could speculate about Kimmel being cancelled next.
After referencing Kimmel in his monologue, Colbert quietly blew a kiss to the camera.
The oddly sweet, sincere gesture comes mere weeks after Kimmel defended Colbert amid his cancellation from CBS.
“Love you Stephen,” Kimmel posted on Instagram shortly after the news broke. To CBS, he wrote, ”F— you and all your Sheldons.”
Kimmel took his Colbert support even further on Friday by running an FYC Emmys campaign for Colbert’s show instead of his own. Kimmel put up a billboard in West Hollywood reading, “I’m voting for Stephen.”