Jimmy Kimmel Mocks Donald Trump’s Bizarre Method of Grieving Charlie Kirk
Kimmel joked that Donald Trump had invented a new stage of grief.
Jimmy Kimmel can’t get over the way Donald Trump has responded to the assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
When the president was asked by a reporter last Friday about Kirk’s death, Trump said he was holding up “very good”—and then instantly switched the subject to the construction of his White House ballroom.
“He’s at the fourth stage of grief: construction,” Kimmel joked.
Q: My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. How are you holding up?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 12, 2025
TRUMP: I think very good. And by the way, right there you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get… pic.twitter.com/Jrw4j2fnVZ
“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend,“ Kimmel said. ”This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK?"
“And it didn’t just happen once,” Kimmel said. He showed a clip of Trump on Fox News, where the president again responded to a question about Kirk’s death by talking mostly about his ballroom.
Trump on Charlie Kirk: "Oh, when I heard it? I was in the midst of building a great -- for 150 years they've wanted a ballroom at the White House, right? They have to use tents for President Xi when he comes over. If it rains, it's a wipeout. And so I was with the architects ...… pic.twitter.com/wBV5yz2nUC
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 12, 2025
“There’s something wrong with him, there really is,” Kimmel said. “Who thinks like that?”
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Kimmel added, “And why are we building a $200 million ballroom in the White House? Is it possible that he’s doing it intentionally so we can be mad about that instead of the Epstein list?”
Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer, Tyler Robinson, was taken into custody last Thursday, the day after Kirk was shot during an open-air event at Utah Valley University.
Although prominent Democrats have widely condemned the murder and Robinson’s political leanings have proven hard to narrow down, Trump has blamed the tragedy on a “radical left group of lunatics.”
Kimmel claimed Trump’s “MAGA gang” are “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Kimmel also shared a clip of Trump saying in a Fox News interview Friday that right-wing voters should get their revenge not through violence but “at the voting box.”
It was a remark that Kimmel described as “almost presidential,” if not for the fact that Trump kept talking.
“I can’t really say at the ballot box,“ Trump said, before falsely adding, ”because in some cases, like California, it doesn’t have ballot boxes.”
“Well, in that case, begin the purge,” Kimmel joked. He noted, “For the record, we live in California. We do have ballot boxes.”
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