By admin 
Jimmy Kimmel has publicly invited President Donald Trump to appear on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, telling an industry audience in Los Angeles that—despite years of mutual attacks—he would “love” to host Trump and would personally extend the invitation. Speaking on Wednesday, 8 October, at Bloomberg Screentime, Kimmel was asked whether he had approached the president…
Jimmy Kimmel has publicly invited President Donald Trump to appear on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, telling an industry audience in Los Angeles that—despite years of mutual attacks—he would “love” to host Trump and would personally extend the invitation.
Speaking on Wednesday, 8 October, at Bloomberg Screentime, Kimmel was asked whether he had approached the president about an interview since returning to air. “I’d love to have Trump on the show, for sure,” he replied. “All right, I’ll ask him.” The late-night host acknowledged their long-running feud but said Trump’s ubiquitous presence in political life makes him a relevant guest.
Kimmel’s remarks came less than three weeks after ABC briefly suspended his programme over comments he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a decision that triggered a wave of political blowback and celebratory posts from Trump.
The president used social media to deride the host’s ratings and to taunt ABC for restoring the show; Kimmel, during the Screentime session moderated by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw, said the suspension would not deter him from covering politics sharply. “He’s on TV all day, every day,” Kimmel said of Trump’s media saturation. “You hear him, you see him … he’s just presented himself so frequently.”
Pressed on whether he would also book regulators who have publicly criticised him, Kimmel said he had no interest in hosting Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr, who had threatened action over Kimmel’s remarks about Kirk.
“I’d love to have Trump on the show, for sure,” he repeated, adding that he would make the ask himself rather than delegating it to producers.
Fox News, which first highlighted the exchange, reported that the offer followed a question about whether Kimmel had invited either Carr or Trump since his return.
As of Friday, the White House had not said whether Trump would accept. TMZ reported that Kimmel had not yet reached out formally but planned to do so, an account consistent with the host’s off-the-cuff pledge at the event.
The invitation represents a marked shift from Kimmel’s usual posture toward the president, whom he has routinely mocked in nightly monologues, though the host has interviewed Trump before and said he would conduct a direct, on-air conversation if the president agreed.
The two men have a documented on-again, off-again broadcast history that predates the antagonism of recent years. Trump appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live during his 2016 campaign after an earlier, last-minute cancellation in 2015 that Kimmel ribbed him for on air.
Transcripts and video from the 2015 and 2016 interviews show the then-candidate discussing party unity, campaign rhetoric and his medical letter, with Kimmel pressing him on policy and temperament in a largely civil exchange.
Their relationship later hardened into open hostility. In March 2024, while hosting the Oscars, Kimmel read out a contemporaneous Truth Social post in which Trump called him the “WORST HOST” and urged ABC to “get rid of Kimmel.”
Kimmel replied from the stage: “Isn’t it past your jail time?” He said afterward he had been advised not to read the post on air but chose to do it anyway. The moment turned a long-running late-night bit into a prime-time clash, and it has remained a touchstone in their exchanges since.
In recent days Kimmel has continued to target Trump’s policies as well as his personality. On his show this week, he condemned the administration’s National Guard deployments to liberal-led cities as “incredibly dangerous and unnecessary,” aligning with fellow hosts who framed the moves as political theatre.
That criticism formed part of the backdrop for his surprise invitation: a signal that, while the monologues will continue, the host is willing to test the feud across a desk rather than a distance.
The White House, for its part, has alternated between belittling and spotlighting Kimmel. Trump celebrated ABC’s brief suspension of the programme and hinted at legal and regulatory pressure on the network.
“We’re going to test ABC out on this,” he said in late September, boasting about previous litigation against the broadcaster’s parent company. The rhetoric reinforced a pattern that has seen the president single out late-night hosts—Kimmel foremost among them—as political adversaries, even as those programmes remain potential venues for high-audience interviews.
Entertainment outlets covering Kimmel’s Screentime remarks noted that the host cast the invitation less as a rapprochement than as a practical booking decision in a political media climate he said had changed the job of late-night.
People quoted Kimmel saying he has long been interested in politics and was simply more public about it during Trump’s presidency and return to office. Entertainment Weekly reported that he closed the session by reiterating, “I’ll ask him,” when pressed again on whether he would host Trump.
Kimmel also used the forum to draw a line between his stance on Trump and his stance toward officials he believes have tried to chill speech. He said he would not invite Chairman Carr, whose criticisms preceded ABC’s pause, but left open the possibility of grilling the president across from his band and studio audience.
Fox News and other outlets amplified the exchange, framing it as an olive branch or challenge depending on one’s view of late-night’s role in a political era.
If Trump were to accept, it would be his first return to Kimmel’s set since the 2016 campaign. Past appearances featured a mix of banter and pointed questions—Kimmel once confronted Trump over a vague, glowing doctor’s note describing the candidate’s health; on another outing, he pressed him about unity after a bruising primary.
Those interviews unfolded before the cascade of mutual insults that later made Kimmel a reliable foil in Trump’s speeches and social posts and made Trump a nightly fixture in Kimmel’s monologues.
Kimmel’s invitation also dropped amid fresh culture-war skirmishes around late-night television more broadly. The president has taunted other hosts online and in interviews, celebrated cancellations and staff shake-ups, and painted network late-night as hostile to his supporters.
Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers have embraced the combative framing, arguing that the scale of Trump’s policy moves requires commentary; Jimmy Fallon has tended to aim for a lighter, less partisan tone.
Kimmel’s willingness to host Trump does not signal a change in that editorial stance, his remarks suggested, but rather an attempt to bring adversarial questioning into the room.
The show’s production, briefly interrupted last month, has resumed on its regular schedule at ABC’s El Capitan Entertainment Centre in Hollywood. ABC has not commented on the prospects of a presidential booking, a decision that would involve both news and entertainment divisions given the security and political sensitivities.
Late-night programmes have handled presidential interviews before—including during campaigns—but a sit-down between Kimmel and Trump now would carry an unusual charge given the litigation and regulatory threats the president has floated against the network and its peers.
Trump’s media strategy has fluctuated between favouring friendly outlets and seizing high-visibility platforms he believes he can dominate. He appeared frequently on network and cable news during his previous campaigns, sparred with debate moderators, and used social posts to both bypass and bait mainstream media.
A Kimmel appearance would test that approach in a room where the host has honed the kind of needling that provokes viral moments. Whether the White House sees value in that risk may hinge on the interview’s format, ground rules and timing, none of which have been negotiated. As Kimmel put it this week, the first step is simple: ask.
The immediate story remains straightforward: a top network host who has mocked the president for years said on the record that he wants him as a guest and will make the invitation himself; a White House that has castigated the same host has yet to respond publicly; and a national audience accustomed to seeing the feud play out through monologues and posts may soon see it tested face-to-face.
If Trump accepts, the booking would reunite two figures whose televised encounters began as normal campaign fare and evolved into one of the defining media rivalries of the past decade. If he declines, the moment will stand as a marker of how far late-night has moved toward direct engagement with the politics it covers—and how far the presidency has moved toward treating network studios as battlegrounds.