There’s no doubt that Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel are anything but friends.
Now, their war of words has erupted once again.
“Hurricane Epstein”
The long-running tension between Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel just erupted again — and this time, the president is taking aim not only at the late-night host, but at ABC itself.
The latest blow-up started after Kimmel used Wednesday night’s monologue to mock Trump over the upcoming release of court documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. Framing the situation as “Hurricane Epstein,” Kimmel joked that it was a “Category 5” storm supposedly heading straight for Trump, while offering no evidence for any wrongdoing.
In a YouTube clip titled “Trump Braces for Hurricane Epstein,” Kimmel pushed the bit even further, telling viewers that people were “one step closer” to getting answers about what Trump allegedly knew. The comments were clearly made for comedic effect, but they set off a predictable political firestorm.
Trump fired back almost immediately on Truth Social early Thursday morning, unloading on both Kimmel and ABC.
“Why does ABC Fake News keep Jimmy Kimmel, a man with NO TALENT and VERY POOR TELEVISION RATINGS, on the air?” Trump wrote, slamming the show as “totally biased” and calling on networks to “get the bum off the air.”
The president’s post renewed a feud that has simmered for years — and it arrived at a moment when Congress is pushing forward on a rare bipartisan effort: the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The bill — intended to make certain Epstein-related documents public — passed the House 427–1 and cleared the Senate with unanimous consent.
Kimmel, playing up the moment, joked that the vote margin was such a “landslide” that Trump might “rebury the Epstein files under it.” In reality, Trump signed the bill Wednesday evening, hours before Kimmel’s jokes aired.
The controversy also comes just weeks after Kimmel’s brief suspension from ABC, following inflammatory remarks involving Charlie Kirk. The show returned to air shortly afterward, with Kimmel refusing to apologize and instead taking more shots at his critics, including Trump.
Kimmel isn’t the only late-night host to set off Trump in recent days. Over the weekend, Trump also went after NBC’s Seth Meyers, openly calling for the network to fire him.
During a tense Oval Office news conference on Tuesday, the Epstein case was one of several issues raised by ABC’s Mary Bruce. Her pointed questioning clearly irritated Trump, who snapped back by calling her a “terrible reporter” and said he didn’t like her attitude. The Epstein topic seems to be hitting a nerve: just days earlier, aboard Air Force One, Trump referred to Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey as “piggy” while taking media questions.
By Wednesday, the White House press office escalated the feud even further. It released a letter listing a series of complaints against ABC News — some dating all the way back to Trump’s first term — and delivered a blistering assessment of the network.
“ABC ‘News’ is not journalism,” the press office wrote. “It’s a Democrat spin operation masquerading as a broadcast network.”
