It appears that a years-old squabble between Jimmy Kimmel and Sean Hannity has been revived. On Monday night, the Fox News pundit slammed a recent Jimmy Kimmel Live! segment in which the comedian criticized Hannity’s interview with gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner. Last week, Kimmel called Jenner an “ignorant a-hole” for making comments about homelessness in California while appearing from her Malibu airplane hangar.
“Ah, homeless people, can’t walk around ’em, can’t fly over ’em,” Kimmel said, referencing Jenner’s claims that her friend “can’t walk down the streets and see the homeless.” He continued, “Is it transphobic to call a trans person an ignorant a-hole? Or does calling that trans person an ignorant a-hole, even though she happens to be a trans person, show that we don't discriminate against ignorant a-holes no matter what their gender orientation?”
Hannity fired back on his own show Monday, asking, “Jimmy, what is with all the anger and all the cheap shots? Yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, homeless people are all over your state. And by the way, don’t you have anything better to do? Maybe actually trying to be funny or boost your dismal ratings?”
He then took aim at Kimmel for sketches on Comedy Central’s The Man Show featuring Kimmel in the early 2000s, including one in which Kimmel wore blackface. (Kimmel issued an apology last year after the clip resurfaced, saying, “I apologize to those who were genuinely hurt or offended by the makeup I wore or the words I spoke.”) Hannity urged viewers to “take a trip down memory lane” by playing the clip on-air. “You wanna talk about ignorant assholes?” he asked. “This is you dressed as Karl Malone. And check this out: This is you, an ignorant asshole, when you had a cucumber in your pants during The Man Show. And maybe your bosses at Disney can talk you out of your bad behavior.”
This isn’t the first time Kimmel and Hannity have quarreled over comedy. Back in 2018, Hannity criticized Kimmel for mocking Melania Trump’s accent, calling him a “despicable disgrace” and an “ass clown.” Kimmel replied, “If I’m an ass clown…you, Sean, are the whole-ass circus.” The pair later called a truce after Kimmel tweeted that “the level of vitriol from all sides...does nothing good for anyone and, in fact, is harmful to our country.” Hannity accepted the mea culpa, inviting Kimmel to appear on his show with the hypothesis that “you’ll actually agree with me on more issues than you think.”
It appears, though, that time hasn’t softened either’s stance on the other. “Jimmy, here’s my advice: Don’t talk about my show anymore,” Hannity declared. “You talk about my show, I’ll hit you back 50 times harder.” Kimmel has yet to respond to Hannity’s challenge—but the sound of his team searching for problematic Hannity clips (from, like, last week) echoes in the distance.
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