Jimmy Kimmel calls out Elon Musk as fake friend | TV Shows

Jimmy Kimmel isn’t holding back when it comes to Elon Musk or Donald Trump.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the late-night host called Musk a “fake friend” to the former president and accused him of using political allegiances for personal gain. “Well, he’s kind of the same as Trump in a lot of ways,” Kimmel said of Musk. “I mean, he supported [Barack] Obama and then Hillary [Clinton], and now it’s convenient for him to support Trump. And to me, those are the worst people. I don’t think Trump believes in any of it, and I don’t think Elon Musk believes in it.”

“I think Elon Musk sees this as a great way to accrue a lot of power and make a lot of money, and that’s exactly what he’s doing.”

Kimmel, who’s been a vocal Trump critic both on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and while hosting the Oscars, said he still finds Trump’s rhetoric hard to normalize.

“We should be hardened” to it by now, he said: “but I’m not. It is shocking to me; it seems like a comic book villain. He seems like the kind of character that would flame out after a few years, but the fact that he’s still with us is remarkable.”

Musk fired back on X, calling Kimmel “an unfunny jerk.”

But Kimmel reserved his strongest criticism for Musk’s reaction to the attack on Paul Pelosi.

“Here’s where I realized Elon Musk was a very bad person and a dangerous person: When Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, an elderly man, was viciously attacked, his first reaction was to repost a brazenly false story suggesting that it was a male prostitute that did it,” Kimmel said.

“That’s when I realized, Oh, this is a bad person. There’s no depth to which he will not stoop. An old man was hit with a hammer and that’s his first reaction. It’s vile.”