Jimmy Kimmel Attempted to Humiliate Mike Lindell by Putting Him in an Arcade Machine - It Didn't Quite Work Out
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
Unfunny comedy is painful to watch. Leftist propaganda unfunny comedy is even worse. ABC’s late-night host, unfunny comedian Jimmy Kimmel, is an example of what happens when talking points are substituted for punchlines.
Kimmel thought he had a great opportunity to mock MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in person recently on his show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” At Kimmel’s request, Lindell appeared for the interview inside an arcade claw machine filled with stuffed animals.
It appears Kimmel assumed the prop would enhance the shtick he planned to hurl at Lindell. Instead, Kimmel’s stunt came across as contrived and poorly conceived. Lindell transcended the setting with good humor and good sense, not at all diminished by the gimmick.
In November 2022, Kimmel admitted his choice to offer leftism instead of laughs hurt his career. “I have lost half of my fans — maybe more than that,” he said.
Kimmel wasn’t joking about that. Forbes noted in October 2022 the ratings for “Jimmy Kimmel Live” were the lowest of the big-name late show hosts. He lost out to Fox’s “Gutfeld!” “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on CBS and NBC’s “The Tonight Show.”
According to USA Today, Lindell and Kimmel started feuding in 2021 over Lindell’s concerns about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. In his monologues, the late-night host did his bit to support the usual leftist narratives by presenting Lindell, and by extension all dissenters, as crazy or stupid.
Lindell observed back on his own streaming show, “Jimmy, your jokes aren’t funny anymore, because, you know what? People have common sense now.” He ultimately appeared in person on Kimmel’s show in April 2021.
On Jan. 30, the two had a rematch, and Lindell’s comment remains accurate. Kimmel’s jokes were not funny, and the claw machine gimmick defied common sense.
The problem is Kimmel fell into the fallacy of mistaking a straw-man caricature manufactured by establishment media talking points for the actual person he was attacking.
From the most likely pre-scripted questions Kimmel asked Lindell, it is evident the leftist narrative being pushed is “Crazy Mike Lindell is afraid of machines.”
This is a patronizing misdirection away from Lindell’s very serious claims that America’s voting machines, and therefore our elections, are insecure and unreliable. Arizona’s debacle of an election in November is just the latest evidence of this crisis. In Maricopa County, voting machines in heavily Republican areas had excessive malfunctions on Election Day.
Kimmel’s role here was to make Lindell seem deranged.
“Why don’t people take you seriously?” asked the host who requested his guest appear in a booth surrounded by toys.
Kimmel would not stop pushing the fear of machines theme. “Mike, I know that you’re distrustful of machines, now that you’re inside one, do you feel differently?” Kimmel asked.
Later he asked, “Does that extend to, like, sewing machines? Yeah, tell me, like, what about ice machines, are you OK with those?”
The audience barely responded to the jabs.
Instead, Lindell easily turned Kimmel’s awkward insults into opportunities to explain his position.
“You can make fun of that, but we know the machines I’m talking about are voting machines, computers used in elections, because we want to have elections and not selections,” he said.
This was after Lindell demolished the claw machine gag right at the start of the interview. “Remember we were kids, and uh, we questioned these carnival games whether they were rigged or not, but when we spoke up back then, we didn’t get sued, did we?” he asked.
The entrepreneur-turned-activist is being sued for defamation by Dominion after questioning the accuracy of its voting machines’ results in the 2020 election.
Lindell tossed toys to a boy pretending to play with the claw machine, observing, “It’s a rigged game.”
Even Kimmel admitted the claw machine was a misfire. His attempt to humiliate Lindell failed.
“To be honest I don’t even remember why I decided you should be in there. It seemed like a good idea when it happened,” the late-night host said.
Lindell said he had been told he was in the machine for a bit about vaccination rather than voting machines. “You tricked me, you did it to be funny, huh?” he told Kimmel.
“I have to say, I was very surprised when you said you’d do it,” Kimmel said.
Later in the segment, when James Adomian came out portraying a crude caricature of Lindell as a hysterical psycho, the discrepancy between straw man Lindell and the real man was even more evident. Besides a mustache, there was little resemblance between Lindell appearing poised, laughing and in command of the conversation, and the actor playing him as an idiot in full meltdown mode.
Lindell celebrated the outcome of the interview on his Truth Social account.
The top YouTube comments on the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” post expressed appreciation for the interaction.
“As much as we disagree about most things, if we can laugh together, we can love together,” one person said. “Like him or not, he knows how to have fun, even at the expense of himself, and if you can laugh at yourself, life is just a little bit easier for all of us. This was hilarious.”
Another said, “Wow this was brilliant. Lots of life lessons here in the fact that two people with polar opposite worldviews are still able to come together, laugh, and not take things so seriously.”
Overall, the commenters credited Lindell on his performance but gave more credit to Kimmel and the whole establishment media than is warranted. Their hostility to American values and patriots is engrained and systematic. But the sentiment of reconciliation is sound and will be vital for the future.
Lindell has made it clear he gives the glory to God for his situation. It’s why he is such a brave warrior for our freedom and rights.
It’s ironic Kimmel’s goofy setup let Lindell seamlessly bring up the topic of cheating machinery. Lindell got the last laugh in that interview.
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