Kimmel Tells Trump to Resign After Midterm Losses

Jimmy Kimmel told Donald Trump to resign on Wednesday, 4 November. "Quit already, just quit," he said in his monologue, the opening comic speech that starts a late-night talk show. He made the remark after Democrats won the 2026 midterm elections, according to Variety.

The midterms are the national elections held halfway through a US president's term. Republicans lost control of both the House and the Senate, the two chambers of Congress, TV Insider reported.

Kimmel responded to a claim Trump made about the results. Trump had said Republicans would have won more races if he had been on the ballot. Kimmel's answer was four words: "You were on the ballot." He went on to say that Trump "has no allegiance to anyone or anything" and that "the only party he leads is the slumber party." Mashable reported that Kimmel was reacting to Trump blaming everyone but himself for the results. Kimmel said Trump had cost Republicans the vote "big-time," according to Yahoo Entertainment.

The White House hit back quickly. Spokesperson Danny Ingle issued a statement calling Kimmel "a no-talent loser who has beclowned himself with tanking ratings." Kimmel noted on air that the wording was almost word-for-word the same statement the White House had issued about him twice in the past year.

This is not the first time the two have clashed in public. Reuters reported in April 2026 that Trump had demanded Kimmel be fired, in a video report from that month. Kimmel has not been taken off the air over the exchanges reported so far, and neither the network nor the White House has announced any change to his programme.

For viewers, the story is simple. A late-night host used his opening segment to call for a sitting president's resignation, and the president's office answered in kind within hours. Kimmel's monologue is the kind of moment that gets clipped, shared and argued over the next morning, long after the cameras stop rolling.