Randy Holmes/ABC via Getty Images; Billy Weiss/Getty Images
Jimmy Kimmel is back Jimmy Kimmel Live! on his first show of the year and delivered a scathing monologue after Aaron Rodgers’ baseless suggestion that he was linked to Jeffrey Epstein.
On Monday, the comedian grilled the quarterback for seven minutes, calling him a “hamster guy” who “thinks he knows what the government is up to because he’s a quarterback who does YouTube research and listens to podcasts.”
Rodgers said last week on ESPN The Pat McAfee Show That he would pop “some kind of bottle” once a “list” of Epstein’s associates was released, and that “a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel,” were hoping said list wouldn’t appear. Unsurprisingly, Kimmel’s name was not found anywhere among the hundreds of pages of unsealed records that were part of Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 civil case against Ghislaine Maxwell.
In response to the Jets star’s indiscreet comments, Kimmel threatened to sue Rodgers. While Kimmel took some time out of his vacation to talk about “Aasshole” on X (formerly Twitter), the host stopped by Monday night.
“I don’t know Jeffrey Epstein. I never met Jeffrey Epstein. “I wasn’t on a list, or a plane, or an island or anything at all,” Kimmel began during his opening monologue. “I suggested that if Aaron wanted to make very false and damaging statements like that, we should do it in court so he could share his evidence with, say, a judge. Because when you hear a guy who won the Super Bowl and did all the State Farm commercials say something like that, a lot of Of people believe him. “A lot of frankly delusional people think I get together with Tom Hanks and Oprah at Shakey’s once a week to eat pizza and drink baby blood.”
After discovering that Rodgers had retaliated for a 2023 segment on his show that highlighted the quarterback’s weakness for conspiracy theories, Kimmel went on to suggest that Rodgers was suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect — “the cognitive bias in which people with limited ability to be competent in a particular area “Overestimate their abilities.”
“Aaron Rodgers has a very high opinion of himself, because he has had success on the football field. He believes he is an extraordinary being. He honestly believes that because God gave him the ability to throw the ball, he is smarter than everyone else. The idea that his brain is average It’s just unfathomable to him. We’ve learned during the COVID-19 crisis that somehow he knows more about science than scientists.
Kimmel explained that he is not “one of those people who thinks that athletes and members of the sports media should stick to talking about sports,” and said that Rodgers “has the right to express any opinion he wants but to say that someone is a pedophile is unacceptable.” It is not an opinion, nor is it idle talk. Sorry, Pat McAfee.
To those who argue that the comedian says “stuff about people all the time,” Kimmel responded, saying, “We don’t make up lies.” He added: “We have a team of people who work hard to check facts and reputable sources before I tell a joke and that’s an important distinction.”
Kimmel noted that although he sometimes makes mistakes, he apologizes for them, and suggested that Rodgers should do the same. “That’s what Aaron Rodgers should do. That’s what a decent person would do,” the late-night host said. “But I bet he won’t. If he does that, you know what I’ll do, I’ll accept his apology and move on. But he probably won’t do that.”