Jimmy Kimmel thanks Trump for huge ratings boost

Kimmel's return to late night more than tripled his usual audience, despite the fact that the show is still being preempted in over 60 American cities.

By Emma Keates  |  September 26, 2025 | 10:15am
Screenshot: Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube
TV News Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel thanks Trump for huge ratings boost

Jimmy Kimmel opened his Thursday night show—the host’s third back on-air since Disney lifted his indefinite suspension earlier this week—by asking his audience to stop clapping. “Can we not do that every night now?” he asked as the raucous cheers and chants of “Jimmy! Jimmy!” finally subsided. “I mean I appreciate it, but I also hate it. I really do.” That’s a battle he seems destined to lose. Despite Donald Trump and the FCC’s attempts to silence him, Kimmel is more popular than ever. Approximately 6.38 million viewers tuned in to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live!‘s Tuesday night return, according to updated Nielsen data (via LateNighter). That’s more than triple his audience from the week before, and that’s not even the most astounding statistic. More than 23 percent of all viewers watching television at 11:35 p.m. were tuned into the show. That marks not just Kimmel’s most watched episode in over a decade, but the highest audience share for a late-night talk show since Johnny Carson’s last in 1992. And that’s all while being preempted by 23 percent of ABC’s local affiliates. 

Kimmel addressed the record ratings in his Thursday night monologue with a shout-out to the man who gave him the assist. “It’s been a tumultuous week. Even though we’re still being preempted in 60 American cities, on Tuesday, we had our second highest rated show in almost 23 years on the air,” he said. “The monologue from Tuesday night has more than 21 million views just on YouTube alone. And I want to say we couldn’t have done it without you, Mr. President. Thank you very much.”

This comes after Trump’s proclamation that Kimmel’s “audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there” on Truth Social earlier this week. Despite the President’s wishes, it doesn’t look like Kimmel will be “rot[ting] in his bad Ratings” any time soon. The host also doesn’t show any signs of backing off Trump’s administration. Elsewhere in his monologue, he poked fun at a new poll highlighting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FCC chair Brendan Carr’s low approval ratings, spotlighted other countries’ negative coverage of U.S. politics, and spent some time chatting about Trump’s “nefarious” (Kimmel’s word) escalator-related “sabotage” (Trump’s word) at the U.N. this week. (“Is [Trump] the strongest, healthiest, most physically powerful man-beast ever elected president or a brittle-bone grandma with osteoporosis?”)

You can watch the full monologue below:

 
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