After spending much of Monday night defending himself against criticism from Melania Trump, Donald Trump, and the White House, Jimmy Kimmel still found time to go on the offensive. This time, his punchlines took aim at guest with a last-minute cancellation.
Kimmel took a dig at Oz Pearlman, the mentalist who had been set to headline this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner before plans unraveled over the weekend. Pearlman’s booking had already raised eyebrows, breaking with the dinner’s long-standing tradition of featuring a comedian to deliver a roast of the political elite.
Kimmel, clearly unimpressed with the decision to appease President Trump, responded last week by staging his own mock WHCD on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The segment included the now-infamous joke about Melania Trump that helped spark the current controversy.
But Pearlman never got the chance to perform at the real event. A gunman attack at Saturday’s dinner derailed the evening. He was then slated to appear on Monday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, in what could have been an awkward but interesting follow-up. Instead, ABC quietly pulled Pearlman from the lineup and replaced him with Pod Save America co-host Jon Lovett.
During the interview, Lovett joined others who have defended Kimmel. “You were using your First Amendment right to poke fun at people in power,” Lovett said. “And that’s what that whole weekend used to be about before they changed comedian to mentalist.”
“Do you have any mentalist powers that you can share with us?” Kimmel asked Lovett. “I’m sending a message to the mentalist right now: You cancelled, you f***ing p***y," he responded, getting a loud response from the audience and Kimmel.
Kimmel piled on, joking that he’d been attempting to reach Pearlman himself. “I’ve been sending him that message all day,” he added, clearly enjoying the chance to take the mentalist down a peg.
Earlier in the night, Kimmel had already delivered a pitch-perfect response to the political backlash surrounding his WHCD parody, pushing back on calls for his firing while expressing sympathy for those affected by the weekend’s violence. Yet when it came to Pearlman, the gloves came off.
While Kimmel stood his ground amid criticism from the highest levels of government, Pearlman ended up choosing to stay out of it, leaving Kimmel to absorb the fallout alone. Had Lovett not said anything, Pearlman likely would have skated by with the assumption being a scheduling conflict or the need to recover from a traumatic experience. But the jokes suggest Pearlman's decision didn't go over well with everyone at Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
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