Jimmy Kimmel appealed directly to Trump voters during his monologue.
It's a bold plan, but it might just work.
The third time wasn't the charm for President Donald Trump when it came to addressing what happened in Charlottesville over the weekend.
People across the political spectrum were stunned with what amounted to a full-throated defense of white nationalists. The New York Post's John Podhoretz called it "horrifying," CNN's Chris Cillizza warned that the speech signaled that Trump's presidency could be "headed to a very dark place," and a number of Republican members of Congress publicly distanced themselves from the president after his impromptu press conference in the Trump Tower lobby.
Also, it's not a reporter's job to say something was "nice." Come on, man. GIFs from Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube.
Late night talk show hosts once again got in on the action of criticizing Trump's comments, but Jimmy Kimmel took a somewhat unique approach.
He began with what we all know: that Trump is volatile and at times, can seem "unhinged." He got in some substantial criticism of Trump's comments, such as Trump's claim that there were "very fine people on both sides" of the Charlottesville protest.
"If you're with a group of people chanting things like, 'Jews will not replace us!' and you don't immediately leave that group, you are not a 'very fine person,'" Kimmel said.
That's when Kimmel pivoted, choosing not to simply preach to the choir of "smug, annoying liberals," but instead addressing Trump voters directly.
"I get it. I actually do," he said, offering empathy for people who felt so disaffected by the political system in the U.S. that they just wanted to "shake this Etch-a-Sketch hard and start over" with a political neophyte like Trump. But what does not make sense is why so many are continuing to stick by his side.
Since taking office, Trump's threatened a number of countries via Twitter, called the media the "enemy," skirted nepotism laws, launched a bogus "voter fraud" investigation, repeatedly confused the concept of health insurance with life insurance, divulged classified information to the Russians during an Oval Office meeting, endorsed police brutality, and so much more.
This probably isn't what Trump voters actually voted for, and Kimmel gets that. He urged Trump voters to "treat the situation like you would if you'd put 'Star Wars' wallpaper in the kitchen: 'All right, I got caught up. I was excited. I made a mistake, and now it needs to go.'"
Trump voters: your voices matter, especially right now. He needs to hear from you.
Urge him to take the job seriously. This is not a vanity project to earn him praise. People's lives are at stake.
But if appealing to vanity is the only way to get through to him, well, Kimmel has a tongue-in-cheek solution to that as well: King Trump.
The whole segment is great and is worth a watch by everyone across the political spectrum. We're all in this together.