Jimmy Kimmel returned to late-night after his winter hiatus and addressed his feud with Aaron Rodgers.
The New York Jets quarterback insinuated Kimmel’s name would appear as an associate of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. On his first show for 2024, the ABC late-night show host said it was “already a crazy year” following the allegations.
Kimmel said in his monologue that when the list came out, “Of course, my name wasn’t on it and isn’t on it and won’t ever be on. I don’t know Jeffrey Epstein. I’ve never met Jeffrey Epstein. I am not on the list. I was not on a plane or an island or anything — ever.
The comedian reminded audiences that his response to Rodgers’ claims was that if he “wanted to make false and very damaging statements like that, we should do it in court so he could share his proof with a judge.”
Kimmel said that when people hear these things coming from “a guy who won a Super Bowl and did all the State Farm commercials,” people are inclined to believe him.
“A lot of delusional people honestly believe I am meeting up with Tom Hanks and Oprah at Shakies once a week to eat pizza and drink the blood of children,” he added. “And I know this because I hear from these people often. My wife hears from them. My kids hear from them, my poor mailman hears from these people. And now we’re hearing from lots more of them thanks to Aaron Rodgers.”
Kimmel then went on to theorize that Rodgers didn’t actually believe his name was on Epstein’s list and only said what he said “because he’s mad at me for making fun of his top knot and his lies about being vaccinated.” The stand-up comedian reminded viewers of the joke he made at Rodgers’ expense for the quarterback’s theory of UFO news being reported on to distract people from the Epstein list getting released.
“So he saw that and, maybe to retaliate, he decided to insinuate that I am a pedophile,” Kimmel continued. “This is how these nuts do it now. You don’t like Trump — you’re a pedophile. It’s their go-to move. And it shows you how much they actually care about pedophilia.”
Kimmel said he knows guys like Rodgers who have “a very high opinion of themselves,” being that “he had success on the football field.”
“He believes himself to be an extraordinary being. He genuinely thinks that because God gave him the ability to throw a ball, he’s smarter than everyone else,” the host continued. “The idea that his brain is just average is unfathomable to him. We learned during Covid [that] somehow he knows more about science than scientists. A guy who went to community college then got into Cal on a football scholarship and didn’t graduate. Someone who never spent a minute studying the human body is an expert in the field of immunology. He just put on a magic helmet and that G made him a genius.”
RELATED: ESPN Responds To Pat McAfee’s Claims Executive Is “Trying To Sabotage” His Show
Kimmel continued, “Aaron got two A’s on his report card and they were both in the word Aaron. Can you imagine that this hamster brain man thinks he knows what the government is up to because he’s a quarterback doing research on YouTube and listening to podcasts?”
The host called Rodgers’ condition The Dunning Kruger effect, which he says “is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities.”
“In order words, Aaron Rodgers is too arrogant to know how ignorant he is. They let him host Jeopardy! for two weeks and now he knows everything,” Kimmel joked.
Kimmel acknowledged that Rodgers has the right to his opinion, “but saying someone is a pedophile is not an opinion, not is it trash talk. Sorry, Pat McAfee.” The latter was a response to McAfee, who defended Rodgers by saying he was just trash-talking as a joke over their previous history.
Rodgers appears on The Pat McAfee Show every Tuesday and is expected to address the feud on his next appearance.
Kimmel says that he is not expecting an apology from Rodgers. In the case that the former Green Bay Packers quarterback apologizes, Kimmel said he would “accept his apology and move on.”
Watch Kimmel’s entire monologue in the video posted below.
