Jimmy Kimmel Just Handed His Show to the One Person Trump Has Feuded With for 20 Years

Jimmy Kimmel called Charlie Kirk's assassin a MAGA supporter on live television – and ABC yanked him off the air.

Now Kimmel is heading to vacation – and he picked his replacement to make sure the hits on Trump keep coming.

The woman he chose has been at war with Donald Trump for twenty years – and just flew back from Ireland to fight it on ABC.

Kimmel's Parting Gift to the Commander in Chief

Jimmy Kimmel announced Thursday he's taking a two-month summer break from Jimmy Kimmel Live! – and made sure to remind everyone it's "voluntary this time."

That "voluntary" qualifier was doing a lot of work.

When Kimmel returned, Jimmy Kimmel Live! briefly spiked to 6.5 million viewers for his comeback episode – then immediately shed 64% of that audience by Thursday, crashing back to 2.3 million.

The show averaged 1.6 million nightly viewers in 2025 – down 37% from a decade earlier and still bleeding out.

Here's who he picked to sit in his chair.

Rosie Flies Back from Ireland to Keep the Hits Coming

Rosie O'Donnell – the woman who moved to Ireland after Trump won in 2024, citing her child's well-being and her own mental health – is coming back to American television to guest host for Kimmel this summer.

O'Donnell announced the move just weeks after attending the Tony Awards in New York City.

Kimmel introduced her with a smirk: "As a special treat for our commander in chief, I asked one of his all-time favorites – Rosie O'Donnell – to be here to keep the hits coming."

Trump and O'Donnell have been publicly feuding since 2006, when she called him a "snake-oil salesman" on The View and accused him of going bankrupt.

Trump fired back calling her "a woman out of control" – and the war has never stopped.

Trump threatened to revoke her U.S. citizenship, posting that she's "not a Great American and is, in my opinion, incapable of being so."

O'Donnell fired back accusing Trump of using her as a distraction – still fighting the same war, from a different continent.

Then ABC dangled a paycheck, and suddenly Ireland wasn't so safe after all.

Kimmel's other summer guest hosts include Tiffany Haddish, Anthony Anderson, Ike Barinholtz, Colman Domingo, and Jelly Roll – but O'Donnell is the only one explicitly framed as a gift to enrage the President.

That tells you everything about what this show has become.

Rosie O'Donnell Still Claims Kamala Harris Won the 2024 Election

Late-night television built its audience on one simple promise: we'll make everyone laugh, even the president.

Johnny Carson made fun of Nixon. Letterman made fun of Clinton. Leno made fun of everybody.

Kimmel decided that model was for losers.

He turned Jimmy Kimmel Live! into a nightly Democratic fundraiser – and the audience that didn't sign up for that walked out one by one until 37% of his viewers were gone.

Now Kimmel is handing the microphone to a woman who fled the country to avoid the President, who spent two decades calling Trump every name she could think of, and who went on Jim Acosta's podcast this week to claim Kamala Harris actually won the 2024 election.

That's who ABC – owned by Disney – is putting in the late-night chair this summer.

Think about that for a second.

Disney is the company that just finished clawing its way back from years of getting destroyed at the box office for going woke.

And they're handing their late-night slot to someone whose entire public identity is hating the most popular president in modern Republican history.

Rosie O'Donnell once said on live television that "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam."

She's also the woman who pushed 9/11 conspiracy theories on The View, claiming fire had never melted steel before and questioning whether the government was telling the truth about the attacks.

This isn't a late-night show anymore.

It's a therapy session for people who still can't accept the 2024 election – and they're airing it on ABC at 11:35 PM.

Sources:

• Marlene Lenthang, "Jimmy Kimmel taps Rosie O'Donnell as rotating guest host during two-month hiatus," NBC News, June 22, 2026.
• "Jimmy Kimmel picks Rosie O'Donnell to guest host during his vacation," Fox News, June 22, 2026.
• "Jimmy Kimmel sheds 64% of audience after short-lived ratings spike following suspension," Fox News, September 29, 2025.
• "ABC Suspends Jimmy Kimmel Live Over Charlie Kirk Comments," The Hollywood Reporter, September 17, 2025.
• "Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump's Longstanding Feud Explained," People, July 2025.