RT 💥 “HOLLYWOOD ERUPTS: Kimmel’s Wild Challenge to Trump Ignites a Showdown No One Saw Coming!”

 a lot to me to have your attention and to work with this great group of people for another year.”Jimmy Kimmel hosting ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ on Nov. 5, 2025.

While Kimmel immediately followed the announcement by throwing a playful jab at sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez, he took a less playful route by addressing the president elsewhere in his monologue. A day after Trump, 79, called Kimmel “terrible” while hosting the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday, Dec. 7, the late-night host delivered his response. 

“I’ve watched some of the people that host, Jimmy Kimmel was horrible,” Trump said at the event in a clip Kimmel played on his program. “Some of these people… If I can’t beat out Jimmy Kimmel in terms of talent, then I don’t think I should be president.”

Kimmel called Trump’s other remarks during the night “very hurtful” and jokingly insisted that he’s “starting to think [the president] might have a crush on me.” He also took the politician’s words literally, joking he doesn’t think he’s “ever agreed with anything more” before presenting Trump with a challenge. 

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“Do you think he even knows I never hosted the Kennedy Center Honors? Maybe he’s confusing me with Queen Latifah. As far as this ‘who has more talent’ thing goes, it seems like he’s challenging me to a contest, which if so, I’m open to it,” Kimmel said. 

He added, “Let’s do it. Let’s have a talent competition.”

As for what the face-off would look like between the commander in chief and late-night TV personality, Kimmel joked that he’d “come out, tell a few jokes, draw something” and play his clarinet, while Trump would have his own options: “He can play golf, spank a porn star and ruin the country.”

PEOPLE confirmed Kimmel’s one-year extension on Monday, with Bloomberg being the first to report that while his current contract was slated to end in May 2026, the renewal takes him and the show through the end of next year’s season.

The extension also comes amid Trump’s continued social-media attacks on Kimmel and nearly three months after Disney’s ABC decided to pull the series from the air “indefinitely” on Sept. 17 following Kimmel’s comments on Charlie Kirk’s death. 

The host previously told the Los Angeles Times that the three-year contract he signed in 2022 would likely be his last. “I hate to even say it, because everyone’s laughing at me now — each time I think that, and then it turns out to be not the case,” he joked.

He added, “I still have a little more than two years left on my contract, and that seems pretty good. That seems like enough.”

Sunday night’s Kennedy Center honorees included Sylvester Stallone, George Strait, KISS, Gloria Gaynor and Michael Crawford, with Trump revealing in August that he was “about 98 percent involved” in selecting them after he appointed himself chairman of the Kennedy Center in February.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.