Kimmel’s Back, Trump’s Still Stupid, and We’re Not Going Anywhere

Why we celebrate every win, mock every idiot, and never, ever stop.

It was the darkest of times, it was the dumbest of times.

That’s our reality now: a grotesque mixed bag where every day serves up one part despair, like watching democracy get grabbed by the pussy in broad daylight; one part lunacy, like a guy with grayscale hands pretending to be WebMD on live TV; one part laugh out loud hilarious, the kind of stupid best measured in fucking Tide Pods; and if we are lucky, one part victory, messy but glorious, like confetti cannons going off inside a Hooters during the lunch rush while your wife’s coworker FaceTimes her from the next booth over.

It is exhausting, it is absurd, it is like living in a sitcom written by blunt force trauma. Which is exactly why we do not quit. Because when the wins come, no matter how tiny or ridiculous, we grab them with both hands and make noise. We flaunt them, we meme them, we ride them until sparks fly from the axles. Because those wins are proof, undeniable proof, that even in the middle of all this darkness and idiocy, resistance still fucking works.

Start with Disney, because this part matters more than the latest sewer-stench headline. Disney caved. THEY CAVED. The House of Mouse, a corporation so addicted to profit it would livestream Old Yeller’s execution in 4K if the ad revenue cleared, folded under pressure from the American people.

And don’t you dare let the corporate press polish this turd into “reevaluation” or “internal review.” They got their asses handed to them. We canceled. We dragged. We mocked. We cut off their streaming dollars like a deadbeat dad’s Netflix password, and they panicked. And they brought Jimmy back because they knew without us, they’re just a rat with ears too big to be cute, like Chuck E. Cheese’s washed-up cousin Chauncy trying to bum a cigarette behind your kid’s school.

That victory matters because it proves something in these grim dumpster fire times: they are not untouchable. We can still make them blink. We can still make them retreat. We can still make the most powerful entertainment corporation in the world kneel in front of the people. That’s not small. That’s not trivial. That’s a flaming middle finger in the face of authoritarian bullies. That’s a reminder that this shit show is survivable if we refuse to shut up.

And thank God for that reminder, because while we were proving Mickey has no power without our wallets, Trump was busy proving his brain is basically a Lite-Brite missing half the bulbs, duct-taped together with melted slices of government cheese. His Tylenol sermon wasn’t medical advice; it was a Mad Lib written by syphilis. He waddled out, orange paint dripping under the lights, neck FUPA flapping like a hairless cat in a hurricane and tried to say “acetaminophen” but sounded like an Applebee’s day drunk trying to spit marbles out of his mouth while shitfaced on peach schnapps. He declared that Tylenol causes autism because he “feels” it does. Feels. This is the same guy who once felt bleach might be a refreshing beverage. The same guy who felt that COVID would “just disappear.” The same guy who feels Diet Coke is a multivitamin. And just to be crystal clear in his medical genius, he also wanted to make sure everyone knew that acetaminophen, a word any 12-year-old could pronounce, but he couldn’t, was “essentially Tylenol.” That’s like announcing that H2O is essentially water (you fucking moron). And by the way, when Donald Trump “feels” something related to science, science doesn’t just file a restraining order, science packs its bags, changes its name, and moves to a Motel 6 in another galaxy, praying the front desk doesn’t forward his calls.

But the word salad buffet kept coming. He said Cubans don’t have autism because they can’t afford Tylenol. Wrong. He said the Amish don’t have autism because they don’t use Tylenol. Wrong. Next, he’ll say Care Bears don’t have depression because they live on clouds, or that Gargamel cured polio with Smurf vibes alone. It wasn’t a presidential statement, it was closed captions from a VHS infomercial recorded during a gas leak, with the coked-up host screaming “CALL NOW!”

And just when you thought that shit couldn’t possibly get any crazier yesterday, it did. Because then he said that unlike babies (who can get the disease from their mothers) that 12-year-old girls should get the hepatitis B vaccine because they’re “sexually active.” From the man whose name is plastered all over the Epstein files he refuses to release. From the man photographed hugging Ghislaine Maxwell like she’d just baked him cookies and slipped him her number. From the man who literally wrote a birthday card to a convicted pedophile about their “beautiful secret.”

As an aside, as the mother of a 12-year-old girl, if I ever heard someone talk like that about my kid, I’d make it my personal mission to ensure they spent every remaining day regretting they ever opened their fucking mouth, but I digress.

This wasn’t vaccine policy; it was pedophile brain leakage broadcast on national television. And the media covered it like he was discussing crop insurance at a Kiwanis pancake breakfast.

Meanwhile, his backup dancers stood there like they were auditioning for Dumb and Dumber 3: The Midlife Crisis Tour. RFK Jr., whose tanning addiction has officially pushed him into “fossilized baseball glove” territory, and whose voice sounds like Tom Waits auditioning for Sesame Street while chain-smoking Marlboros until he’s one puff away from being legally classified as asbestos, looked like a taxidermied leather couch dragged out of a house fire and propped up for Halloween. Dr. Oz, the human coupon book, nodded along like a man whose medical degree was printed on the back of a Cheerios box, mailed second-class, and redeemed for store credit.

Together they looked like the worst boy band in history: Three Men and a Lie, complete with all the charisma of a regional car dealership commercial starring a guy in a polyester blazer screaming about APR financing while a giant inflatable gorilla slowly deflates behind him. And if you’re a person dumb enough to take medical advice from that traveling circus, you might as well go ahead and let the Hamburglar perform your next colonoscopy with a Shake Weight while Grimace holds the goddamn camera, because what’s the fucking point?

And this is exactly why they keep coming after comedians and late-night hosts. Because laughter is catharsis. It’s the one thing they can’t regulate, can’t bottle, can’t tax. Authoritarians know that once people are laughing at you, they stop fearing you — and fear is the only currency these assholes have left. That’s why they went after Kimmel. That’s why they go after Colbert, Fallon, Meyers. That’s why state TV in every dictatorship looks like a hostage tape, no jokes, no satire, just endless shots of Dear Leader pretending to solve math problems like he’s auditioning for Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

But here? We need the jokes. We are desperate for it. Laughter is oxygen in a burning house, the last drag you take before spitting smoke back in their faces. And they hate it. They hate it because once we’re laughing at them, they’re stripped naked — the emperor’s got no clothes, no crown, just an ass like expired cottage cheese and hair glued on like a Party City wig in a wind tunnel. Fear is their only currency, and laughter bankrupts them. If we keep laughing, we keep fighting. If we keep fighting, they lose. That’s why the Kimmel win is bigger than one late-night comeback, bigger than one corporate cave-in — it’s proof we’ll clown them, drag them, meme them, and laugh them into dust before we let them steal that from us.

And don’t even get me started on the unhinged United Nations freak show he just finished… it was like watching a man try to sell Cutco knives to 193 world leaders, a performance so catastrophic the translators probably filed for hazard pay. That lunacy is going to have to wait until tomorrow, because my current word count already has PTSD.

And yes, sometimes the laughter is the only thing keeping us from screaming into the void, because holy hell, it is laughable. Sometimes it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious, like watching the president of the United States try to sound out basic words as if he’s chewing drywall, while his cronies nod along like bobbleheads bolted to the dash of a clown car rolling down a cliff. The whole thing looks less like a government in action and more like a demolition derby inside a spelling bee, with Trump slurring syllables like a man gargling aquarium gravel while his entourage claps like seals desperate for a bucket of half-rotten fish.

But it’s also deadly serious. Because millions believe him. Millions will hear their president say Tylenol is unsafe and toss the only safe, doctor-approved relief they have. People will suffer, babies will get sick, and these assholes will keep grinning because they think they “owned the libs.”

And look, I get it, I know it’s easy to feel hopeless these days. Easy to think, what’s the fucking point? Easy to feel like crawling under a blanket and binge-watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island until democracy taps out. But that despair, that exhaustion, that hollow “maybe it’s over,” that’s not random. That’s by design.

Authoritarians need you small. They need you tired. They need you too beaten down to fight back. Which is exactly why Disney caving is so damn important. It’s proof. It’s oxygen. It’s a reminder that when we push, they break. When we boycott, they back down. When we laugh in their faces and cut off their cash flow, even the biggest mouse on earth whimpers like a half-collapsed Halloween inflatable face-planting on the lawn at 2 a.m.

So ride this win like a stolen car with the plates ripped off and the muffler dragging sparks down the highway. Celebrate it like you just found out Prince and Tom Petty crawled out of the grave to play a backyard set where the cover charge is beer, the neighbors are crying, and somebody’s lawn flamingo is already on fire. Pin it to your chest like a strip-club wristband you refuse to take off, scream it in the streets until the Karens call the HOA, stencil it across the bathroom wall of history in Sharpie, glitter glue, and spite. Don’t let them steal the joy of this moment. Because it proves something Trump and his parade of carnival rejects pray you forget: we are stronger, we are louder, we are funnier, meaner, smarter, impossible to silence, impossible to buy off, and way too damn stubborn to erase.

This is how you survive the dumbest, darkest times. You drag them until they cry. You mock them until they shrivel. You laugh in their faces until they suffocate on their own hypocrisy. You remember that every wave of despair is engineered to make you sit down and shut up. And you refuse. You never stop. You keep going, because this whole circus runs on us, and without us it’s just a parking lot full of sad clowns smoking in the rain.

And by the way, if anyone tells you we’re powerless, remind them that we just won something huge, remind them Disney surrendered harder than a piñata full of spoiled clam chowder at a Quinceañera on a Dollar Tree budget, remind them that we are never going to give up, and never, ever let them forget it.

And with that, today’s song:

I love you guys!
Stay sassy, stay strong, a don’t ever stop flipping the bad guys the fuck off!

💙 Jo