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Jimmy Kimmel said Donald Trump has his running mate JD Vance to thank for the “worst moment of any debate ever” where he peddled a wild lie about migrants eating pets.
“I had a liberal elite day today,” Kimmel said on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday, before immediately trolling Trump for his litany of false claims during and leading up to the political face-off against Kamala Harris.
“I woke up, I ate a big cat for breakfast, and then I had a baby – then I had an abortion right after that. Then I went to pick up my kids from their mandatory transgender surgery operations after school, and now I'm back here spreading Marxist propaganda on TV.”
The GOP presidential candidate made numerous wild, false claims during the debate, with one standing out in particular: a debunked claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating pet dogs and cats.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” Trump proclaimed in his odd rant.
Kimmel roasted Trump over the comments, calling it “maybe the worst moment of any debate ever” and blaming Trump's running mate for putting it on the Republican presidential candidate's radar in the first place.
“JD decided, ‘I'm going to make this the centrepiece of every stump speech,’” Kimmel said.
“Then it wiggled its way into Trump's little brain and now this imbecile is forced to defend it constantly.”
Vance had stirred up baseless rumor on social media prior to the debate.
The falsehood appears to have originated from a Springfield Facebook group warning residents that family pets, such as cats and dogs, were being “carved up” and eaten, and advising locals to be cautious of the Haitian community.
Ohio officials have since debunked the claims, saying there has been no credible reports of such occurrences.
The late-night show host played a clip of CNN's Kaitlan Collins grilling the Ohio senator about his and Trump's “responsibility” to “not promote false information.”
In the clip, which went viral, Collins noted to Vance that “if someone calls your office and says they saw Bigfoot, that doesn’t mean they saw Bigfoot.”
Vance responded: “It's a totally fair point, but nobody’s calling my office and saying that they saw Bigfoot.”
The Jimmy Kimmel Live! host joked “well, not yet they aren’t” – before reading out the phone number for Vance’s office to his audience.
“But if you did want to call JD Vance and say you saw Bigfoot,” he added, to applause from his audience. “The direct line to his office is (202) 224-3353.”
With the phone number flashing up on the screen, he continued: “But please don't, he's very busy. Last night he got a bunch of calls saying the sprinkles on Baskin Robbins ice cream makes you gay.”
Kimmel sarcastically once again urged his viewers to “not call (202) 224-3353 to report a Bigfoot sighting.”
The false claims about migrants in Ohio wasn’t Trump’s only lie on Tuesday night when he came face-to-face with Harris for the first time – prompting a few fact-checks from ABC News moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir.
He also peddled the lie that Democrats support abortion after birth – while throwing Vance under the bus over his comments on abortion.
When asked if he would veto a national abortion ban if it were to cross his desk should he win the election, Trump refused twice to give a straight answer.
Davis pointed out that Vance claimed Trump would veto it, to which he responded: “Well I didn't discuss it with JD in all fairness.”
