Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel joked about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) in his opening monologue earlier this week after she labeled some in her party “pro-pedophile” for supporting Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“Where is Will Smith when you really need him?” Kimmel asked, a reference to Smith’s Oscar show storming of the stage and slap of comedian Chris Rock over a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
Greene was upset with Kimmel’s joke, casting it as encouraging violence against her. She tweeted that she had contacted U.S. Capitol Police — the same police she refused to honor last June when she voted against awarding them the Congressional Gold Medal for their heroics in defending the Capitol and lawmakers during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by a pro-Trump mob.
Her spokesman, Nick Dyer, said Friday that “threats against Congresswoman Greene invoking Jimmy Kimmel have been coming into our office.”
Dyer also pointed to a tweet Greene posted Thursday featuring a voice mail she said she received after Kimmel’s monologue. “I would pay good money to watch Jimmy Kimmel bash your (expletive) head in with a baseball bat,” a male caller said. “It would be so (expletive) hysterical.”
Kimmel continued the jokes on Thursday.
“Once again, I find myself in the middle of a brouhaha, as I appear to have run afoul of probably the worst woman in American politics,” Kimmel said Thursday. “Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congressperson from the 14th District of Georgia, is unhappy. She’s specifically unhappy with me.”
Kimmel had mocked Greene on Tuesday after she attacked Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) for joining Democrats in supporting Jackson, who will be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. Jackson, who was confirmed Thursday, has been the target of right-wing smears accusing her of being too lenient on child sex abusers in her sentencing, despite her decisions being consistent with other judges and sentencing recommendations.
“Any Senator voting to confirm #KJB is pro-pedophile just like she is,” the Georgia lawmaker tweeted.
Kimmel criticized Greene’s tweet while noting that she is “good friends” with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who is under federal investigation for possible sex trafficking.
Greene, clearly upset, replied on Twitter, calling Kimmel’s remarks a “threat of violence” that she reported to the U.S. Capitol Police.
On Thursday, she dismissed the idea that the comedian was joking.
“You hide your misogyny and your racism behind your ‘jokes’ on @ABC,” Greene tweeted. “This was a dog whistle to the violent left to assault me or worse, and your already inspiring fantasies of violence against me.”
Kimmel noted Thursday the irony of the lawmaker seeking protection from police who she refused to honor for protecting lawmakers from threats of violence from the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol in the hope of overturning the 2020 election.
“She called the police and reported this,” he said. “Not only did she call the police, she called the same police she voted against giving a Congressional Gold Medal to for defending our Capitol against the insurrection she helped incite on Jan. 6.”
“That’s who she called: the people she wanted to defund,” Kimmel added calling the lawmaker “a snowflake and a sociopath.”
“Officer? I’d like to report a joke,” Kimmel remarked, and he wrote a letter to Batman asking for an investigation.
Greene has been a regular target of Kimmel and other late-night hosts over previous comments, including her recent mixing of metaphors and referring to the Nazi police as a raw vegetable-based cold soup, and blaming wildfires, which are mostly caused by human activity like unattended campfires, on lasers from space funded by a wealthy Jewish family.
In February, the Republican referred to Capitol Police as House Speaker “Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police” during an appearance on conservative media outlet One America News.
“We have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff and spying on American citizens that want to come talk to their representatives,” Greene said.
Late-night television host Stephen Colbert weighed in on Twitter with a quip.
“I assume the Gazpacho Police specialize in cold cases?” the host of the “Late Show” tweeted.
And after reports surfaced last year that Greene posted a conspiracy theory on Facebook in 2018 speculating that California wildfires were caused by Jewish space lasers, late-night host Trevor Noah did a segment on the lawmaker on the “Daily Show.”
“How did Osama bin Karen get elected to Congress in the first place,” the comedian asked.
