Jimmy Kimmel fights back tears during emotional final monologue of 2025: “A lot of us are not OK”
Jimmy Kimmel has shared his final monologue of the year, a tear-jerking, honest reflection on a year filled with many highs and many lows.
Kimmel has been in a fiery feud with US President Donald Trump throughout the majority of the year, which reached a breaking point when the talk show host was taken off-air in September over his comments on the death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
This sparked outcry across the industry as a victory for Trump and an infringement on free speech, but Kimmel was ultimately reinstated after four missed shows.
Kimmel referenced all of this and more in his last monologue of the year, sharing, “It has been a strange year, a hard year.” Choking on unshed tears, he went on to admit, “I’m crying already, sorry,” before adding, “on behalf of all of us at the show, I just want to say we appreciate your support.”
Kimmel went on to note that “many awful and destructive acts” spread across the United States this year, so much so that he isn’t sure “what the American way is anymore.”
He continued his resistance to the status quo in America: “I also believe it is important that we as Americans let our friends in other countries… know that a lot of us are not OK with what is happening. There is still much more good in this country than bad, and we hope that you will bear with us during this extended psychotic episode that we’re in the middle of.”
Kimmel went on to reference Trump’s end of year message, during which he called America had come back from the “dead” to become “the hottest country in the world.” Kimmel quipped: “Maybe we’ll get lucky and in a few years he’ll leave us for a younger, hotter country somewhere in the world.”
He also added, “11 fact-checkers died watching that speech last night! He packed a lot of crap into 18 minutes.”
On a more serious note, he shared, “What we need at a time like this, besides common sense when it comes to guns and mental health care, is compassion and leadership. We did not get that from our president, because he has none of it to give.”
Recently, Kimmel struck a deal with Disney to extend his late-night run into the new year, keeping Jimmy Kimmel Live on the air through 2027.
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