President Joe Biden joked about jailing his Republican political opponents during a Wednesday night appearance on comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show.
The two were discussing gun control policies in the wake of the recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, when Kimmel pressed the president on why he was not taking sweeping executive action to restrict access to semi-automatic rifles.
Former President Donald Trump issued executive orders “like Halloween candy,” Kimmel said.
Biden replied by taking a jab at Trump. “What I don’t want to do, and I’m not being facetious, I don’t want to emulate Trump’s abuse of the Constitution and constitutional authority.”
“I often get asked, ‘Look, the Republicans don’t play it square, why do you play it square?’ Well, guess what? If we do the same thing they do, our democracy would literally be in jeopardy,” Biden said, adding, “It’s not a joke.”
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Kimmel followed up by saying that while he understood Biden’s reasoning, interacting with Republicans was like interacting with someone who does not follow the rules in the board game Monopoly.
“How do you ever make any progress, if they’re not following the rules?” Kimmel asked.
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“You got to send them to jail,” Biden interjected. “There’s that little box in there.”
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“Directly to jail?” Kimmel asked, to which Biden replied, mumbling something inaudible before the show took a break.
Biden spent a large portion of the conversation criticizing Republicans, saying, “This is not your father’s Republican Party. This is a MAGA party” and accusing the GOP of subjecting itself to “intimidation by the NRA.”
The president said that voters needed to ensure gun control “becomes a voting issue.”
Biden also spent some discussing the negative media coverage his administration received, blaming sensationalism as the reason his messages did not reach the American people the way he wanted them to.
“Look at how the press has changed,” Biden told Kimmel. “With notable exceptions, even the really good reporters, they have to get a number of clicks on the nightly news. So instead of asking a question … it’s just, everything gets sensationalized.”
Towards the end of the interview, Biden and Kimmel discussed abortion. The two discussed the possibility of the Supreme Court overturning Roe V. Wade, as a leaked draft majority opinion Politico published in May suggested.
Specifically, Biden and Kimmel discussed states taking action to restrict and prohibit the practice once federal protections fall off with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Biden said that should Roe v. Wade be overturned, it could motivate a massive voter turnout.
“I don’t think the country will stand for it,” Biden said of the prospect of ending federal protections for abortion. “If in fact the decision comes down the way it does and these states impose the limitations they’re talking about, it’s going to cause a mini revolution, and they’re going to vote these folks out of office.”
Speaking with Kimmel, Biden discussed the possibility of taking some executive action to safeguard the sinful practice but added that voters should turn out to vote for pro-abortion candidates in the midterms, so that Congress will have enough votes to codify abortion into law.
“You gotta vote to let people know exactly what the devil you think,” Biden told Kimmel.
Wednesday’s interview received criticism for being biased from the start, with Kimmel praising Biden as he walked into the studio, admitting he voted for Biden multiple times and saying Biden was to “aviator sunglasses what Tom Cruise is to aviator sunglasses.”
“America has record inflation, record gas prices and baby formula shortages, just to name a few major issues, so it’s safe to assume Jimmy Kimmel will ask nothing about any of this, and if he does, there will be stock answers about how great things are and ZERO challenging follow-ups,” SiriusXM host Tim Young said, according to Fox News.
“Absolutely astonishing. Biden won’t do an interview with an actual journalist; he hand-picks a late night comic to perform massage on his second chakra, and still looks like a man who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel,” political commentator Ben Shapiro posted on Twitter.
