Jimmy Kimmel: What to know
Here’s a few things you may not know about late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel joked on Wednesday that Vice President Mike Pence would fumble an attempt to contain the coronavirus after President Trump put him in charge of the government's response to the pandemic.
"Why is Mike Pence in charge?" Kimmel asked. "What is his plan to stop the virus? Abstinence? I think Trump might be trying to kill him. I really do."
Kimmel also crudely suggested that Pence was a sycophant to Trump. "I hope the virus isn't spread by kissing ass, because if it is, they've got the wrong guy," Kimmel quipped.
Pence has come under fire for his comments about abstinence and the way he handled an HIV outbreak while governor of Indiana. In 2002, Pence reportedly told CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer that it was "sad" for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to push condom use.
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"The truth is that Colin Powell had an opportunity here to reaffirm this president’s commitment to abstinence as the best choice for our young people, and he chose not to do that in the first instance, but — and so I think it’s very sad,' he said.
"Frankly, condoms are a very, very poor protection against sexually transmitted diseases," Pence added. "And in that sense, Wolf, this was — the secretary of state may be inadvertently misleading millions of young people and endangering lives."
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During that interview, he also embraced abstinence as an alternative. "I just simply believe the only truly safe sex, Wolf, as the president believes, is no sex," he said.
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"And we ought to, with leaders of the stature of the secretary of state, we ought to be sending a message to kids across the country and the opportunity had across the world that abstinence is the best choice for young people."
Kimmel has a long history of attacking the Trump administration, but criticism of Pence's beliefs is nothing new.
For example, "The View" came under fire in 2018 after co-host Joy Behar suggested the vice president suffered from a mental illness because he believed God could speak to him.
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Pence responded by denouncing what he called "religious intolerance" on ABC, the network which broadcasts "The View."
“To have ABC maintain a broadcast forum that compared Christianity to mental illness is just wrong,” he said. “It is simply wrong for ABC to have a television program that expresses that kind of religious intolerance.”
Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.
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