Jimmy Kimmel Says World Leaders Secretly ‘Hate’ Trump, and He’s Got Receipts

Jimmy Kimmel spent Wednesday night doing what he does best, turning a presidential headache into pure late-night comedy gold.

The target this time was Donald Trump’s appearance at the G7 Summit in France, where the president reportedly showed up nearly an hour late, declared himself “the boss” in front of a room full of world leaders, and then complained about his chair. Kimmel did not let a single second of it slide.

By the time the segment wrapped, Kimmel had built an entire case, complete with photographic evidence, that the leaders gathered around Trump might genuinely be over it. The internet, predictably, ate it up.

This was not Kimmel’s first time going after a Trump diplomatic outing, either. He has spent recent weeks mining the White House for material, including an earlier bit about the multi-million-dollar reflecting pool that turned “green” not long after its renovation wrapped up.

So What Actually Happened in That Room

Let’s set the scene first, because the details here do a lot of work. Trump arrived at the meeting hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron close to an hour behind schedule. Kimmel explained that aides claimed the president had been on an important call back home. There was just one problem with that excuse.

It was reportedly around 3:30 in the morning in Washington. Kimmel did not hide his skepticism about who exactly Trump would be on the phone with at that hour.

When Trump finally walked in, he did not exactly ease into the room. Instead, he strolled around the table, paused, and announced “I’m the boss” to the assembled leaders, a moment that reportedly drew a wave of awkward laughter from everyone present.

He kept the energy going moments later, telling photographers who were briefly let into the room that they were welcome to stick around for the meeting if they wanted. Kimmel could not get over either moment, joking that the room’s reaction said everything about how these leaders actually feel once the cameras stop rolling.

The Chair Drama Deserves Its Own Headline

If the late entrance and the self-appointed nickname were not enough, Trump then turned his attention to the furniture. He reportedly complained about the temperature in the room and grumbled that he had the “lowest chair in the room.”

According to the segment, Trump attempted to adjust the seat himself and came up short. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney ultimately stepped in and handed over his own chair so Trump could have a better seat.

Kimmel could not resist piling on, joking that Trump looked “all steamed up” after his lap around the table and poking fun at his hairstyle by saying the French might call it a “soufflé”. It was a small moment, but it fit the larger picture Kimmel was painting of a leader who manages to make even a seating arrangement into a production.

Kimmel summed up his take on the whole spectacle bluntly. He said Trump’s behavior at these summits becomes “increasingly childish” with each summit he attends. He went a step further, comparing the experience of dealing with Trump to cracking open a can of soda that has been shaken up too hard. “You know it’s gonna spray,” he said, so the only real move is trying to aim it away from your face.

It is the kind of line that sounds like a throwaway joke until you realize how often Kimmel has had to reach for new ways to describe the same recurring chaos. At this point, he could probably write a whole segment just on Trump’s furniture complaints alone.

That Photo Is Doing Some Heavy Lifting

Here is where the segment really turned. Kimmel pulled up the official G7 group photo, the kind every summit produces like clockwork, and pointed out that Trump was standing right in the center of the pack.

Then came the photo that followed. Once the formal picture was wrapped, the other leaders peeled off into smaller groups to chat and shake hands, as people naturally do after a group photo ends. Trump, according to Kimmel, was the only one left standing alone in the middle of the frame. Kimmel did not hold back his reaction to the image, calling it possibly the “saddest photo” he has ever seen.

He could not resist one final dig, joking that the moment looked like something straight out of Matt Damon’s long-running on-screen mishaps, a nod to the comedian’s years-long mock rivalry with the actor. It landed as the kind of bit that only works because Kimmel has been building that particular joke for years.

Why This Keeps Happening Every Summit Season

What makes this kind of segment stick is not really the chair or even the soda can metaphor. It’s the photo. A single image, leaders mingling while one man stands by himself, says more in two seconds than any monologue line could. Late-night hosts have always known that visuals outlast punchlines, and Kimmel leaned into that here.

International summits will keep happening, and so will the photo ops that come with them. If Wednesday’s monologue proved anything, it is that these moments will keep handing comedians material long after the cameras at the actual summit stop rolling.