Jimmy Kimmel Laughs at MAGA for Trying to 'Pin' Rudy Giuliani Hospitalization on Him 

Jimmy Kimmel mocked MAGA media figures on his Monday, May 4, show for suggesting he had "inside knowledge" or was responsible for former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani’s recent hospitalization.

The controversy began after The Jimmy Kimmel Live! host made a joke on April 28, saying Giuliani "rose from the grave" to record a podcast — a jab at the former mayor's age and a long-running joke by Kimmel that Giuliani is a vampire.

When Giuliani was hospitalized with severe pneumonia just days later, on May 3, conservative commentators and a Newsmax panel criticized the timing as "abhorrent" and questioned if Kimmel knew about the illness beforehand.

This comes as a feud between Kimmel and the MAGA network escalated into a high-profile clash in early 2026, involving accusations of "propaganda," calls for federal intervention, and a heated exchange over the role of late-night satire.

When speaking about the Giuliani news, the comedian accurately quipped, “When I read this, I thought, I really thought. I said, I wonder if they’ll try to blame this on me.”

“And then, sure enough,” he continued, “One of these podcast bozos points to a joke I made about Rudy on Thursday about him being a vampire and then suggests I might actually have some inside knowledge of what’s going on in Trumptown there.”

After a Newsmax panelist claimed he was operating under the "gauze of comedy” when he likely meant “guise of comedy,” Kimmel performed a bit standing under a literal giant sheet of gauze held by stagehands.

He jokingly claimed the "gauze" gave him psychic abilities to see into the future.

“Every day in the morning, I wake up, I make coffee, and then I look into the future to see which events have yet to occur, and then we write jokes we know are going to make trouble,” he said.

The comments came amid Kimmel’s ongoing clash with President Donald Trump, in which Giuliani, speaking on a livestreamed episode of his podcast, called the ABC host “one of the most distasteful human beings in this country” and an “incompetent jacka---,” weighing in on the backlash surrounding Kimmel’s mock White House Correspondents’ Dinner routine.

Despite the mockery, Kimmel struck a briefly serious tone, stating, "For the record, I hope Rudy Giuliani lives another 100 years," before quipping that Giuliani "earned that outside the d-ldo shop," referencing the infamous press conference in which the disbarred Trump attorney planned a press conference in the parking lot of Philadelphia-area Four Seasons Landscaping when he likely thought it was being held at the swanky hotel chain.

Giuliani remains in critical but stable condition at a Florida hospital. He is being treated for a severe viral lung infection resulting in pneumonia. His condition is complicated by restrictive airway disease, which his spokesperson, Ted Goodman, stated was a result of Giuliani's exposure to toxic dust during the September 11 attacks.

Though he initially required mechanical ventilation, he is now reportedly breathing on his own and showing signs of improvement.

Giuliani was disbarred in Washington, D.C. on September 26, 2024, following a similar disbarment in New York in July 2024. These actions resulted from his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, with courts finding he made false, "uncontroverted" statements. He is also facing criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona.