Former 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' Writer Bess Kalb Takes Aim at 'Thin'-Skinned Donald Trump During Heated Capitol Hill Hearing

Late-night comedy met Capitol Hill this week when former Jimmy Kimmel Live! writer Bess Kalb delivered a blistering critique of President Donald Trump during a House Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Silencing Dissent: The First Amendment Under Attack.”

Kalb, who wrote for Jimmy Kimmel for eight years, told lawmakers that for comedy writers, Trump “is our best and worst audience.”

“He is our best audience, because unlike most Americans, he watches late-night television,” Kalb joked. “He cares about what the Network Men in Suits say about him.”

But, she added, “He is our worst audience because his inexplicably bruised skin is very, very thin.”

Kalb opened her testimony by acknowledging the unusual optics of a comedy writer in a suit addressing Congress. “The fact that I am sitting here in a navy blue business suit in the Capitol building at a hearing about the First Amendment means something has gone very, very wrong,” she said.

She recounted being blocked by Trump on Twitter in 2017 after jokingly replying to his posts “as his concerned and reassuring mom.” The incident led to litigation over whether a sitting president could block critics on social media. “He quite literally made a federal case of a joke,” she said.

Kalb argued that recent shakeups in late night signal more than programming changes. Referencing CBS’ decision not to renew The Late Show with Stephen Colbert after the host joked about a $16 million settlement paid to Trump, she said the show “was bulldozed like it was the East Wing of the White House.”

She also cited Jimmy Kimmel Live! being “briefly yanked off the air when the show’s monologue displeased the president,” adding, “I want to be fair: The Trump administration denies responsibility for these cancelations, much as the mafia is continuously surprised that so many people end up in the East River with cement blocks on their feet.”

Kalb pointed to a Truth Social post in which Trump celebrated Kimmel’s reported cancelation, writing, “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED… Do it NBC!!! President DJT.”

“These permanent and temporary cancelations aren’t just about controlling jokes,” she said. “They’re about controlling criticism of this administration and its corporate bedfellows.”

Beyond late night, Kalb described a recent book tour stop canceled at a Montana school after parents objected to political jokes she had written years earlier. “It’s a harrowing indication of how a joke can be wielded against its writer,” she said.

Throughout her testimony, Kalb framed satire as a democratic safeguard. “A true leader is only as strong as the joke he can take at his own expense,” she said. “There’s nothing funny about the fact that we are living through a time when jokes about the government are a liability.”