Jimmy Kimmel Rips Donald Trump for 'Cringe' Pearl Harbor Joke to Japan's First Female Prime Minister

Jimmy Kimmel couldn't help but rip Donald Trump after the president made an insensitive joke while speaking to Japan's first-ever female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.

"We often cringe when real leaders come to visit ours, but today I think we hit a new level of discomfort," Kimmel, 58, said during the Thursday, March 19, broadcast of Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Kimmel played a clip of the interaction between the world leaders, which happened in the Oval Office earlier that day. In the video, Trump, 79, was asked why he didn't tell U.S. allies in Europe and Asia about the U.S.-Israeli strikes in Iran late last month.

“You don’t want to signal too much, you know?” Trump responded as the Japanese prime minister, who looked visibly uncomfortable, sat next to him. “When we go in, we went in very hard, and we didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor? You believe in surprise, I think much more so than us.”

The late-night personality's audience responded with gasps as Kimmel shook his head, saying, "I guess we should be grateful he didn’t do an accent?"

“What is going on through that orange head of his?” he humorously added. “Let me tell you. There is no doubt in my mind that everything he knows about Pearl Harbor begins and ends with a movie starring Ben Affleck.”

Kimmel often takes shots at the president on his late-night show. Trump is known to respond via his Truth Social account, most recently slamming TV hosts for “horrible ratings” and “gigantic salaries.”

Trump's latest tirade targeted network coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, dragging comedians into a broader critique of media institutions. Trump praised FCC Chairman Brendan Carr for “looking at the licenses” of broadcasters who are allegedly abusing “FREE American Airwaves” and “perpetuat[ing] LIES,” singling out what he called “the Late Night Morons.”

Trump’s claim that late-night TV has "horrible ratings" doesn't quite match up with recent data.

CBS’ The Late Show With Stephen Colbert averaged 2.43 million viewers for the week of March 1, an increase of 1 percent overall from the week before and an increase of 5 percent in the key 18–49 demographic, according to a LateNighter analysis of Nielsen Live+3 ratings data.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! drew 2.28 million viewers, up 5 percent from the previous week, and led the key demo with 263,000 viewers.