J.D. Vance thought he could take a cheap shot at Jimmy Kimmel and walk away untouched.
What he got instead was a full-blown televised character assassination — backed by clips, receipts, and a “dirty secret” from his past that might haunt him for the rest of his political life.
It all started when Kimmel was suspended from ABC after comments connected to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Almost immediately, Trump-world pounced. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, a Trump ally, went on a right-wing podcast and all but threatened ABC and its affiliates, suggesting they could “do this the easy way or the hard way” if they didn’t clamp down on Kimmel. That’s not a complaint — that’s government pressure on speech, the kind of thing we’re used to seeing in authoritarian regimes, not late-night TV drama.
Fast forward: Kimmel is pulled off some stations. The message is crystal clear — criticize the president, and your job is on the line.
Enter J.D. Vance.
Instead of defending free speech or even just staying out of it, Trump’s running mate marched onto Fox News with Laura Ingraham and spun a completely different fairy tale. According to Vance, there was no government interference, no pressure, no intimidation. Nope. He smirked and claimed Kimmel was only off the air in some markets because “he’s not funny” and his “ratings aren’t very good.”
For a guy who built his brand as a straight-talking truth-teller from “Hillbilly Elegy” land, that was pure gaslighting.
And Jimmy Kimmel did not let it slide.
The moment he returned to the air — on all his stations, by the way — Kimmel went nuclear. He christened Vance with a nickname that instantly stuck: “Vice President Maybelline.” Then he looked into the camera and shredded Vance’s talking point piece by piece.
“My ratings aren’t very good?” Kimmel said. “Last time I checked, your ratings are somewhere between a hair in your salad and chlamydia.” The crowd detonated.
He followed it up with another brutal line:
“In three and a half years, I’m not the one who’s going to be doing mascara tutorials on YouTube.”
The eyeliner jokes weren’t random. Vance has been dogged for years by memes about his heavily lined eyes. His own wife, Usha, once had to go on record saying his lashes are natural and she’s jealous of them. Kimmel’s team took that internet joke and turned it into a recurring sketch — with Haley Joel Osment (yes, the kid from The Sixth Sense) playing Vance in smudged eyeliner, sipping Diet Mountain Dew, and introducing himself with lines like: “On behalf of my wife, Usha, who I assure you exists, and my children, I believe there are two…”
It was savage. And it wasn’t just about makeup.
Kimmel then dragged Vance over one of his ugliest fearmongering stunts: pushing the lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets. Local authorities said there were no credible reports of that happening. None. But Vance kept repeating it anyway, turning a racist rumor into a political weapon. Kimmel mocked him by reading out the phone number for Vance’s office on air and “warning” viewers not to call and tell him that Baskin-Robbins rainbow sprinkles turned their kids gay — a not-so-subtle way of saying Vance will amplify any nonsense if it fits the narrative.
But the dirtiest secret Kimmel dragged back into the spotlight wasn’t about eyeliner, ratings, or rumors.
It was about J.D. Vance’s own words about Donald Trump.
Before he reinvented himself as Trump’s loyal attack dog, Vance was on record absolutely trashing him. In messages to a Yale law school roommate back in 2016, Vance said he bounced between thinking Trump was just a cynical crook like Nixon… and fearing he might be “America’s Hitler.” That’s not a paraphrase — that’s the phrase he used.
On Twitter, he went even further. After the Access Hollywood tape, Vance scolded Christians who defended Trump, warning, “Everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us.” He wrote that Trump made people he cared about — immigrants, Muslims — feel afraid, and said he found Trump “reprehensible.”
Those tweets later vanished. Deleted. Scrubbed. Right around the time Vance realized he needed Trump’s endorsement to launch his political career.
Kimmel put those words back on the screen for millions to see and twisted the knife:
“I agree with a statement you no longer agree with,” he told Vance. Then he called him a “hollow shell of a human being” and reminded viewers that there was a time when politicians were at least embarrassed to be exposed as hypocrites.
That’s the real story here.
J.D. Vance didn’t just attack Jimmy Kimmel and get roasted for it. He triggered a chain reaction that exposed exactly who he is: a man who once called Trump dangerous and reprehensible — and now defends Trump’s attacks on the press, dismisses blatant government pressure as a “joke,” spreads racist urban legends, and hides behind eyeliner jokes and culture war theatrics.
Jimmy Kimmel didn’t just clap back.
He pulled off a live-TV unmasking.
And Vice President Maybelline may never outrun it.
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