Jimmy Kimmel took some time out of Tuesday night’s show to clear up some of Donald Trump’s confusion about the words would and wouldn’t. The clarification was a response to the president’s comments at a press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. After being asked about Russian interference in the 2016 American presidential election, Trump sided with Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies: “I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be,” Trump said.
But 24 hours later, Trump held another press conference to announce that he, ahem, misspoke: “The sentence should have been ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.’” As Kimmel played the breaking news clip of this announcement, the audience booed.
Kimmel then wondered which “genius” from Trump’s inner circle had the idea to make this correction announcement. “I bet it was Melania,” Kimmel said. “She hates him the most.” Kimmel also imagined an alternate version of the investigation into Bill Clinton, imagining a situation in which Clinton decides he meant to say “I did have sexual relations with that woman.”
Although Trump claims he accepts the United States’ intelligence agencies’ findings that Russia did meddle in the election, he still can’t resist the urge to spread the blame to mysterious “others.” Kimmel showed another clip of Trump speaking at the White House, in which he said, “I accept our intelligence communities’ conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place. Could be other people also, there’s a lot of people out there.”
To help Trump with his confusion, Kimmel ended the segment with a Sesame Street video explaining the vast difference between would and wouldn’t. After Grover calls Trump a coward, the video ends with a short message: “Brought to you by the letters K, G, and B.”
