Head-spinning week of Trump

The show: Jimmy Kimmel Live, Aug. 15 The moment: The late-night request “I want to speak to those of you who voted for Donald Trump,” Jimmy Kimmel told his audience last Tuesday, after Trump defended white supremacists in a news conference. “I get it. You were unhappy with the way things were going.”

The problem, Kimmel continues, is that Trump “screws up royally every day . . . But you’ve been trying to ignore it because you don’t want to admit to these smug, annoying liberals that they were right.

“It’s time, for especially you who voted for him, to tell him to go,” he concludes. “Please. Think about it.”

That same night, Stephen Colbert said of Trump, “You’re a racist.”

The next day, Fox News host Shepard Smith admitted that his booking team hadn’t been able to find a single Republican willing to come on his show to defend Trump’s statements.

Did TV hosts during Watergate directly implore the American people to stop supporting their president? Did politicians run for cover so shamelessly? Newshounds have had many head-spinning weeks since Trump took office, but last week was the dizziest yet.

Lena Dunham told her Twitter followers that if the news was triggering them, it was OK to stop watching. But I felt the opposite: I shoved all work aside and just consumed commentary, from bigpicture pundits to superspecific statue historians. The more I read/ heard/saw, the more I craved. I have carved a neural pathway for outrage and the endorphins keep coming. Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights at midnight on the Comedy Network. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.