Jimmy Kimmel on the blocked Suez canal ship: 'Capitalism had a heart attack'
Most of the late shows are on vacation this week, but Jimmy Kimmel aired from Los Angeles with a bit on the big stuck boat: the Ever Given, a massive cargo ship which ran aground in the Suez canal last week, blocking a major international shipping channel. “I have to say, after all the fighting and the tooth gnashing over the past few years, it was nice to see the whole world come together to make fun of a boat, it really was,” said Kimmel.
The Ever Given was finally dislodged on Monday by a fleet of tug boats – “the same way they got Trump out of the White House,” Kimmel joked – but not after crippling global supply lines in a sprawling traffic jam that could take weeks to smooth out.
“Basically, capitalism had a heart attack over this last week,” said Kimmel.
The mega-ship was loaded with Ikea furniture “which means thousands of men in their twenties now have an excuse for why they don’t own a headboard,” he added, noting that the shipping logjam is estimated to have lost $10bn a day. “It’s crazy that something like this can bring the world of commerce to a halt.”
Now that the rush to free the Ever Given has succeeded, the blame game can commence. The boat’s shipping company, Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine, has blamed a strong gust of wind, but Kimmel was skeptical – “they finished this canal in 1869, in 150 years this is the first time they had wind?”
Later in the monologue, Kimmel checked in on Donald Trump’s retirement in Florida, where he has been staying at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Over the weekend, numerous cell phone videos captured the former president delivering a barely coherent speech at a wedding, in which he toasted himself and rambled about the border, China, Iran. “You know what, I said the same thing at my brother’s wedding, it was word for word,” Kimmel deadpanned.
The wedding band appeared visibly bored in the background as Trump asked “do you miss me yet?”
“It’s a wedding! It is a wedding,” Kimmel exclaimed. “How do you give a drunken wedding toast when you don’t even drink?”
“Whenever someone plays the YMCA he magically appears like Beetlejuice,” Kimmel added. “He ended the speech by instructing the guests to violently storm the buffet table.”