Jimmy Kimmel Calls for a Twitter Truce With Sean Hannity Over Melania Trump Joke

For nearly a week now, Jimmy Kimmel has been embroiled in a feud with talking Angry Bird Sean Hannity, following the above bit on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Monday in which Kimmel mocked Melania Trump’s accent. Hannity declared Kimmel is a “racist,” pervert,” and an “ass clown,”and Kimmel made fun of Hannity for treating Donald Trump like an odd-coiffed second coming, but on Sunday Kimmel waved a white flag, calling for an end to the “vitriol” reverberating from their respective Twitter feeds. All things, after all, must die.

Kimmel posted a screed to Twitter on Sunday afternoon, in part to call a truce with Hannity, but mostly to apologize for an offensive tweet he made in the midst of the madness that referenced Trump preferring Hannity “on bottom.” That tweet elicited some deserved outrage from members of the LGBTQ community, which Kimmel addressed. “By lampooning Sean Hannity’s deference to the President, I most certainly did not intend to belittle or upset members of the gay community and to those who took offense, I apologize,” Kimmel said. He also mentioned the Melania bit, calling it a “harmless and silly aside referencing our First Lady’s accent,” but noted that “Ms. Trump almost certainly has enough to worry about without being used as a prop to increase TV ratings,” which, you know, sounds right. Here’s the whole thing:

The majority of Hannity’s battle with Kimmel was predicated on some of the sketches Kimmel did during his tenure on The Man Show, a decidedly misogynistic Comedy Central program that ran from 1999 to 2004. In 2018, Kimmel’s a father, Oscar host, Affordable Care Act advocate, and late night Trump critic, but in the aughts, he was doing stuff like this:

And, uh, this:

So, yes, the Man Show was not Kimmel’s finest hour/four years, but Hannity spent much of his feud claiming Kimmel was a “disgusting pervert” and calling him “Harvey Weinstein Jr.,” a move that only serves to make light of the many actual rape and assault allegations against the real Weinstein. And considering Hannity’s built his career at a station rife with sexual harassment scandals—and that he once invited a “legal analyst” to claim on his radio show that most women make up sexual assault, after several women came forward to accuse Alabama Senate nominee Roy Moore of sexually assaulting them when they were young teenagers—he can sit right down. Not that he will.