Jimmy Kimmel took a jab at Donald Trump after the former president claimed the U.S. government spent $8 million on making mice “transgender” during a speech to Congress.
Trump made this bizarre claim, along with other accusations, on March 4, as part of his speech where he talked about some of the projects he’s started since taking office. Among his complaints was how much money the U.S. government has spent on certain initiatives under President Joe Biden, including: “$8 million to promote LGBT+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of; $60 million for indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America; $8 million for making mice transgender. This is real.”
On his show the next day, March 5, Kimmel couldn’t help but point out how wrong Trump’s claim about the mice was.
In his monologue, Kimmel said, “You hear the president say we’re spending $8 million to do sex change operations on mice, and you think, ‘Well, he must be exaggerating, but maybe there’s some truth to it.’ Turns out, there isn’t. It’s not real.”
Kimmel explained, “The government actually spent money on creating genetically modified mice to study diseases. It has nothing to do with making them ‘transgender.’”
He went on to ask, “Do they not know this, or are they just hoping we don’t? Maybe they think we’re too dumb to look it up?”
Kimmel then joked, “They’re turning Mickeys into Minnies and Minnies into Mickeys. No, they’re just trying to find cures for diseases like dementia and heart disease, which, you’d think Trump would care about since both are probably coming for him soon.”
Trump, reflecting on his first weeks in office, had said, “It has been nothing but swift and unrelenting action. The people elected me to do the job, and I am doing it.”
You can watch Kimmel’s full monologue below.
