Last Night on Late Night

Kimmel Thinks Trump’s Proposal Is “Basically the Fyre Festival of Budgets”

Stephen Colbert also opposes it: “I know this is an unpopular position these days, but I believe children should go to the doctor and eat.”

As Donald Trump’s budget plan, which includes several cruel cuts to protections for the nation’s most vulnerable people—including children, the poor, and the elderly—proves unpopular on both sides of the aisle, more critics have started weighing in on late night. In particular, Jimmy Kimmel emerged Tuesday as one of the plan’s harshest.

Kimmel first got uncharacteristically political earlier this month when he opened up about his son’s terrifying health scare with a monologue that called for protection for those with preexisting conditions and criticized Trump’s proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health. On Tuesday night, Kimmel expressed his disdain for Trump’s budget, as well: “It cuts programs for the poor and the elderly to give tax cuts to the rich,” Kimmel said. “It’s like Robin Hood if Prince John was the good guy, O.K.? So this budget makes huge promises that it can’t possibly deliver. It could leave millions of Americans without necessary services like health care or even food. It’s basically the Fyre Festival of budgets.”

Kimmel wasn’t the only host to criticize Trump’s budget plan. As Stephen Colbert discussed the proposal, titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” he said, “It turns out [Trump is] building that foundation out of the ground-up bones of poor people, because this budget cuts things like the food stamp program, SNAP, and the children’s health insurance program CHIP. . . I know this is an unpopular position these days, but I believe children should go to the doctor and eat.”

“Trump said we’d be sick of winning, and he is ready to deliver on the first half of that sentence,” Colbert said later. “The budget also calls for major cuts to the Centers for Disease Control. So whenever that thing inside Steve Bannon bursts out and goes airborne, we will not be prepared to handle it.”