Jimmy Kimmel hits back at Elon Musk after billionaire calls him a ‘propaganda puppet’

The talk show host didn’t hesitate to hit back at the Tesla CEO for dissing him following his emotional on-air monologue after Donald Trump’s US election win on Wednesday night.

“Kimmel is an insufferable nonsense propaganda puppet,” Mr Musk, who is a firm supporter of Mr Trump, tweeted on his platform X in response to the Jimmy Kimmel Live! segment. 

When the 56-year-old host was back on-air on Thursday, Kimmel didn’t waste time dragging Mr Musk, 53, for his tweet, which was met with laughs from the studio audience. 

“Last night I shared some of my thoughts and feelings about what happened and how much I’m going to miss democracy and what not, and I heard from a lot of people about it,” Kimmel said on the show.

“But none more prominent than the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, who this morning tweeted: ‘Kimmel is an insufferable nonsense propaganda puppet,’ which … at least my children like me, you know!”

It appears Kimmel was referring to Mr Musk’s transgender daughter Vivian Wilson, who has been very vocal about her disdain for her father in recent years. 

In 2022, she officially cut ties with him and filed a petition to legally change her name and gender.

Most recently, she branded Mr Musk – a father of 12 – a “serial adulterer” in a social media post shared back in August. And this past week, Ms Wilson called him out for his role in the election.

“Watching the grown members of my ex-‘family’ in the media/twitter-sphere recently makes me glad that I didn’t develop my genetic predisposition of apparently not having a f***ing spine,” Ms Wilson wrote, before slamming the “f***ing politicians and oligarchs” who supported Mr Trump’s win.

As he continued in his clapback, Kimmel said Mr Musk’s comments were rich coming from someone who “paid people a million dollars a day to vote for Donald Trump”.

“Listen Kermit, you bought Twitter, you bought a social media platform that is literally a propaganda machine!” Kimmel added.

“Let me tell you something, if I spent two weeks trying to come up with a four-word description of Elon Musk, I don’t think I could do better than ‘insufferable nonsense propaganda puppet.’”

Kimmel then reminded viewers about the disparaging remarks Mr Trump once said to Mr Musk before the billionaire gave him $US100 million to regain the White House.

Posting on his own platform Truth Social back in 2022, Mr Trump revealed that Mr Musk had asked for “help on all of his many subsidised projects” with the now-president bragging at the time: “I could have said, ‘Drop to your knees and beg’ and [Elon] would have done it.’”

Kimmel couldn’t help but laugh and poke fun of the pair’s new-found bromance as he concluded his monologue.

“And you know what he means by beg, right? I’m sure you guys will be great together now that you’re friends. I’m sure his little hand will fit nicely in your sockhole,” he laughed.