"I have to believe John McCain is smiling": Jimmy Kimmel on Sidney Powell's guilty plea

The late-night host jabbed at Trump, who infamously claimed in 2015 that McCain, a veteran, was "not a hero"

Published October 20, 2023 10:45AM (EDT)

Jimmy Kimmel Live! (Disney/Randy Holmes)
Jimmy Kimmel Live! (Disney/Randy Holmes)

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel offered a grim prediction for Donald Trump after one of the ex-president's 18 co-conspirators, disgraced attorney Sidney Powell, entered a guilty plea in Fulton County on Thursday in District Attorney Fani Willis's Georgia election interference case. The former federal prosecutor pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally obstruct the performance of election duties in the 2020 presidential election. She agreed to serve six years of probation, pay a $6,000 fine, write a letter of apology to Georgia residents and testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials.

“The Chicken McNuggets are coming home to roost, aren’t they?” Kimmel quipped. “The rats are jumping off the Spray-tanic. The big, beautiful walls are closing in ― and somewhere up there, I have to believe John McCain is smiling. You know, he likes people who don’t get caught.” Trump during a 2015 interview, remarked that McCain, a former Navy pilot and Republican Arizona senator who died in 2018, was "not a hero" because he was captured and tortured at a North Vietnamese prison. "He was a war hero because he was captured," Trump said to CBS pollster Frank Luntz. "I like people who weren’t captured.” The former president added that he felt "John McCain’s done very little for the veterans. I’m very disappointed in John McCain.”