Jimmy Kimmel Hits Back at White House Over Trump-Natalie Harp ‘Gigglegate’

Jimmy Kimmel isn’t buying the White House’s explanation for a giggle heard during Donald Trump‘s phone call to C-SPAN earlier this week, saying the reasoning “made very little sense.”

“Here’s another mystery that needs to be solved,” the late-night host said on Wednesday’s (November 11) Jimmy Kimmel Live! “I showed a clip last night of President Trump calling into C-SPAN. They have a new call-in show, and I guess he couldn’t resist calling in.”

Kimmel noted that Trump surprised the host and “when she answered the call, we heard a woman laughing who definitely wasn’t the first lady.”

He played the clip again, in which a woman can be heard giggling as Trump says hello to the host. On Tuesday’s (November 10) show, Kimmel made an offhand comment that the laugh belonged to the president’s personal aide, Natalie Harp.

“Okay, so we know from an interview he did last week that his assistant Natalie, one of her jobs is to place these calls. And we presumed the woman laughing was Natalie,” Kimmel stated. “But for whatever reason, with all the many problems they have on their plate, the White House felt the need to issue a statement about this pushing back.”

Kimmel read the statement: “They said, ‘The laugh is leftover audio from a previous caller who had not disconnected yet.'”

The comedian said the explanation didn’t make sense because “we heard the president first and the previous caller was a guy named Doug.” He added, “But what makes even less sense is the fact that they released a statement about this. It’s like some kind of Gigglegate. I would have forgotten about it already.”

“It kind of makes you wonder why they’re so eager to deny that it was Natalie’s laugh. It’s not like she was laughing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,” Kimmel said, referencing the backlash to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seen laughing at the monument dedicated to the services of an unknown soldier.

Elsewhere in the monologue, Kimmel touched on the letter Trump left for Joe Biden in 2021 following the latter’s presidential election victory. The letter features in Biden’s upcoming memoir, Promise Me, America.

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Kimmel read from the letter, in which Trump described working in the Oval Office as “a blessing beyond imagination,” and said, “Your strength, your deepest reservoir of energy, comes from the knowledge that millions upon millions of people are depending on you. Their ambitions and aspirations are the reason you’re here, with so many counting on your success. May God bless you and Jill, and may God bless America.”

However, Kimmel wasn’t convinced. “First of all, there’s no way [Trump] wrote that. I mean, not only is there no way he wrote it, I bet he didn’t even read it,” he said. “But what I want to know is where is the person who did write it? Why is that person not in charge of his tweets or speeches or anything for that matter?”

He added, “It’s gracious. It’s poetic. There are no spelling errors. There are no words in all caps. No blobs of ranch dressing on the signature. Find the person who wrote that letter from the president and make that person chief of staff instead of Stephen Miller.”

You can watch Kimmel’s full opening monologue in the video above and let us know your thoughts below.