Jimmy Kimmel has responded to the “preposterous” lawsuit former Rep. George Santos filed against him over the weekend.
On Tuesday night’s (Feb. 20) episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the comedian dedicated the first part of his opening monologue to his ongoing legal battle with Santos, who recently sued him for breach of contract, copyright infringement, fraud, and unjust enrichment over his “Will Santos Say It?” segment.
“I am currently embroiled in what may be the most preposterous lawsuit of all time,” he said. “George Santos, a man Republicans kicked out of Congress for being a fraud, is suing me for fraud.”
Kimmel continued, “George has rudely filed a lawsuit against me, our show and the Walt Disney Company because we did a nice thing — because we supported him by ordering his Cameo videos.”
After Santos was removed from the House of Representatives late last year, he began selling personalized messages to “fans” on Cameo. When Kimmel caught wind of his new side hustle, he created a segment called “Will Santos Say It?” in which his team sent in absurd requests to the former politician using fake names and narratives then aired the videos on his late-night show.
“We wrote some absolutely ridiculous messages for him to read, we gave them a credit card number and sure enough, he recorded the messages and sent them back to us and now he’s suing,” Kimmel explained. “He says we deceived him under the guise of fandom soliciting personalized videos only to then broadcast these on national television.”
The host then quipped, “So if there’s one thing George Santos will not stand for, it’s using a fake name under false pretenses,” referencing the numerous lies Santos has allegedly told over the years.
However, Kimmel was more surprised that Santos actually “believed” the requests — especially since one was about “a guy named Gary who ate six pounds of loose ground beef in under 30 minutes” and another was “a message congratulating my mom Brenda on the successful cloning of her beloved schnauzer Adolf.”
“He says he thought these were real messages and that he was duped,” Kimmel said, before joking, “He’s being represented by the prestigious law firm of Pot, Kettle and Black.”
Kimmel concluded the topic with one final dig at Santos, telling the audience, “This is like getting sued for paternity by Nick Cannon.”
Jimmy Kimmel Live airs on weeknights at 11:35/10:35c on ABC. Check out last night’s monologue above.
