Jimmy Kimmel masterfully responds to Aaron Rodgers' tasteless, false allegations about him
He’s “too arrogant to know he’s ignorant.”
Jimmy Kimmel has some harsh words for Aaron Rodgers.
New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers should have thought twice about making false allegations about late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. It’s probably not a great idea for an NFL quarterback to pick a public fight against a man who spent decades taking shots at people in the news.
It all began when Rodgers speculated that Kimmel would be on the Jeffrey Epstein client list, basically insinuating that he’s a pedophile, on the January 2 episode of ESPN’s "The Pat McAfee Show." It was a tasteless, baseless accusation that Kimmel denies and he hasn’t appeared in any of the unsealed court documents.
After the accusation, Kimmel noted that Rodgers' "reckless words put my family in danger." When he returned to do his monologue on Monday, January 8, Kimmel gave a thoughtful and funny takedown of Rodgers, painting him as a man who is “too arrogant to know he’s ignorant.”
He added that Rodgers probably suffers from the Dunning-Krueger effect. This psychological phenomenon occurs when a person's lack of knowledge and skill in a particular area causes them to overestimate their own competence.
"He genuinely thinks that because God gave him the ability to throw a ball, he’s smarter than everybody else. The idea that his brain is just average is unfathomable to him. We learned during COVID somehow he knows more about science than scientists,” Kimmel continued.
“And by the way, I’m not one of those people that thinks athletes and members of the sports media should stick to talking about sports,” Kimmel said. “I think Aaron Rodgers has the right to express any opinion he wants. But saying someone is a pedophile isn’t an opinion nor is it trash talk, sorry Pat McAfee."
Rodgers responded by denying that he accused Kimmel of pedophilia. "I don’t give a s--- what he says about me," Rodgers said. "As long as he understands what I actually said and that I’m not accusing him of being on a list, I’m all for moving forward."