By Katherine Tinsley
4:04am PDT, Jun 18, 2025
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Despite Donald Trump's enthusiasm for the gathering, photos showed that there was a lower turnout than planned.
"After all the hype, and money, somewhere around 50 million dollars, it was… boring,"
Jimmy Kimmel said.
"It was basically a $50 million version of when a 5-year-old shows you every car in his Hot Wheels collection… There were flyovers, there were combovers, the whole thing," he added.
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Melania Trump attended the gathering alongside Donald Trump, who appeared to nod off at one point.
"In fairness, that's as close as he gets to being able to sleep with his wife, so he took the opportunity,"
Jimmy Kimmel joked. "It almost makes me feel bad for him. Almost."
"That's known as the Slovenian Snub," he added.
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Jimmy Kimmel noted how photos showed that the crowd size was small in comparison to what the White House has claimed.
"Turnout was much lower than expected, or as Trump would say, there were 'record-setting crowds,'" he joked.
"The bleachers, you can see, were mostly empty," he added. "The crowds were sparse. There was not a whole lot of cheering for the tanks and military vehicles."
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Jimmy Kimmel later joked about conspiracy theories that the weather in Washington, D.C., might've influenced the crowd.
"It's a shame… But the lackluster crowd size wasn't [Donald] Trump's fault, and believe it or not, wasn't even [Joe] Biden's fault! The blame for this one goes squarely on the radical left-wing weather people," Kimmel said before joking that it sounds like the president is "about to start deporting meteorologists."
