Jimmy Kimmel shouldn't be surprised if he's the target of Kanye West's next Twitter tirade.
West's return to Twitter has left many scratching their heads, and his recent interviews have done the same. On ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! Tuesday, the host spoke about one of the more bizarre discussions West had with Harvey Levin. "For whatever reason, Kanye felt the need to spend a full hour on TMZ Live today to defend his love for Donald Trump and to go off on a tangent not seen since the glory days of Gary Busey on Celebrity Rehab," Kimmel joked. He then played clips from the interview, in which West revealed he became addicted to opioids after getting liposuction. "I had plastic surgery because I was trying to look good for y'all!" West yelled. Before he was hospitalized, he was taking two pills a day. "When I left the hospital, how many pills you think I was given? Seven!" he said. "I went from taking two pills to taking seven!"
Quipped Kimmel, "Maybe you should be taking eight."
At another point, West ranted, "TMZ is the hospital to fix the world." Kimmel joked, "Wow, healthcare really is in bad shape if TMZ is a hospital. If TMZ is a hospital, it's a mental hospital!"
Kimmel, like many of his audience members, was dumbfounded by West's TMZ Live interview. "Here's the thing: This job, doing this show every night, is hard enough. Keeping up with the White House on a daily basis is exhausting. I can't handle Donald Trump and Kanye West at the same time. It's too much. It's like being a single mother with twins. I can't do it!" he said. "One of you is gonna have to stop—I'll let you decide between yourselves which one it's going to be."
Of course, Kimmel has quite a history with West.
In the fall of 2013, West went on a Twitter rant after Kimmel aired a sketch involving kids re-enacting the rapper's interview with BBC Radio 1, where he dubbed himself "the biggest rock star on the planet." After some back and forth, Kimmel invited West to appear on his late-night talk show to clear the air. Though he apologized, he added, "A lot of people think you're a jerk." To his credit, the rapper acknowledged he's known to be "weird and inappropriate sometimes."
"I do think somewhere in you, you want people to understand where you're coming from," Kimmel said. "Correct?" The rapper gave him a one-word answer, replying, "Yeah." But West became more animated as the interview progressed. "I've never done a publicity stunt in my life. I don't follow rules of, like, a normal celebrity," he said. "I don't do publicity stunts. Period."
Five years later, Kimmel reflected on their beef in GQ. "I live for moments like that. When I got in a Twitter battle with Kanye, I was so happy. My wife makes fun of me. She's like, 'You are so happy right now,'" he said. "I'm absolutely beaming. I feel very confident in a situation like that."