“In Washington today, Trump awarded the National Medal of Science to his owner, Elon Musk. And look at this, look at the body language here,” Kimmel said, featuring a clip of the presentation. “This is definitely someone we can trust with the keys to our military in space. Nodding and … like he’s rebooting in front of our eyes.”
Musk was awarded with the nation’s highest science honor on Thursday night, alongside other tech moguls including Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
While the award acknowledges the recipient’s contributions to science and technology, Kimmel noted how “no one has meddled more with our nation’s scientists than Twitchy Cybertruck” through federal cuts via the Department of Government Efficiency.
Trump awarded Musk just over a year after their public dispute, which led to the billionaire calling him out for being in case files related to convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein and saying, “That is the reason they’ve not been made public.”
Musk has since deleted the post on X and apologized, but Kimmel took a shot at them rekindling their friendship, joking that “It is so nice when two terrible people can put their differences aside for the greater bad.”
“And you know what? I do give the president some credit,” Kimmel said. “It’s hard for him to give medals to other people. He’s really showing growth.”