Was former first lady Michelle Obama videotaped executing a barbed takedown of Donald Trump on the 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' show in the fall of 2025? No, that's not true: As of November 12, 2025, no such video recording existed. Michelle Obama hadn't been on Kimmel's show for years at that time.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on Facebook on November 11, 2025. It opened:
LATE-NIGHT SHOWDOWN: Michelle Obama & Jimmy Kimmel HUMILIATE T.r.u.m.p in a Live Takedown That Shook Washington!
It wasn't just another interview -- it was an earthquake in real time.Michelle Obama joined Jimmy Kimmel Live, and what started as friendly banter turned into one of the sharpest on-air dismantlings of D.o.n.a.l.d T.r.u.m.p's 'strongman' image ever broadcast.Kimmel fired the first shot with his signature sarcasm, poking fun at T.r.u.m.p's obsession with ratings and legal drama. Then Michelle, calm and razor-sharp, delivered the line that froze the crowd:'When power becomes a performance, truth is the first thing to die.'The studio erupted. Even Kimmel paused before dropping his closing jab:'T.r.u.m.p turned politics into entertainment -- and somehow still lost the audience.'Insiders say T.r.u.m.p's team was in chaos minutes after the clip aired. One Mar-a-Lago aide called it 'a category-five meltdown.'Now the exchange is spreading like wildfire -- hailed as the night comedy collided with consequence.Watch the uncut segment before it disappears from your feed.
This is what the image attached to the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of post by "Capitol Whisper" at facebook.com)
According to the most recent show schedule on the ABC website (archived here), Michelle Obama was not a guest on November 11, 2025, or the day before, and, as of this writing, she wasn't scheduled to come to the show during the week of the post's publication.
A search across the Jimmy Kimmel Live! account on YouTube did not reveal any recent appearances:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of search results page at youtube.com/@JimmyKimmelLive)
A search across the episode database on IMDb (archived here) showed that the former first lady appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on November 15, 2018 (archived here) and December 12, 2022 (archived here), and on March 16, 2021 (archived here), the show aired a pre-recorded clip of Michelle Obama trying to convince the host's daughter to eat carrots. Yet, the database contained no recent episodes recorded during the first year of Trump's second term in office.
Searches across news reports on Google and Yahoo (archived here) did not show any media coverage of the purported Michelle Obama interview mentioning Trump on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
A search for a specific quote did not lead to any source other than the post reviewed in this fact check that attributed those words to the former first lady:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of search results page at google.com)
In the comment section on Facebook, the same account added a link to a longer article making the same claim (archived here). In part, it read:
Within minutes of the broadcast, political Twitter -- or what's left of it -- was on fire. Hashtags like #KimmelVsTrump, #MichelleStrikes, and #TruthOverPerformance began trending globally.
But searches on x.com did not show multiple entries containing such hashtags in the context of Michelle Obama's purported interview:
(Sources: Lead Stories screenshots of search result pages at x.com)
The website that ran the article carries a disclaimer (archived here):
The Company assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in the contents of the Service.
Its Terms and Conditions (archived here) section continued:
The Service is provided to You "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" and with all faults and defects without warranty of any kind.
As of this writing, the most recent Michelle Obama appearance on a late-night show took place at Stephen Colbert's studio on November 5, 2025. In that segment (archived here), she did not make the comments attributed to her in the post that is the subject of this fact check.
