Jimmy Kimmel ridicules Trump for calling alleged hush money payment ‘legal expense’

Trump was speaking outside court on the second day of his historical criminal trial

Jimmy Kimmel ridiculed Donald Trump calling the alleged hush money at the centre of the historic criminal trial a “legal expense.”

Trump, 77, is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a alleged bid to cover up a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. The former president allegedly paid Daniels in October 2016 in exchange for her silence over a 2006 affair Daniels says they had.

Trump stood before reporters outside the courthouse on Tuesday morning and said: “I was paying a lawyer, and I marked it down as a legal expense, some accountant,” Mr Trump told reporters Tuesday morning ahead of the trial. “I didn’t know. Marked it down as a legal expense. That’s exactly what it was. And you get indicted over that?”

“Yeah,” the late-night host replied. “He claims he didn’t have sex with Stormy Daniels, he just paid her $130 grand out of the goodness of his heart.” Kimmel continued.

Trump denies the affair and all of the charges brought against him by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.

Kimmel pointed out, however, that no matter what sort of legal woes Mr Trump is carrying through his presidential campaign, even to the point he has become the first sitting or former president to be put on criminal trial, his loyal supporters don’t seem to care about his alleged affair with Ms Daniels.

“The joke is on Trump because his supporters don’t care that he’s a lying cheating scumbag he could have saved himself a whole trial and $130 grand,” Kimmel explained.

Donald Trump on his second day at the hush money trial in New York (Getty Images)

Outside the courthouse this week, Mr Trump has had a crowd of supporters protesting the former president’s trial, with a few offering wild defences against him, saying that they opposed the charges because they too had paid for sex – despite the fact that Trump is not actually being accused of that.

“What do you think I do in Thailand, just sit in a chair?” one supporter said to The Independent, explaining his trips to East Asia. “That’s what we do as men, you know?”

While his most faithful continue to protest outside the courtroom, Trump is airing his relentless grievances about the criminal trial and Judge Juan Merchan on Truth Social, claiming that the “Trump Hating Judge won’t let me respond to people that are on TV lying and spewing hate all day long” and calling to removed a gag order imposed on him.

“Only Donald Trump will complain about being under a gag order while violating that very gag order,” Kimmel joked.