Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel found the perfect way to troll Ted Cruz on Thursday night’s show, by recruiting RuPaul’s Drag Race star Trixie Mattel to read the Texas senator’s new book to a room full of children.
Mr Cruz became a four-time author with the publication of his new book Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America earlier this week.
To mark the occasion, Mr Kimmel invited Ms Mattel onto Jimmy Kimmel Live! to hold a Drag Queen Storytime with a group of children.
Drag queens – and in particular Drag Queen Storytimes – have become a major flashpoint in the right wing’s ongoing culture wars of late.
“Ted’s been out trying to sell the book,” Mr Kimmel explained.
“His last book, he had to get his own campaign to buy thousands of copies to get it up the list, which is sad. So we decided that, this time, we’d help him out with an assist from one of the stars of RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
Trixie Mattel held a ‘Drag Queen Storytime’ on the Jimmy Kimmel Show— (ABC)
Sporting a hot pink jumper and blonde hair, the drag queen read aloud excerpts of the book to the children, who yawned and appeared bored.
One such excerpt contained Mr Cruz’s thoughts on the live-action movie The Little Mermaid, which drew criticism from figures on the right for casting Black actor Halle Bailey as Princess Ariel.
“Instead of admitting that Disney had managed to ruin a classic, defenders of the subpar remake – including its star –accused the public of racism,” wrote Mr Cruz, as read by Ms Mattel.
The children did not seem impressed by the senator’s remarks.
“But the original Little Mermaid was good and the other Little Mermaid was good – the new one,” one of the children said.
“I just want to say out loud right now: the book is boring,” another child chimed in.
Ms Mattel then suggested they skip a page or two, to which one child responded that they should “skip the book” altogether.
The drag queen later gave all the children copies of Unwoke to take home, which they promptly all dumped in the trash.
Mr Cruz responded to the skit on X, formerly Twitter.
“Awesome!” he wrote, thanking Mr Kimmel for buying “at least NINE copies of my new book” – even though they ended up in the bin.
