Jimmy Kimmel Cried After Chastising Lion-Killing Dentist Walter Palmer

Last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live! , Kimmel had a lot to say about Walter Palmer, the dentist from Minnesota who traveled to Zimbabwe and paid at least $50,000 to kill Cecil, one of Africa’s most beloved lions.

Cecil was one of the lions in an Oxford University research project and thus was protected in his park and outfitted with a tracker. Palmer, along with two Zimbabwean locals, lured Cecil away from his protected area and shot him with a bow and arrow. The bow and arrow didn’t kill Cecil though, and it took forty hours for Palmer and the other men to track Cecil down. When they did, Palmer shot Cecil, skinned him, took his head, and left his body. When they realized the animal was wearing a tracker they tried to destroy it to no avail.

Palmer is no stranger to controversy surrounding hunting. He has pictures posing with a bear, lion, rhino, and leopard that he also hunted and killed mercilessly. He was even convicted of a felony back in 2008 for lying about where he killed a bear. As Kimmel put it, “He killed, like, half of Noah’s Ark.”

Kimmel calls Palmer, who has gone into hiding since the attack considering he’s universally reviled and treated like a real like James Bond villain, both an “a-hole” and the “most hated man in America.” Palmer emailed in a statement to the news that read in part, “I had no idea that the lion I took was a known local favorite until the end of the hunt. To my knowledge everything about this trip was legal and properly handled.”

Jimmy Kimmel responded to that statement with both disgust and disbelief. “Let’s say we accept that [Palmer’s statement] at face value… The big question is why are you shooting a lion in the first place… How is that fun?”

Kimmel noted that he isn’t totally against hunting in all instances, but that there comes a point where it is unquestioningly wrong. “If you’re some a-hole dentist who wants a lion’s head over the fireplace in his man cave so his douchebag buddies can gather around it and drink scotch and tell him how awesome he is, that’s just vominous,” Kimmel said.

At the end of his speech Kimmel got very chocked up while giving the website for the preservation society that Cecil was a part of. “I think it’s important to have some good come out of this disgusting tragedy… Maybe we can show the world that not all Americans are like this jack-hole.”

If you want to learn more about Cecil or donate to the group, you can visit http://www.wildcru.org.

 

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