Jimmy Kimmel takes down Donald Trump for canceling an appearance

Yesterday, Donald Trump canceled an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Which, at first, might have seemed like kind of a bummer to the Kimmel team. But it turns out that when Trump doesn’t show up to something you can actually milk him for plenty–and maybe better–jokes than if he had been there.

“Why did he cancel? We told him there were cameras here, right?” Kimmel said in his opening monologue. “Are Tuesday nights the nights he volunteers down at the orphanage?”

Kimmel went on: “But don’t worry, tonight we’re gonna give everyone in the audience a basketball dipped in cologne so you can fully experience what it would have been like had Donald Trump been here.”

Trump’s campaign said he canceled the appearance because of “a political obligation,” Variety reports.

“Unfortunately Mr. Trump now has a political obligation that will prevent him from joining as planned, but we have rescheduled to join in-studio in LA over the next few weeks,” Trump campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks told the publication.

Kimmel wasn’t buying the excuse last night: “I’m dying to know what this major political commitment was. Usually it means he had to go on CNN and call someone an idiot or something,” he said.

But possibly the most directly critical Kimmel got was referencing Trump’s plan to build a wall on the Mexican border: “The good part about Donald Trump not being here is we don’t have to build a wall around Guillermo tonight,” said Kimmel about his Mexican-American security guard and now show regular Guillermo Rodriguez.