Jimmy Kimmel Refuses to Back Down After Trump and Melania Demand His Head
Jimmy Kimmel came out swinging Monday night after both Donald and Melania Trump spent the day demanding ABC fire him over a joke he made in his Thursday monologue, in which he described the first lady as having “a glow like an expectant widow” — a line he said was plainly a reference to the president’s age and the couple’s visible dynamic together.
Kimmel did not budge an inch. He told his audience the joke was never a threat, never an incitement, and that anyone claiming otherwise knows it. “It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination,” he said, noting his long record of speaking out against gun violence.
Rather than apologize to Melania, Kimmel turned her own words back on her. After she called for ABC to reject his “hateful and violent rhetoric,” Kimmel agreed that such rhetoric should be dialed back — and suggested she start that conversation at home. The audience erupted.
The backdrop to all of this is an assassination attempt that took place at the White House Correspondents’ dinner Saturday night, where a shooter was apprehended before anyone was harmed. Right-wing media immediately pointed to Kimmel’s days-old monologue as somehow connected. Kimmel wasn’t having it, and he made that clear by playing a clip of Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier that same day bragging to a reporter that there would be “shots fired” at the event.
This is not the first time the Trump machine has tried to take Kimmel out. Last fall, ABC briefly pulled him from the air following MAGA pressure over comments about the Charlie Kirk assassination.
Trump gloated. Then Kimmel came back the following Tuesday to his highest ratings in years. “He tried his best to cancel me,” Kimmel said at the time, “instead he forced millions of people to watch the show.”