President Trump is demanding Disney’s new CEO Josh D’Amaro fire Jimmy Kimmel from ABC following a string of jokes Kimmel made for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
During his roast, Kimmel had joked that the First Lady had “a glow like an expectant widow,” but after the April 25 Correspondents’ Dinner shooting outside the ballroom, Melania Trump slammed the comment as a “despicable call to violence” and linked it to the shooting.
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy … his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate,” Melania wrote on X.
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“A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community?” she continued.
Echoing his wife’s sentiment, on Monday (April 27) Trump called for Kimmel to be fired, calling the joke “something far beyond the pale” and saying, “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”
Kimmel defended his right to freedom of speech during his late-night TV monologue on Jimmy Jimmel Live! the same evening. “You know sometimes you wake up in the morning and the first lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job? We’ve all been there, right? What a day,” Kimmel said.
“It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am … It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that. I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular,” he added.
“I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I also should point out Donald Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants to say, as are you and as am I and as are all of us, because under the First Amendment we have as Americans the right to free speech,” Kimmel continued.
On Monday, the alleged gunman, Cole Allen, 31, was charged with attempting to assassinate the president.
This isn’t the first time Kimmel has sparked controversy with his on-air political comments.
In 2015, his late-night show was pulled from air briefly following backlash to comments he made following the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said during an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! following the September 10, 2026 Kirk killing.
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