Content Advisory: This article discusses gun violence, alleged assassination attempts, and political rhetoric. Reader discretion is advised.
Donald Trump is calling for Jimmy Kimmel to be fired again, and this time the fight centers on a joke about Melania Trump.
The president posted on Truth Social after Melania publicly urged ABC to cancel ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ over a monologue that aired before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting.
Kimmel had joked that Melania had “a glow like an expectant widow.” Trump called the line “shocking” and claimed it amounted to a “despicable call to violence.” “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” Trump wrote.
The demand came after a suspected gunman was arrested following the shooting outside the WHCD host hotel. Attorney General Todd Blanche said investigators believe the suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, was targeting members of Trump’s administration.
Trump Said Kimmel Went ‘Far Beyond The Pale’
Trump blasted Kimmel’s ratings and accused him of staging a fake video involving Melania and Barron Trump as if they were sitting in his studio.
“He showed a fake video of the First Lady, Melania, and our son, Barron, like they were actually sitting in his studio, listening to him speak, which they weren’t, and never would be,” Trump wrote.
He then quoted Kimmel’s “expectant widow” joke and connected it to the next day’s WHCD shooting. “A day later a lunatic tried entering the ballroom of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, loaded up with a shotgun, handgun, and many knives,” Trump wrote. “He was there for a very obvious and sinister reason.” Trump added that many people were “incensed” by the joke and said the moment was “far beyond the pale.”
Melania Called Kimmel A ‘Coward’
Melania had already issued her own statement earlier Monday, accusing Kimmel of spreading “hateful and violent rhetoric.”
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country,” she wrote. “His monologue about my family isn’t comedy, his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.”
She also called him a “coward,” claiming he hides behind ABC because “the network will keep running cover to protect him.”
“Enough is enough,” Melania wrote. “It is time for ABC to take a stand.”
Kimmel Has Faced ABC Pressure Before
This is not Kimmel’s first major clash with Trump or ABC.
Last September, ABC temporarily suspended ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after backlash over a joke Kimmel made following Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Trump’s FCC chairman Brendan Carr had also applied pressure at the time.
When Kimmel returned, he said the joke may have been “ill-timed or unclear or maybe both,” adding, “I get why you’re upset.”
Daniel Suhr, president of the conservative Center for American Rights, also criticized Kimmel on Monday, accusing him of using public airwaves to push a “private partisan agenda.” “If ABC took seriously its duty as a trustee of the public airwaves, he’d be gone,” Suhr said.
ABC and Kimmel have not publicly responded to the latest firing demands. Trump has attacked Kimmel for years and has repeatedly called for his show to be canceled. Kimmel, meanwhile, has made Trump a regular target of his monologues.
Now the fight has escalated again, with Melania, Trump, Kimmel, ABC and the WHCD shooting all folded into one messy late-night firestorm.
