Jimmy Kimmel fired back at Melania and Donald Trump’s calls for his termination after his “expectant widow” joke pre-The White House Correspondents’ Dinner went viral in the wake of the shooting.
The comedian addressed the controversy during Monday’s monologue for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” in which he defended that his joke was in no way a call to assassinate the president. Rather, he described his quip as a “light roast” highlighting the Trumps’ age difference.
“Sometimes, you wake up in the morning and the first lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job,” Kimmel started off Monday’s show. “We’ve all been there, right?”
“It was a pretend roast,” he continued. “I said, ‘Our First Lady Melania is here. Look at her, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,’ which obviously was a joke about their age difference, and the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together. 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.”
As he went on, Kimmel acknowledged that the first lady “had a stressful experience over the weekend,” expressing a bit of empathy for those who were in the room at the Washington Hilton.
“And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject,” he said, referencing the first lady’s statement from earlier. “I do. And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.”
Watch his full monologue below.
Earlier on Monday, the first lady took to X and called for ABC to fire the late-night host after his monologue spoofing the White House Correspondents’ Dinner saw her compared to an “expectant widow” days before the actual dinner was shut down over a shooting.
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country,” Melania wrote on her social media account. “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. 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.”
Shortly after Melania released her statement, her husband echoed her sentiments in a post of his own on Truth Social, with the president writing that Kimmel should be “immediately fired” by ABC. He added that “this is something far beyond the pale.”
The demand came more than seven months after Disney pulled Kimmel’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from the air for days last September over jokes he made after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, which sparked conservative outrage and threats from Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr. Disney eventually restored Kimmel’s show following bipartisan pushback, though the president threatened to sue the network over Kimmel’s return.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.
