Jimmy Kimmel on Monday night did not back down after both President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump demanded that ABC fire him over jokes he made last week.
“You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and the first lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job?” he said at the top of his monologue. “We’ve all been there, right?”
Last week, Kimmel created his own version of a White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner roast that included a crack about Melania Trump glowing “like an expectant widow.” Days later, at the actual event, a gunman rushed past security and opened fire as he tried to get into the ballroom where the Trumps and other high-level officials were in attendance.
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country,” the first lady wrote on X, describing him as a “coward” and demanding that ABC pull him off the air.
The president also called for Kimmel to be canned. But Kimmel stood by the joke. “It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am,” he said. “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.”
Kimmel pointed out the hypocrisy of the Trumps criticizing his rhetoric, given the president’s extensive history of using explosive, demeaning language against his critics and rivals.
“I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house. And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do,” he said. “And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.”
Kimmel also said he was glad no one was killed in the “traumatic and scary” event on Saturday evening. “But if you want us to believe that a joke I made three days before this dinner had any effect on anything that happened, well then, maybe someone should look into this psychic lady, too,” he said, and rolled footage of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaking before the event.
Kimmel said it felt like “deja vu,” given his experience last year when he was briefly pulled off the air following comments he made about the suspect in the Charlie Kirk assassination, which led to calls from many on the right that he be fired. But he was back on the air about a week later after many fans canceled their Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions in protest.
Trump — who has frequently attacked late-night hosts and demanded that most of them be fired over jokes they’ve made about him — cheered when Kimmel was suspended, and was livid when he was allowed back on the air.
