Jimmy Kimmel opened Monday's show with a dry acknowledgment of the morning he'd had. "Sometimes you wake up in the morning and the First Lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job," he told his audience. "We've all been there, right?"
The joke that set it off was simple enough. Last Thursday, Kimmel taped his own mock version of the White House Correspondents' Dinner monologue, featuring archival reaction shots of the Trumps. "Our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow," he said. The bit drew little attention when it aired. Then the actual Correspondents' Dinner ended in a shooting Saturday night, and by Monday morning everything had changed.
Melania Trump posted on X calling for ABC to fire the late-night host. "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. People like Kimmel shouldn't have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate." She called Kimmel a coward who "hides behind ABC" and demanded the network take a stand.
President Trump followed with his own post on Truth Social, calling on Disney-owned ABC to "immediately fire" Kimmel and writing that the joke was "something far beyond the pale."
Kimmel pushed back directly. "It was a pretend roast," he 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." He added that he has spent years speaking out against gun violence.
He also pointed out what he called hypocrisy from the administration. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had said on Fox News that Trump would be firing off "some shots" during his planned Correspondents' Dinner speech. Kimmel noted that choice of words without comment, letting it land.
On the subject of violent rhetoric, Kimmel offered Melania a suggestion. "I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject," 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."
The situation echoes a confrontation from September 2025, when Disney pulled "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" from the air for several days after Kimmel made jokes following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. That episode drew a warning from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. ABC has not yet responded to either Trump's demand or Melania's statement.
