Jimmy Kimmel pushed back Monday night against calls from President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump to have him fired, defending a joke he made last week as a comment on the couple's age gap rather than a threat of any kind.
The dispute stems from a line Kimmel delivered on his Thursday night show while pretending to perform a comedy routine at the then-upcoming White House Correspondents' Association dinner. He described Melania Trump as having "the glow of an expectant widow." Two nights later, that dinner was cut short when a man armed with guns and knives attempted to enter the Washington ballroom where the Trumps and much of the nation's political leadership had gathered.
Melania Trump posted on social media that "people like Kimmel shouldn't have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate," calling on ABC to take a stand. President Trump echoed her on his Truth Social platform, calling the joke "a despicable call to violence" and demanding that "Disney and ABC" fire Kimmel immediately.
On his Monday night monologue, Kimmel did not back down. He described the joke as "a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am," and rejected the framing that it was anything close to an incitement. "It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that," he said.
Kimmel said he was genuinely sorry the Trumps and others in the room had a frightening experience Saturday. "No one got killed doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic and scary," he told his audience. But he challenged the premise that a joke he made three days before the dinner had any bearing on what happened that night.
He also turned the rhetoric back on the president. After agreeing that hateful and violent language was worth rejecting, Kimmel said "a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it."
This is not the first time the two have clashed publicly. Kimmel was pulled from the air for several nights last September after conservatives, including Trump, criticized him over remarks he made following the killing of Charlie Kirk. Kimmel had said America had "hit some new lows" watching the MAGA movement try to "score political points" from the assassination. He later said he could see how the comments were offensive to some but did not issue a blanket apology. CBS News reported it had reached out to ABC for comment on the latest dispute, with no response received before publication.
