Hours after First Lady Melania Trump declared that ABC must “take a stand” against late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for “atrocious behavior” in a post on X, formerly Twitter, President Donald Trump went on social media and demanded that Kimmel be fired in a lengthy rant on Monday evening (April 27).
“Wow, Jimmy Kimmel, who is in no way funny as attested to by his terrible Television Ratings, made a statement on his Show that is really shocking,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social media platform “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. He then stated, ‘Our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.’”
Trump added, “A day later, a lunatic tried entering the ballroom of the White House Correspondents Dinner, loaded up with a shotgun, handgun, and many knives. He was there for a very obvious and sinister reason. I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but, this is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”
The spoof of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was taped and aired last Thursday (April 23). Kimmel, positioning himself as the M.C. of the event, joked about Melania Trump and pretended to address her, in addition to jokes about Trump’s health.
This occurred before a gunman was apprehended at the Washington Hilton where the dinner was held on Saturday evening, after breaching a security perimeter while the president and the first lady were at the dinner on the concourse level.
On the Monday night taping of his show, Kimmel pushed back on Melania Trump’s X post. “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 said.
Kimmel has been the subject of calls to be removed by Trump and his base before. Last September, he was off the air for a week after his controversial jokes about right-wing personality Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination.
