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Donald Trump’s seemingly never-ending obsession with seeing Jimmy Kimmel fired continued Thursday with another desperate demand for ABC to kick out the late night host.
“When will the ABC Fake News Network fire dead boring Jimmy Kimmel,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday morning (April 30). The president then claimed that Kimmel was “incompetently presiding over one of the worst-rated shows on television,” adding, “People are angry. It better be soon!!!”
The trigger for Trump’s latest tirade appears to have been some of Kimmel’s monologue jokes from the night before, in which he once again took aim at the President and First Lady Melania Trump for their reaction to a one-liner in his fake White House Correspondents’ Dinner bit. “Our first couple, Donald and Melania, seem closer than ever lately, and I imagine I’ve contributed to that,” Kimmel said before showing a video of the couple awkwardly holding hands while meeting King Charles and Queen Camilla.
Kimmel’s joke about Melania
“Given the week I had with the first couple, I’ll just say this is a completely normal way to interact for two people who love each other very much,” Kimmel joked. “Maybe that’s why his hands are so blue and green because Melania always slaps them away.”
Trump and Kimmel, of course, have a long history of feuding, but the feud flared up again after Kimmel joked in his fake Correspondents’ Dinner bit last Thursday (April 23) that Melania was “shining like an expectant widow.” While the joke was obviously a dig at the 79-year-old president’s advanced age, the Trumps insisted it was meant to be far more sinister and violent – after a man attempted to carry out an attack at the real White House Correspondents’ Dinner a few days later (April 25).
On his show earlier this week, Kimmel dismissed the presidential couple’s calls for him to be fired, defending the phrase as “a very harmless roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger.” And although ABC and its parent company Disney caved to political pressure when Kimmel made a joke about Charlie Kirk’s alleged murderer last year, the network has shown no sign of taking action against Kimmel this time.
FCC under pressure
Still, the Trump administration appears ready to put as much pressure on Disney as possible. Earlier this week, the FCC ordered Disney’s eight company-owned ABC channels to resubmit their license renewals within 30 days – even though the relevant paperwork would not be due until 2028 at the earliest. A Disney spokesman said the company would defend its balance sheet “through appropriate legal means.”