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Jimmy Kimmel appeared on the most recent episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” responded to calls from Donald and Melania Trump to fire him.
“You know when you wake up in the morning and the First Lady releases a statement demanding that you be fired?” Kimmel opened his monologue on Monday night. “We’ve all been there, haven’t we?”
Kimmel described how Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner was canceled “after a man with multiple guns and knives crashed the party.” “Luckily no one was hurt,” Kimmel said. “Many people were shocked – on an evening that was supposed to be light and carefree.”
The Roast and its consequences
Last week, Kimmel hosted an “alternative” White House Correspondents’ Dinner on his show. He performed a mock roast using “reactions” from archival footage of the Trumps, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Vanilla Ice, Dog the Bounty Hunter and others. In the clip, Kimmel joked that Melania was glowing like an “expecting widow.”
“That was Thursday,” Kimmel explained. “There hasn’t been much of a response until this morning, when I was greeted by another Twitter shitstorm and demands from our First Lady Melania Trump that I be fired over a joke I made five nights ago.”
In her post, Melania took issue with Kimmel’s joke and called on ABC to “take a stand.” “His words are corrosive and deepen the political sickness in America,” she wrote. “People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the ability to break into our homes every night to spread hate.”
Kimmel’s answer to the Trumps
“It was a mock roast,” Kimmel replied. “Which was obviously a joke about the age difference between the two of them and the look of pure joy you see on their face whenever they’re together. It was a very harmless roast joke about how he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than me. That wasn’t a call for assassination by any definition, and they know it. I’ve been very outspoken against gun violence, especially against it, for many years – but I understand that the First Lady had a distressing experience over the weekend. And probably every weekend in this house is pretty much stressful.”
He added: “And I also agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do. And I think a good place to start would be to have a conversation with your husband about it. … I’m sorry that you and the president and everyone in this room had to go through that on Saturday. Really. Just because no one was killed doesn’t mean it wasn’t traumatic and frightening. We should stick together and make the best of it. Really.”
Trump joined Melania’s call to hold Kimmel accountable. “I appreciate that so many people are outraged by Kimmel’s vile call for violence, and normally wouldn’t respond to anything he says – but this goes way beyond any limit,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Jimmy Kimmel should be fired by Disney and ABC immediately.”
Déjà vu for Kimmel
Last September, Kimmel’s show was pulled from ABC and Nexstar after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr – the Trump-appointed head of the US Federal Communications Commission – made threats over Kimmel’s comments about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. “Jimmy Kimmel Live” returned a week later, and the host addressed the president directly in his first monologue after the break. On Monday evening he commented: “It’s like déjà vu for me today.”
