‘Not a call to assassination’: Kimmel defends Melania gag after Trumps demand his firing

Sydney/Washington: Jimmy Kimmel has defended a joke he made about the US first lady having the glow of an “expectant widow” as a “light roast” after Melania and Donald Trump called for the late-night host to be sacked.

The remark was broadcast on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Thursday, days before an alleged assassination attempt on the US president at a Washington gathering of journalists and politicians.

“It was a very light roast joke about the fact that [Donald Trump] is almost 80, and she’s younger than I am,” Kimmel said in his opening monologue on Monday (US time). “It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination.”

Earlier in the day, Trump said Kimmel should be fired by American broadcaster ABC and its parent company, Walt Disney, while the first lady accused Kimmel of “hateful and violent rhetoric” and said it was time for the ABC to take a stand.

“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,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday (US time). “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”

His post followed one by his wife, who called Kimmel’s remarks “corrosive” and a symptom of what she described as a political sickness in the United States.

“People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate,” Melania Trump wrote on X.

“A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behaviour at the expense of our community?”

The Trumps were rushed out of the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night (US time) after a shooting in the lobby of the Washington Hilton, which the White House said was the “third major assassination attempt” against Trump in two years. The suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, was charged on Monday (US time) with attempting to assassinate the president of the United States.

In his first monologue since the Washington event, Kimmel said he agreed with Melania Trump that hateful and violent rhetoric should be rejected.

“I do, and I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it,” he said.

Kimmel acknowledged the “traumatic” nature of Saturday’s incident and expressed sympathy for attendees. But he also emphasised the importance of free speech – pointing out the correspondents’ dinner itself was an event “supporting the First Amendment”.

“Donald Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants to say, as are you and as am I, as are all of us, because under the First Amendment we have, as Americans, a right to free speech,” he said, rejecting the notion that a joke, delivered three days earlier, “had any effect on anything that happened”.

Disney and the ABC did not immediately comment.

In his parody of the annual dinner that aired two days before the actual event, Kimmel had said: “Mrs Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

The TV host also appeared to imply that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had introduced Trump and his wife, a claim the first lady denied in a rare address this month.

In a press briefing earlier on Monday (US time), White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also called out Kimmel’s remarks.

“Who in their right mind says a wife would be glowing over the potential murder of her beloved husband? And having experienced what I did with the first lady on Saturday night, I can tell you that she was anything but that,” she said.

Leavitt was seated at a long table at the dinner alongside the Trumps when the chaos erupted.

The first lady later appeared alongside her husband as he briefed reporters at the White House after the shooting. He described the incident as “a rather traumatic experience” for her.

Asked during an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes whether his wife had been scared, Trump said: “I don’t want to say, and people don’t like having it said that they were scared, but certainly, I mean, who wouldn’t be when you have a situation like that?”

Trump has repeatedly urged broadcasters to drop comedy or news programs he dislikes or which have been critical of him, pressing regulators to revoke the licenses of broadcasters he says are unfair to him.

In September, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) pressured broadcasters to take Kimmel off the air. The ABC briefly suspended Kimmel’s show that month over comments he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Hours before the suspension, FCC head Brendan Carr warned that local broadcasters who aired Kimmel could face fines or loss of licences and said “it’s time for them to step up”. His comments garnered pushback from the entertainment industry and politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Republican senator Ted Cruz, who likened the threats to those of an organised crime boss.

Trump praised Kimmel’s suspension at the time.

In November, Trump criticised an ABC News correspondent for asking Saudi Arabia’s crown prince about the 2018 killing of a Washington Post columnist and suggested the commission should move to revoke the broadcast licences of Disney-owned ABC stations.

with Reuters, Bloomberg

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