Jimmy Kimmel’s Latest Flap Gives New Disney Boss Josh D’Amaro His Next Big Stress Test | Analysis

It all seems to come back to Jimmy Kimmel.

A little over seven months after ABC made the decision to suspend the late night host, Kimmel is in hot water again after Melania Trump called for the network to “take a stand” against the comedian on Monday, followed in quick succession by President Donald Trump demanding they fire him over an ill-timed joke made days before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was ambushed by a gunman.

The response to this growing controversy is shaping up to be the next major challenge for new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, who took the reins from Bob Iger a little over a month ago, and who after overseeing a round of mass layoffs across marketing, publicity and other departments earlier this month, is charged with charting Disney’s path forward at a time of tumultuous change, continued consolidation and political pressure.

Each Disney chief is faced with a political stress test — Bob Chapek faltered in his handling of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, while Iger faced the same situation with Kimmel just seven months ago that resulted in a suspension and high stakes diplomacy between talent and public outrage. What D’Amaro does next could say much about his tenure as Disney’s steward.

“It’s a big First Amendment stress test,” Brian Stelter, CNN media correspondent and analyst, said on the network Monday.

“It depends on how [D’Amaro] ultimately wants to go,” Jordan Matthews, partner at Holtz Matthews LLP, told TheWrap. “If they’re going to make a decision to pull something, it would be based off of a business decision, but I think it would ultimately look weak, and it would be a slippery slope if they do anything. They’re not going to fire him. If they suspend him, it’s going to only invite more criticism.”

This particular late night saga dates back to last Thursday when Kimmel posted his own alternative White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The 14-minute monologue was a play on Turning Point USA’s alternative Super Bowl Halftime show, which featured Kid Rock instead of Bad Bunny. Kimmel’s monologue took several shots at Trump, calling the president a “drama queen” with “disgusting” hands. But the joke that landed the comedian in hot water has to do with the First Lady.

“Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,” Kimmel said on Thursday. Two days later, Cole Tomas Allen was tackled with a long gun and three knives at the real White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was attended by the president, Melania and Vice President JD Vance. While a Secret Service agent was injured from the attack, no one else sustained serious injuries.

The Kimmel connection, however, was enough to invite criticism from the First Lady.

“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy — his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America,” Melania Trump wrote on X early Monday, addressing Kimmel’s days-old joke for the first time.

She went on to call Kimmel a “coward” who “hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him” and called for “ABC to take a stand.” The Trump camp has doubled down on her remarks, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt calling Kimmel’s joke “completely deranged” and President Trumpcalling the comedian’s joke a “despicable call to violence” on Truth Social.

Kimmel addressed the controversy on Monday during “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” stressing that Thursday’s joke was not a call to assassinate the president.

“I said, ‘Our First Lady Melania is here. Look at her, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,’ which obviously was a joke about their age difference, and the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together,” he said in his monologue. “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 I’ve been very vocal for many years, speaking out against gun violence in particular.”

Earlier in the day, Kimmel’s supporters rallied around the comedian once again. Jane Fonda’s Committee for the First Amendment — an organization composed of more than 3,000 actors, writers, journalists, creators and people in the entertainment industry — urged ABC and Kimmel not to back down in a statement released Monday.

“This is a test — of ABC, of the press and of our collective commitment to the First Amendment. The pressure is real. The intent is unmistakable. But we have been here before, and we know what is required from all of us. Speak up. Push back. Do not capitulate. Do not be silent,” the statement read.

A MoveOn renewed petition, updated after last fall’s suspension to keep Kimmel on the air and “stop caving to authoritarian censorship” reached over 230,000 signatures on Monday. That’s all before anyone in the Disney camp has made an indication about whether or not they plan to suspend Kimmel.

Disney did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

It’s also worth nothing that Kimmel’s joke came before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and was not — as some have characterized — made in poor taste after the event. But that kind of specificity doesn’t travel well in online outrage chambers, just as many contended that Kimmel’s Charlie Kirk comments were taken out of context.

It’s a freedom of speech tornado, and Disney’s brand new leader is right in the middle of it. What he chooses to do next may set the tone for his tenure.

“This is actually a defining moment for D’Amaro, and not necessarily in a negative way,” said J. Christopher Hamilton, assistant professor at Syracuse University and a practicing entertainment attorney. “Any response that reads as reactive, spineless or purely transactional is the one that damages him. Done right, this is an opportunity as much as it is a test.”

The high stakes of Kimmel’s first suspension

When Kimmel was first suspended last September, it wasn’t over anything he said about the Trump family. Rather, it was what he said about Charlie Kirk’s assassin. On Sept. 15, Kimmel said that the “MAGA gang” was trying to characterize the killer as someone “other than one of them.” Two days later, Co-Chairman of Disney Entertainment Dana Walden, in consultation with CEO Bob Iger, made the decision to suspend Kimmel from ABC.

The move wasn’t one that Walden made in a vacuum. Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group — two companies that own most of the affiliate network stations throughout the United States — announced they were pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from their ABC stations the day after Kimmel’s monologue and the outrage from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. At the time, Nexstar was in the early stages of its $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna, a merger that would require FCC approval from the Trump administration. Representatives from Nexstar later said the FCC approval had no influence on its decision concerning Kimmel. Disney also denied claims that pressure from affiliates impacted its decision.

Kimmel’s suspension was immediately met with mass outrage. More than 400 artists including Tom Hanks, Jennifer Aniston and Lin-Manuel Miranda called out Disney and ABC in an open letter from the ACLU. People posted their displeasure on social media and boycotted Disney+. Even some Disney employees worried that Walden and then-CEO Bob Iger overreacted to the rightwing outrage around the Kirk joke.

Six days after his suspension, Kimmel returned to ABC on Sept. 22. But for Disney, the saga wasn’t over.

Though Kimmel heavily praised Walden and backed her to be Disney’s next CEO, ABC’s decision led to an investigation from Disney shareholders. It’s also been speculated that the public relations debacle impacted Walden’s chances of winning the Disney CEO job over parks head D’Amaro.

“The last time Disney moved against Kimmel, the company lost billions in market value within days,” Hamilton told TheWrap. “Josh D’Amaro may be navigating political headwinds carefully, but overreacting to a controversy rooted in protected free speech, one that caused no actual harm, would be a far costlier mistake than the joke itself.

To suspend or not to suspend

From purely a legal point of view, Kimmel has “very strong protection,” Matthews said, pointing to the comedian’s First Amendment rights. That’s why so much of this controversy comes down to the court of public opinion. And this is exactly the type of story that is perfectly primed to catch fire.

The average American can easily understand the idea of a comedian being silenced for expressing his First Amendment rights. The Trumps’ call for Kimmel’s firing is also coming at a time when late night hosts in particular have seemed vulnerable. The cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” last summer caused a massive outrage, partially because it came around the same time of the Skydance-Paramount merger. Shortly after Colbert was canceled — officially due to being too expensive — and CBS settled its “60 Minutes” lawsuit with Trump, the FCC approved the merger. Now Paramount Skydance is looking to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, a union that could put John Oliver’s future in jeopardy.

Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show” and Seth Meyers’ “Late Night” are perhaps the two most stable late night shows on TV, and they’re not exactly in a great place. While Fallon scaled back to a four-night-a-week schedule, Meyers lost his band. This is all to say that Trump’s attacks on late night are coming at a time when the general public is very well aware of how much these shows are struggling.

Or, as the Committee for the First Amendment put it, “Americans understood what was at stake. That moment is not over. If anything, the stakes are higher now.”

“I don’t see them terminating Kimmel or anything like that. Honestly, if they do suspend him or even stop production on the show again, I would be surprised,” Matthews said. “It would look very weak in terms of Disney’s position, and I don’t think it makes sense at all in terms of the actual legal protections that are in place. I think it would be problematic.”

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