President Trump and first lady Melania Trump demanded in separate social media posts on Monday that ABC pull comedian Jimmy Kimmel from its airwaves over a bit involving the White House correspondents’ dinner, delivered two days before it occurred.
Mr. Kimmel, who has a long history of sparring with the president, had imagined himself as the M.C. at the dinner. “Of course, our first lady, Melania, is here,” he said on Thursday night. Then, pretending to address her, he called her “so beautiful” and added: “Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.” He made cracks about Mr. Trump’s age and health.
This was before a gunman broke past a security perimeter in the Washington Hilton while the president and first lady were inside on Saturday.
In his social media post Monday afternoon, Mr. Trump described the comedian’s joke as “really shocking” and “something far beyond the pale.” He ended his post: “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”
The first lady had posted about Mr. Kimmel a few hours earlier.
“His monologue about my family isn’t comedy,” she wrote. “His words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.” She called Mr. Kimmel “a coward” who “shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.” She said he “hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him.”
“Enough is enough,” she wrote. “It is time for ABC to take a stand.”
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, cited Mr. Kimmel’s bit at her briefing Monday afternoon, too. “This kind of rhetoric about the president, the first lady, and his supporters is completely deranged,” she said. “It’s unbelievable that the American people are consuming it night after night after night.”
Representatives for Mr. Kimmel and for ABC did not return requests for comment.
The outcry from the White House on Monday was that latest instance of a president who has himself made inflammatory remarks about matters of life and death defining what sort of speech he deems acceptable in America. He recently gloated over the death of Robert S. Mueller III — “Good, I’m glad he’s dead!” — and seized on the murder of Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife, at the hands of their own son, to suggest that “Trump derangement syndrome” may have been responsible.
The controversy over a joke told about a dinner meant to honor the first amendment is sure to revive a fight over censorship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kimmel that erupted last fall. In September, ABC pulled Mr. Kimmel’s late night show from the air temporarily after a conservative uproar over the way he described the politics of the man accused of shooting the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The network did not initially explain its decision, but it came after political pressure by the Trump administration. At the time, Mr. Trump called the decision “Great News for America” and later said networks whose hosts are critical of him should lose their right to broadcast.
Mr. Kimmel was back on the air before long, and has since taken up his role as Trump family bête noire with gusto.
In his appearance on Thursday, Mr. Kimmel also did an impression that imagined Jeffrey Epstein introducing Melania Trump to her future husband. That line in particular was likely to incense the first lady; earlier this month, she shocked the White House by calling a surprise press appearance to hit back at rumors that Epstein, the dead financier, had been the one to introduce her to Mr. Trump. The president later said his wife found it “very insulting” that such a story was being spread.
It was Mr. Kimmel’s “widow” reference that the president and his press secretary cited on Monday.
In the wake of Saturday’s shooting, Mr. Trump said the whole ordeal at the Washington Hilton had been “a rather traumatic experience” for his wife. She dove under a table, and looked stricken as she stood in the White House press briefing room alongside top members of the government during the president’s late-night press conference.
On Sunday, the president appeared on 60 Minutes and talked about what it was like when he and his wife “dropped to the floor.”
“Well, my thought was, ‘You know, I’ve been through this before a couple of times,’ and she has not, to this extent,” he said. “She got it. She knew what was happening. She listened.”
Shawn McCreesh is a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump administration.
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