“You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and the First Lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job,” comedian Jimmy Kimmel said in the opening monologue of his late-night show Monday evening. “We’ve all been there, right?”
Kimmel, who frequently mocks President Donald Trump and his family and whose show last year was temporarily suspended after pressure on ABC by the Administration, addressed First Lady Melania Trump’s call earlier Monday for the network to fire him over a joke he made last week.
Kimmel, in a skit that aired on April 23 that satirized the then-upcoming White House Correspondents’ Dinner, pretended to address Melania and joked that the First Lady had “a glow like an expectant widow.”
But after the actual dinner on April 25 was disrupted by a shooting, suspected to be the third assassination attempt on the President, Melania claimed on social media that Kimmel’s “hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country” and that “his monologue about my family isn’t comedy.” The President also chimed in, referencing Kimmel’s “expectant widow” joke and claiming that it was “far beyond the pale.”
Kimmel defended himself on Monday night’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, saying that his remark was not a call for violence but rather “obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together.”
Kimmel continued: “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.”
He noted, facetiously, that if the Trumps really believe his remarks could have induced violence, they should also look into a remark made by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt before the dinner. “It will be funny. It will be entertaining,” Leavitt had told Fox News. “There will be some shots fired tonight.”
While Kimmel said he understands that the incident may have been particularly “stressful” for the Trumps and agreed to reject “hateful and violent rhetoric,” he argued that the First Lady should first speak to her husband about dialing back inflammatory language against his critics and the press.
“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,” Kimmel said, while noting that he’s a vocal advocate against gun violence. “I am sorry that you and the President and everyone in that room on Saturday went through that. I really am,” he said. “Just ’cause no one got killed doesn’t mean it wasn’t traumatic and scary, and we should come together and be best.”
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