Donald Trump is once again going after Jimmy Kimmel, this time demanding that the comedian be fired over a White House Correspondents’ Dinner parody, which the president seemed to suggest foreshadowed the security incident that led to an evacuation during the actual event.
Last week, Kimmel hosted his own “alternate” gala on Jimmy Kimmel Live in which he delivered a “monologue” for a fake audience that included Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. The bit was prompted by the fact that Trump had declined to enlist a comedian to helm the event — as is customary — and instead give the job to a mentalist. One of Kimmel’s barbs was about the 79-year-old president’s advance age, with the comedian quipping to Melania, “You have a glow like an expectant widow.”
But Trump seemed to think the joke was far more sinister. “He showed a fake video of the First Lady, Melania, and our son, Barron, like they were actually sitting in his studio, listening to him speak, which they weren’t, and never would be,” Trump wrote in a rant published to Truth Social on April 27. “A day later a lunatic tried entering the ballroom of the White House Correspondents Dinner, loaded up with a shotgun, handgun, and many knives. He was there for a very obvious and sinister reason.”
On Saturday, April 25, the Trumps and other attendees were rushed off stage and evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C., after gunshots were heard. The suspect was detained, and Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C., said he’d been charged with using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon.
Trump referred to Kimmel’s segment as a “despicable call to violence.” His language echoed the statement Melania shared on X, writing, “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. People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.”
“This is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” Trump wrote. Melania also accused Kimmel of being a “coward” who “hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him.” She went on to call out the leadership at ABC for trying to “enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community.”
Last September, Kimmel’s show was taken off air by ABC and Nexstar after a threat from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, related to the comedian’s remarks about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Jimmy Kimmel Live returned a week later and the host addressed the president during his first monologue back.
“I barely paid attention in school, but one thing I did learn from Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and Howard Stern is that a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American,” he said at the time. “And I am so glad we have some solidarity on that from the right and the left and from those in the middle, like Joe Rogan. Maybe the silver lining from this is we found one thing we can agree on, and maybe we’ll even find another one. Maybe we can get a little bit closer together.”
