Featured Image Credit: Randy Holmes/Disney via Getty Images
Topics: Jimmy Kimmel, Donald Trump, Melania Trump, US News, Celebrity
Phoebe Tonks
Topics: Jimmy Kimmel, Donald Trump, Melania Trump, US News, Celebrity
The White House has doubled down on its calls for Jimmy Kimmel to be fired from ABC after he failed to apologise for a joke about First Lady Melania Trump which branded her an ‘expectant widow’.
On Tuesday, April 28, White House communications director Steven Cheung continued to escalate the matter as he branded the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host, 58, a 's--- human being’ for his lack of remorse over the brutal ‘roast.’
The response from Cheung came just hours after Kimmel had defended his words as an ‘obvious’ joke, rather than any incitement to violence or hatred.
During his "alternative" White House Correspondents' Dinner segment during last week’s Thursday April 22 show, Kimmel joked that Melania had "a glow like an expectant widow.”
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Just two days later, she could potentially even have become one, when a shooter charged a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents Dinner, with the intention of killing the President.
"Jimmy Kimmel is a s--- human being for: #1. Making a disgusting joke about assassinating the President," Cheung claimed on X. "#2. Doubling down on that joke instead of doing the decent thing by apologizing. ABC needs to fire him immediately and he should be shunned for the rest of his life.”
Kimmel’s joke formed just one of several in a mock ‘alternative’ correspondents speech, after he failed to be invited to this year’s event. Typically in previous years, the annual event has been hosted by a comedian who roasts the President in a light hearted fashion, before they return the favor. However this year, which marked the first Trump has attended while in office, the decision was made to scrap a comedian and have mentalist Oz Perlman take the lead instead.
In his alternative roast, Kimmel made a number of jokes including references to the Epstein files and Trump’s recent AI Jesus art posts. Yet despite it being an objectively dark roast, the comedian doubled down on it being just that - a joke, however neither Melania nor Trump appear to have taken it that way.
Melania was the first to call out Kimmel as she urged ABC to ‘take a stand’ and fire him for his words, which she interpreted as inciting violence. Trump himself later echoed her sentiments with a lengthy Truth Social post in which he lambasted Kimmel and ABC for allowing it to air.
"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," Trump wrote, while demanding that Kimmel should be 'immediately fired by Disney and ABC.’
Kimmel meanwhile, defended his joke as he argued: "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 a call to assassination and they know that I've been very vocal for many years, speaking out against gun violence in particular.”
Although he didn’t apologise for the joke, he did however, extend his sympathies and say sorry that ‘everyone in that room on Saturday went through that’ in a direct reference to the shooting.