Jimmy Kimmel Defends Joke After Melania & Donald Trump Call For His Firing

Jimmy Kimmel is responding to President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump after they urged ABC to fire him over a joke he delivered days before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In a segment that aired on the April 23 broadcast, Kimmel pretended he was hosting the dinner and roasted members of the Trump administration using old footage, including the First Lady, who he joked has a “glow like an expectant widow.” On Monday, April 27, two days after an alleged gunman, identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, opened fire outside the dinner, Melania criticized the comedian for his bit in an X post, writing in part, “A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community.” Hours later, the President echoed his wife’s sentiments in a Truth Social post and directly urged Kimmel to be pulled from air. “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” Trump wrote in part. Meanwhile, on the Monday episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” the late-night host defended his jokes, saying in part, “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.” Plus, George Clooney also weighed in on the situation in an interview with Variety at the 51st Chaplin Award Gala on Monday night where he was being honored.