Kimmel Defends "Widow” Joke After Trump Calls For Him To Be Fired

Jimmy Kimmel has addressed calls from US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for him to be fired on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live,’ responding to backlash over a morbid joke. “You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and the first lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired… We’ve all been there, right?” Kimmel joked in his opening monologue. Last week, Kimmel staged an “alternative” White House Correspondents’ Dinner on his show, joking that Melania had a glow like an “expectant widow” during the segment. “This was Thursday,” Kimmel said, noting there was very little backlash until a “Twitter vomit storm” and Melania’s call for him to be fired days later. Backlash to the joke intensified after an attempt on the president’s life at the Correspondents’ Dinner, where officials including Melania were evacuated. Melania urged ABC to “take a stand,” writing that “People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.” “It was a pretend roast,” Kimmel explained, adding that it “was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination, and they know that.”