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Jimmy Kimmel is responding after the president and first lady demanded he be fired over a joke he made about Melania Trump.
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President Trump and the First Lady are calling for ABC to take action against Jimmy Kimmel
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after his joke about Melania Trump that is now fueling a broader fight over comedy, politics
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and speech. The backlash centers on a segment from Thursday's Jimmy Kimmel Live
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which was a parody of the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Kimmel, playing host
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joked about the First Lady's appearance. And of course, our First Lady Melania is here
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Look at them. So beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow
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The line drew sharp criticism from the White House, especially after a gunman rushed a security
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checkpoint at the correspondence dinner two days later and fired gunshots. On Monday
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the first lady called Kimmel's comments hateful and corrosive and urged ABC to act, writing on X
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enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC's leadership
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enable Kimmel's atrocious behavior at the expense of our community. The president went further, posting on Truth Social
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that Kimmel should be immediately fired by ABC and its parent company, Disney
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White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt called the comments disgusting Who in their right minds says a wife would be glowing over the potential murder of her beloved husband And having experienced what I did with the first lady on Saturday night
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I can tell you that she was anything but that. This kind of rhetoric about the president
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the first lady and his supporters is completely deranged and it's unbelievable that the American
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people are consuming it night after night after night. Kimmel addressed the backlash on his show
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Monday night, rejecting the White House's characterization of the joke. It was a very
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light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am. It was not
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by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that I've been
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very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular. But I understand that
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the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend and probably every weekend is pretty
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stressful in that house. And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we
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should reject. I do. And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a
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conversation with your husband about it because. The Free Speech Group Committee for the First
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Amendment also defended him, saying, quote, in America, satire is not a crime. The right to mock
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to challenge and yes, to offend those in power is foundational to democracy
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