Trump has demanded Disney fire Jimmy Kimmel over a joke he made on TV in the days before the assassination attempt in Washington DC – before making a similar joke in a speech today
Donald Trump made essentially the same joke as Jimmy Kimmel gag prompted the President to demand he be fired.
During his speech to welcome King Charles to the US, Trump proudly declared his mother and father were married for 63 years – before making a joke about his own mortality. “That’s not a record we’re going to be able to match, darling,” he said to wife Melania. “I’m sorry, just not going to work out that way.” Mrs Trump did not appear to react to the joke. But it was a strange echo of the joke TV host Jimmy Kimmel made last week, which prompted the First Lady and others in the Trump administration to demand he be fired.
The host of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! made the joke on Thursday’s edition of the show. The joke was, Kimmel has since explained, based on the fact that instead of hiring a comedian to poke fun at the President, as usually happens at the Correspondents’ Dinner, they hired a mind reader to do close-up magic. So he did a skit, pretending he was hosting the event. “Of course, our first lady, Melania, is here,” he said. He called her “so beautiful” and added: “Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”
Speaking on yesterday’s show, Kimmel explained: “It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am.”
But after events at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, when a gunman apparently opened fire in a bid to assassinate Trump and members of his cabinet, Melania and other allies of the President have falsely framed the joke as a call to violence. “His monologue about my family isn’t comedy – his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America,” Melania said in a statement on Monday morning. Trump followed up on Truth Social, calling the joke a “despicable call to violence”, and demanding: “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”
Today, the Federal Communications Commission, the government body that issues broadcasting licences, announced it was calling in all of ABC’s broadcast licences early in apparent retribution over the joke. So far there is no sign Disney or ABC will capitulate to Trump’s demand to fire Kimmel. The host was suspended for several days last September after he angered MAGA supporters with comments about slain activist Charlie Kirk. He was returned to the airwaves after less than a week.