Jimmy Kimmel fired back Monday at President Trump and first lady Melania Trump after both called for his termination over a joke he made days before a gunman stormed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, touching off the first major controversy for Disney’s new chief executive.
“You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and the first lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job?” Kimmel said at the top of Monday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” “We’ve all been there, right? What a day.”
The dispute traces to a Thursday segment in which Kimmel filmed a mock version of the correspondents’ dinner, pretending to roast members of the Trump administration. During the bit, he quipped that Mrs. Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow” — a line he later described as a joke about the couple’s age gap, noting that Mr. Trump is 79 and Mrs. Trump is 56, while Kimmel himself is 58.
Two days later, the actual dinner at the Washington Hilton was upended when Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, ran through a magnetometer security checkpoint holding a long gun and fired a shot that struck a Secret Service officer in the chest, protected by a bulletproof vest. Allen was subdued and arrested at the scene. He was charged Monday by the Justice Department with attempting to assassinate the president, transportation of a firearm in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.
The president and first lady subsequently invoked Mr. Kimmel’s joke in their calls for his dismissal. Mrs. Trump posted to X, calling the joke “hateful and violent” and urged ABC to act, writing, “His monologue about my family isn’t comedy — his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.” The president posted to Truth Social calling it a “despicable call to violence” and writing that “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, at a Monday briefing, called Mr. Kimmel’s comments “completely deranged,” adding that such rhetoric has “led crazy people to believe crazy things, and they are inspired to commit violence because of those words.”
Mr. Kimmel rejected the framing unequivocally. “It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination,” he said. “And they know that. I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence, in particular.” He added that while he agrees hateful and violent rhetoric should be rejected, he suggested Mrs. Trump raise that concern with her husband — drawing extended applause from the studio audience — before invoking the First Amendment. “Donald Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants to say, as are you and as am I and as are all of us.”
He also expressed sympathy for the dinner attendees. “I am sorry that you and the president and everyone in that room on Saturday went through that. I really am. Just because no one got killed doesn’t mean it wasn’t traumatic. It’s scary.”
The controversy amounts to the first significant Trump-era test for Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, who took over as chief executive on March 18, succeeding Bob Iger, and previously ran Disney’s theme parks division. The show taped and aired Monday without interruption — a signal, CNN reported, that Disney was not yielding to the pressure.
It is not the first time Mr. Kimmel has found himself at the center of this kind of fight. From September 17 through September 22, 2025, ABC suspended production of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following pressure from Trump administration officials over Mr. Kimmel’s monologue commentary about the killing of conservative activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
That suspension came after station groups Nexstar and Sinclair pulled the show from their affiliates and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened regulatory action. Kimmel returned to the air within days with a free-speech-centered monologue. Both Nexstar and Sinclair remain in business with ABC and are still on the record as having reservations about Kimmel’s show, though they may hesitate to stage another boycott given the intense backlash that followed the first one.
Mr. Kimmel acknowledged Monday the eerie familiarity of the moment. “This was like deja vu for me today,” he told his audience.
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