<\/p>\n
ABC late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel explained his controversial joke about First Lady Melania Trump, but declined to apologize for offending her.<\/p>\n
On Monday, President Trump repeated his demand that ABC fire the longtime show host over a joke that aired on the L.A.-based \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d two days before the White House Correspondents\u2019 Assn. dinner in Washington. Kimmel, who has headlined that event before, staged a pretend roast during his Thursday night broadcast that featured spliced-in footage of Melania Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President Vance and others. <\/p>\n
During the bit, a tuxedo-clad Kimmel called the first lady \u201cbeautiful,\u201d saying she had \u201cthe glow of an expectant widow.\u201d There wasn\u2019t much reaction to Kimmel\u2019s comment at the time, Kimmel said during Monday\u2019s show. <\/p>\n
On Saturday, the White House Correspondents\u2019 Assn. gala to celebrate the 1st Amendment, was interrupted when a gunman sprinted past security at the Washington Hilton, where the event was being held. He did not reach the ballroom. The suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, has since been charged with attempting to assassinate the president.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no big reaction to [the joke] until this morning, when I greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm and a call to fire me from our first lady,\u201d Kimmel said during Monday night\u2019s telecast. <\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, it was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they\u2019re together,\u201d Kimmel said. \u201cIt was a very light roast joke about the fact that he\u2019s almost 80 and she\u2019s younger than I am. It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassinate,\u201d Kimmel said. \u201cAnd they know that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kimmel added that he has long been vocal \u201cspeaking out against gun violence, in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melania Trump expressed her outrage in a social media post earlier Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cKimmel\u2019s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country,\u201d she wrote. \u201cHis monologue about my family isn\u2019t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn\u2019t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate. A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him.\u201d<\/p>\n
ABC has not commented about the flap.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ABC late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel explained his controversial joke about First Lady Melania Trump, but declined to apologize for offending her. On Monday, President Trump repeated his demand that ABC fire the longtime show host over a joke that aired on the L.A.-based \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d two days before the White House Correspondents\u2019 Assn. dinner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2043920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2392968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Nexstar-TV-stations-will-not-run-Jimmy-Kimmel-Live-after.com2Fc82F352Ffc2e8701475f905c3e5fc40a.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2392968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2392969,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392968\/revisions\/2392969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2043920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2392968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2392968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2392968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}