Trump says Kimmel ‘should be immediately fired’ over joke about Melania before White House dinner shooting<\/b><\/a><\/p>\nKimmel quipped on last Thursday\u2019s episode that the First Lady had \u201ca glow like an expectant widow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very light roast joke about the fact that he\u2019s almost 80 and she\u2019s younger than I am,\u201d Kimmel said (Donald Trump is 79; Melania Trump is 56).<\/p>\n
But after a gunman opened fire outside the dinner ballroom at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner on Saturday, Trump and his allies have recontextualized the joke as a call to violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination,\u201d Kimmel said in Monday\u2019s monologue. \u201cAnd they know that. I\u2019ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject,\u201d Kimmel said. \u201cI also should point out Donald Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants to say, as are you and as am I and as are all of us, because under the First Amendment we have as Americans the right to free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is no indication that Disney is thinking about firing Kimmel.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for D\u2019Amaro did not respond to a request for comment. Representatives for ABC and Kimmel have also remained tight-lipped since the controversy erupted.<\/p>\n
But actions speak louder than comments, and Monday\u2019s actions \u2013 like the business-as-usual attitude at Kimmel\u2019s show \u2013 signaled that Disney is not buckling under Trump\u2019s pressure.<\/p>\n
Pro-Trump media outlets and influencers blasted Kimmel online after Saturday, foreshadowing a concerted effort from the Trump administration to push him out.<\/p>\n
The alleged gunman was charged Monday with attempting to assassinate Trump.<\/p>\n
The first lady condemned Kimmel on Monday morning, and the president followed up a few hours later, calling Kimmel\u2019s on-air comment a \u201cdespicable call to violence\u201d and linking it directly to the shooting incident.<\/p>\n
Disney rerun<\/b><\/p>\n
For Disney, this all feels a bit like a rerun.<\/p>\n
Last September, amid an earlier Trump administration pressure campaign against Kimmel, ABC suspended the show \u201cindefinitely,\u201d only to bring it back less than a week later.<\/p>\n
The network managed to anger both Trump opponents for benching Kimmel and appearing to capitulate to the president and Trump fans by allowing Kimmel back on the air.<\/p>\n
That time around, when Iger was still CEO, ABC felt it had to move quickly after two big owners of ABC-affiliated stations, Nexstar and Sinclair, said they would preempt Kimmel\u2019s show in their respective markets.<\/p>\n
Iger\u2019s deputy Dana Walden, who has a close relationship with Kimmel, later said the suspension was an effort to \u201ctake the temperature down\u201d after Kimmel angered conservatives with a comment about the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to resolve the situation in a certain way to protect our employees, to think about our audience,\u201d she told Bloomberg.<\/p>\n
Walden is now D\u2019Amaro\u2019s No. 2 as the president and chief creative officer of Disney.<\/p>\n
Nexstar and Sinclair are still in business with ABC and are still on the record as having reservations about Kimmel\u2019s show. But they might hesitate to yank Kimmel this time around, since the backlash to their boycott was so intense last September.<\/p>\n
Kimmel, who has been an outspoken critic of the president for years and has attended No Kings rallies in recent months, has argued that politics are \u201cunavoidable\u201d for him right now.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month on Michelle Obama\u2019s \u201cIMO\u201d podcast, he said, \u201cI think it would be embarrassing if we didn\u2019t talk about this. It would be shameful.\u201d<\/p>\n
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