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US President Donald Trump called for comedian Jimmy Kimmel to be sacked for likening First Lady Melania Trump to an “expectant widow,” in a joke made days before a shooting at a dinner attended by the president.
“Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” over the “despicable call to violence,” Trump said in a social media post on Monday, hours after Melania Trump also criticised the comment.
“I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but, this is something far beyond the pale.”
First Lady Melania Trump lashed out at Kimmel on Monday, even though the joke in question had been made in a monologue days before the shooting incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.
Administration officials say a gunman who tried to storm a media gala dinner with a shotgun Saturday night in Washington was apparently targeting Trump and other administration officials.
On Monday, Cole Tomas Allen was charged with attempted assassination of the president in a Washington court.
In the aftermath of the drama, right-wing critics claimed that Democrats criticising Trump were responsible for fuelling extremism, even though the president himself has repeatedly broken precedents with violent invective against opponents, the media, the courts and immigrants.
As a prominent late-night comedy host, Kimmel has been at the heart of the debate over constitutionally protected speech.
In his monologue last Thursday, Kimmel portrayed himself as the MC of the correspondents’ banquet and his jokes included one in which he addressed the first lady in the audience and said, “Mrs Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”
Trump turns 80 in June and is the oldest president ever to take office in the United States. His wife, a former model who was born in Slovenia, is 56.
Hitting out at Kimmel on X on Monday, the first lady said his “monologue about my family isn’t comedy – his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.”
Kimmel was briefly suspended from his show on the ABC network last September following government pressure after he said Trump’s hard-right MAGA movement was trying to make political capital from the assassination of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk.
“A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him,” the first lady added on Monday.
“Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behaviour at the expense of our community.”
Additional sources • AFP