The President of the United States, Donald Trump, said this Monday that the host Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by ABC, the Walt Disney Company, joining his wife Melania Trump in criticizing the late-night talk show host for a monologue he gave before a shooting incident near a gathering of journalists and politicians over the weekend.
Kimmel said on Thursday, in a joke about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that would take place on Saturday, that Melania Trump had ‘the glow of a future widow’.
Trump and the First Lady were rushed out of the dinner on Saturday, after a shooting in the Washington Hilton lobby. A suspect identified as Cole Allen passed through a checkpoint and fired at Secret Service agents, injuring one of them, before being overpowered and arrested.
Trump has repeatedly urged networks to remove comedy or news programs that he dislikes or that have criticized him and his administration, and has pressured regulators to take steps to revoke the licenses of networks he says are unfair to him. The networks have the broad right of the First Amendment to make jokes — even tasteless ones, experts note.
Earlier on Monday, Melania Trump called Kimmel’s comments ‘corrosive’ and a symptom of what she described as a political disease in the United States.
Neither ABC nor Disney immediately responded to requests for comment.
‘Enough is enough. It’s time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will the leadership of ABC allow Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community?’, said Melania Trump in a post on the social network X. ‘People like Kimmel should not have the opportunity to enter our homes every night to spread hatred.’
‘Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country,’ wrote the First Lady. ‘His monologue about my family is not comedy — his words are corrosive and deepen the political sickness in the United States.’
Donald Trump, who had previously called for Kimmel’s dismissal, said that the comedian’s joke was ‘something far beyond the limit’.
‘Jimmy Kimmel should be fired immediately by Disney and ABC,’ he stated.
James Whitmore