First lady Melania Trump on Monday called for ABC to “take a stand” against its late-night host Jimmy Kimmel after his monologue spoofing the White House Correspondents’ Dinner compared her to an “expectant widow” days before the actual dinner was shut down after a shooting.
“Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him,” Trump wrote in an X post. “Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand.”
A spokesperson for Disney, ABC’s parent company, did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
The sketch — which aired on Thursday before an alleged gunman stormed through the Washington Hilton and fired his weapon steps away from the dinner — saw Kimmel offer jokes he would’ve delivered if he had been asked to host the annual dinner. (This year’s dinner did not book a comedian, instead recruiting mentalist Oz Pearlman to lead the festivities.)
Kimmel jabbed the president, sniping that if he bruised President Donald Trump’s ego, “ it’ll only make your hands look less disgusting.” He also saved a biting remark for the first lady: “Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”
The first lady on Monday called Kimmel a “coward” whose “hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country.” The first lady was one of several pulled off the dais on Saturday after she and the president were evacuated following the shooting.
“His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America,” she wrote. “People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.”
The demand comes more than seven months after Disney pulled Kimmel’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from the air for days last September over jokes he made after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, which sparked conservative outrage and threats from Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr. Disney eventually restored Kimmel’s show following bipartisan pushback, though the president threatened to sue the network over Kimmel’s return.
