Update April 28, 2026, 2:45 p.m. ET: This article was updated with Kimmel’s response.
ABC’s chief narcissist and so-called late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel took to the airwaves Monday night to respond to the controversy surrounding a ‘joke’ he made last Thursday about First Lady Melania Trump that led her to call for his firing.
“And of course, our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at [Melania]. So beautiful,” Kimmel said as a fake reaction shot of the first lady was shown. “Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”
Now, that is obviously an abhorrent, tasteless attempt at humor, but Jimmy Kimmel has no class or standard of decency. We have seen that repeatedly. If you are going to give him the benefit of the doubt, however, you have to remember he said that on Thursday – well before Saturday’s attempted assassination of President Donald Trump when the first lady was sitting right next to him, totally exposed, on the dais.
If you were in Jimmy Kimmel’s shoes and you made a ‘joke’ like that and then saw an assassination attempt on the person you were talking about, you might go air on Monday and say, ‘You know what? It was a tasteless joke. I apologize. Obviously, I don’t want anything to happen to the president or first lady.’ But that is not exactly how it went. Here’s, in part, what Kimmel had to say:
“…This was Thursday and there was no big reaction to it, until this morning, when I greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm and a call to fire me from our First Lady, Melania Trump, saying I should be fired because of a joke I made, again, five nights ago. It was a pretend roast. I said, ‘Our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at her. So beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,’ which obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together. It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80, and she’s younger than I am. It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call for assassination, and they know that. I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence, in particular, but I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend. And probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house. And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do, and I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it…”
So, it is Trump’s fault, you see. I am not excusing all the things President Trump says, but Jimmy Kimmel is responsible for his own comments, his own behavior, and if he actually wants us to believe that he agrees hateful and violent rhetoric is bad, he needs to explain why he continues to do it.
That was clearly not a joke about age difference. It was an assassination joke. Only people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome would believe that lie. No, he did not explicitly call for violence, but there is no question he crossed the decency and good taste line on network television.
He suggested Melania Trump wants her husband dead and, given the context of what we have seen, that obviously carries a potential import of assassination, which, again, now has nearly happened to Trump four times. Three of those times were prior to his ‘joke.’
Did we see Trump have a heart attack in recent history? Did we see Trump get diagnosed with a devastating disease? Did we see Trump almost get hit by a bus? No, none of those things happened. What happened was he was nearly assassinated three times, and that is obviously what this cretin is talking about.
Kimmel is just scared shitless now because, once again, he has stepped in it and doesn’t want his precious show to be canceled. He needs to be on that stage. It makes him feel important. So, now he is lying and saying that this was about something other than it was.
He is desperate and he is irrelevant, but he continues to say the most vial things from a very prominent perch and, therefore, we all feel obligated to say: What the fuck ABC?
Original article from April 27, 2026 below:
Jimmy Kimmel never misses a moment to be crass, off point, or inappropriate. Last week, he decided to do a mock White House Correspondents’ Dinner set as though he was the comedian headlining it.
It should be noted that the Whit House Correspondents Association (WHCA) didn’t even book a comedian for Saturday night after last year’s drama with anti-Trump comedian Amber Rufin, who ultimately got fired before her set due to her incendiary rhetoric and unwillingness to tone things down. Mentalist Oz Pearlman was scheduled to perform instead before the event was postponed due to an attempt on the president’s life.
Jimmy’s ‘Jokes’
In any event, Jimmy Kimmel decided to put together this mock routine, and it is remarkable how unfunny the jokes were. Truly. They were so on the nose and obvious, not clever at all. None of them even warranted a mild laugh or amusement. Here’s a sampling:
- On Vice President J.D. Vance: “It’s hard to get J.D. to come to an event like this. He’s a real homebody. His wife peeled him off the couch… Please do not get up from your seats during the performance because the vice president will fuck them.”
- On White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller: Stephen Miller is so racist. The reason he went bald is because his hair was black. Stephen Miller puts the ‘cis’ in white supremacist.”
- On FBI Director Kash Patel: “If anyone starts any trouble, fear not, because FBI Director Kash Patel is standing by. Waitress, can we get Kash of vodka soda in a booster seat, please?”
- On Secretary of War Pete Hegseth: “Pete’s hair has more oil in it right now than the Strait of Hormuz.”
- On Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: “Years ago, he wrote his diary that he pulled his car over to the side of the road to carve the penis out of a raccoon… And his son asked him, ‘Dad, why did you do that? Why did you chop the penis off a dead animal?’ And he looked his son, he said, ‘Because I’m a fucking psychopath. Now, get out of this car and go get measles.'”
I don’t even know where to begin. During the broadcast, they had fake reaction shots from administration officials and the laugh track was there to boost, I’m sure, his sagging audience’s smattering of applause. There was nothing funny; nothing remotely clever. The RFKJ ‘joke’ included an impersonation that didn’t sound anything like him. He gave him a Brooklyn accent for some reason. He doesn’t actually talk like that at all.
The Worst of the Worst
Jimmy Kimmel is not funny, but here he was least funny of all. What he said about Melania Trump is now making major news. You would think Kimmel would have learned his lesson after making light of Charlie Kirk’s assassination and suggesting that the guy who is accused of killing him, Tyler Robinson, is MAGA. Remember, that led to his show getting pulled off the air for five days, and the left turned him into Rosa Parks over it.
But take a look at the terrible ‘joke’ he made about Melania Trump during the same skit:
“And of course, our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at [Melania]. So beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”
Who would make a joke like that knowing that President Trump has almost been killed relatively recently? For this guy to get up there and say she has “the glow of an expectant widow.” Like, how insensitive can you be? Trump has children. He has grandchildren. He does have a wife. He has millions of people who love him. “The glow of an expectant widow”? How sick are you?
The left and the de-sensitivity they are trying to create in people to the thought of political violence is tremendous. It is a force for evil in this country, and he doubles, triples, and quadruples down on it every other week.
The Trumps Respond
On Monday, Melania Trump actually responded, which she never does. As you know, the first lady does not seek the spotlight. It is very rare to hear Melania speak out, but now she has. She posted the following on X:
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.
People like Kimmel shouldn’t 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.
Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community.”
That is extraordinary. That is the closest I have heard to her getting explicitly political and she actually appears to be calling for him to be fired. And no sooner did she post that, that we also heard from her husband, the president of the United States, on Truth Social:
“Wow, Jimmy Kimmel, who is in no way funny as attested to by his terrible Television Ratings, made a statement on his Show that is really shocking. He showed a fake video of the First Lady, Melania, and our son, Barron, like they were actually sitting in his studio, listening to him speak, which they weren’t, and never would be. He then stated, “Our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.” A day later a lunatic tried entering the ballroom of the White House Correspondents Dinner, loaded up with a shotgun, handgun, and many knives. He was there for a very obvious and sinister reason. 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. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
It is pretty explosive. I can only imagine the ‘oh shit’ moment that any normal person would have after saying she “has the glow of an expectant widow” and, within 48 hours, someone tries to kill her husband. A normal person would have a complete meltdown at that series of events.
I am not saying that the shooter was motivated by Jimmy Kimmel, though, to be honest, who knows if he had watched that episode. I don’t know. What I am saying is this was irresponsible talk. Given his professional position, you don’t make jokes about assassinations of the president, especially when he has had multiple assassination attempts against him. You don’t make light of it. Imagine someone saying that about Michelle Obama. Imagine what the reaction would be. Just think about that for a second.
I can maybe understand, in the wake of an assassination attempt, a comedian like Jay Leno – someone who is universally beloved and not known as a partisan hack who actually really does hate the president who just got shot – making a joke that was in good faith. You could maybe find a way that is not in bad taste to help the nation heal. That has always been one of the great roles of our great comedians, to help us heal through humor.
This was not that. We were not healing from anything. It was in advance of a massive gathering where he knew the president would be attending and Melania too. He was pretending that he was at the event, that he was the comedian there, and sending the message out to whomever follows that show that it is so funny to think of Trump dead and Melania as a glowing widow. It is just sick.
Decision Time for Disney
The ball is in your court, ABC. You are not going to be able to ignore this. You are not going to be able to ignore both the president and the first lady. She is even more powerful than he is in this particular moment on this particular issue.
Do the right thing.
Think about it: ABC fired Chris Harrison from The Bachelor because a contestant on that show went to an antebellum-themed party years earlier when she was a young college student. They thought that was racially insensitive and all Chris Harrison said to the effect of, ‘Are we judging her by the standards of today, or by the standards of when she did it?’ That’s all he said, and ABC ruined him. He has never been heard from again.
But you can say – as Jimmy Kimmel, as the face of ABC – that a wife has “the glow of an expectant widow” about a husband who was almost killed at least once, two other times were attempts in the making, and now a fourth?
Disney fired actress Gina Carano over a totally anodyne posting about World War II, Adolf Hitler, and the excesses of the left. Her one online post was too much. This is also the company that paid Donald Trump $15 million when George Stephanopoulos said, erroneously, that Trump had been found liable for rape. He said it over and over and over during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC). They recognized the deep offense caused by that comment when it wasn’t true.
So, how about the libel of Melania Trump suggesting she wants her husband dead? That is what Kimmel just did to her. Forget what he did to President Trump there. He suggested she wants her husband executed. How about that? Disney paid $15 million for civilly found libel for rape. Are we going to do anything about ‘she wants her husband dead’ or normalizing the thought of an execution? Anything?
We look forward to seeing what ABC does.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,304 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.