American host Jimmy Kimmel, author of a joke which exasperated the Trump couple, refrained on Monday from apologizing and denied having been guilty, as the president accused him, of a “vile call to violence”.
Donald Trump demanded that ABC immediately fire the man whose head he had already requested last year. “This really goes too far. Jimmy Kimmel must be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” the president wrote, after comments from the comedian last week who found the First Lady “radiant like a widow in the making.”
These remarks took on even more resonance with the White House correspondents’ gala on Saturday, marked by the attempted intrusion of a shooter now charged with attempted assassination of the president.
But Jimmy Kimmel hasn’t turned back.
“It was obviously a joke about their age difference. And the look of joy that we see on her face every time they are together,” declared the host on the air, while social networks are amused by the often closed pout of the First Lady when she appears in public with her husband.
“It was a very nice little joke about the fact that he is almost 80 years old and she is younger than me,” he argued. “But I understand that the First Lady had a stressful experience this weekend, like probably every weekend,” he quipped.
A little chat, Donald?
“I agree that hateful and violent comments are something that we should reject,” he insisted, believing that the best way to ban them from public debate “would be to have a conversation” with the tenant of the White House.
A big star of night shows, the famous “late night shows”, Jimmy Kimmel had already been accused by the American right of politically exploiting the assassination of pro-Trump influencer Charlie Kirk.
Owned by Disney, ABC then suspended the host from the air. But faced with outcry and accusations of censorship, the channel brought the comedian back a week after his ouster.
This time, it was Melania Trump, breaking with her usual media reserve, who herself criticized him, accusing him on X of carrying a “rhetoric of hatred and violence”.
For Melania Trump, “people like Kimmel should not have the opportunity to enter our homes every night to spread hatred.”
