Entertainment
Kimmel Fires Back After Trump Demands ABC Firing
By Mike Harper · April 28, 2026
Jimmy Kimmel knows this script. He has lived it before.
On Monday night, Kimmel opened his show with a direct response to President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, both of whom had spent the day publicly demanding that ABC fire him over a joke he made the previous Thursday — a mock White House Correspondents’ Dinner bit in which he described Melania as having “the glow of an expectant widow.”
“You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and the First Lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job?” Kimmel said at the top of his show. “We’ve all been there.”
He then explained the joke on its own terms — a reference to Trump’s age and the visible absence of warmth in their public appearances — and turned the moment into something sharper.
“It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination. And they know that,” Kimmel said. “I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence, in particular. And I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.”
The response was direct and, for Kimmel, unusually pointed. But the more important story is not what Kimmel said on Monday night. It is what happened the last time the Trump administration came after him — and what ABC chose to do.
In the fall of 2025, Kimmel made a comment on his show in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk that his critics characterized as inappropriate. The reaction from the White House was swift. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr publicly threatened ABC affiliates over the segment. Trump celebrated on social media, writing “Great news for America. The ratings-challenged Jimmy Kimmel show is CANCELLED.” Within days, ABC suspended Kimmel. Several network affiliates across the country said they would take him off air entirely. The suspension was initially described as indefinite.
He was back on the air within a week. But the machinery had demonstrated that it worked — that a coordinated combination of presidential pressure, FCC signals, and public campaign could move a major broadcast network to act against one of its own hosts.
The current episode is running the same playbook. Melania’s statement called for ABC to “take a stand” and accused Kimmel of hiding behind the network’s protection. Trump’s Truth Social post described the joke as a “despicable call to violence” and demanded Kimmel be “immediately fired by Disney and ABC.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at Monday’s briefing that rhetoric like Kimmel’s has “led crazy people to believe crazy things” — a framing that directly connected a comedy routine to Saturday’s shooting.
ABC has not responded publicly. There is no indication as of Tuesday morning that any suspension or programming change is being considered. Whether that silence holds — or whether the FCC, which is still chaired by Brendan Carr, adds regulatory weight to the pressure — is the question that makes this more than a celebrity fight.
What Kimmel actually said Thursday was a series of jokes about age, power, and the spectacle of Trump’s second term. The “expectant widow” line landed two days before the WHCD shooting. The administration’s framing — that the joke contributed to an atmosphere of political violence — is the argument it used last time, too.
Kimmel has survived one administration pressure campaign. Whether the broadcast network that employs him is prepared to hold its ground through a second one is a different question entirely.