Jimmy Kimmel hits back after Trumps call for firing over 'widow' joke

Jessica Schladebeck, New York Daily News on Apr 28, 2026

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Jimmy Kimmel shrugged off the first couple’s call for his firing after his morbid quip about Melania Trump ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was interrupted by a shooting attack days later.

“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 in the opening monologue of his late-night show Monday evening. “We’ve all been there, right?”

The joke in question came during a special cut of Kimmel’s show that aired Thursday night. The funnyman, dressed in a tux and standing behind a podium, delivered a fake comic monologue as though he were opening the WHCD, at one point pretending to acknowledge Melania in the “audience.”

“Our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful,” he said. “Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

The actual event, held in Washington Hilton’s ballroom in D.C. two nights later, descended into chaos when a man armed with guns and knives tried to gain entry to the venue. The suspect, identified as Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, was tackled to the ground by Secret Service agents as Trump and much of the nation’s political leadership fled the building.

Allen was arrested on the scene and charged Monday with the attempted assassination of the president.

In wake of the incident, Melania took aim at Kimmel, dubbing his joke “hateful and violent.”

“His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America,” she wrote on X. “People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.”

The president followed up with his own remarks hours, calling Kimmel’s on-air comment a “despicable call to violence,” tying it directly to the shooting incident.

Kimmel responded directly Monday, agreeing with Melania that “hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject,” adding that “I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.” He also emphasized that it was never his intention to incite violence.

It “obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together,” he said. “It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination, and they know that.”

Melania turned 56 on Sunday while her husband will turn 80 in June.

Kimmel is no stranger to courting controversy with his comedy. He was briefly suspended by ABC in September after his comment about the assassination of conservative leader Charlie Kirk. He was fatally shot during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University in Orem.

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