Trump Urges ABC, Disney to 'Immediately Fire' Kimmel

President Trump is again taking aim at late-night TV, this time demanding ABC and Disney cut ties with Jimmy Kimmel. In a Truth Social post hours after Melania Trump spoke out against Kimmel, Trump called him "in no way funny" and urged that he be "immediately fired" over a joke in his White House Correspondents' Association dinner spoof days before a shooting at the real event, Variety reports.

• "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,'" Trump wrote.

• "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," Trump wrote. "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."
• Melania Trump earlier said Kimmel's monologue was "corrosive" and "deepens the political sickness within America." She called Kimmel a "coward" who "hides behind ABC" and pressed the network to "take a stand" and stop "enabl[ing] Kimmel's atrocious behavior." Trump allies and MAGA supporters have amplified the criticism online.
• CNN describes the posts as part of another "major free speech controversy over Kimmel," who was briefly suspended over remarks he made about Charlie Kirk's death last year.

• In his WHCA dinner spoof, Kimmel noted that it was the first time Trump was attending the event as president, "but he doesn't have to worry about being made fun of" because mentalist Oz Pearlman was hosting the dinner, not a comedian, the Guardian reports.
• "It breaks with many years of tradition—at the correspondents' dinner, typically someone funny shows up and roasts the luminaries and the president and everyone," Kimmel said. "But our president is a delicate snowflake with the thinnest fat skin of any human being ever, and that means there's going to be no comedian this year. So I thought, why not take a page from the Kid Rock alternative half-time show, and do some of the jokes a comedian might."
• "By the way, in the unfortunate event that our president has a medical emergency tonight, do we have a doctor in the house—oh, I'm sorry. I mean, do we have a Jesus in the house? I always confuse them, too," Kimmel quipped, referring to Trump's remarks about an image he posted, then deleted earlier this month.