By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, April 27 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that Jimmy Kimmel should immediately be fired by ABC and parent company Walt Disney, joining his wife Melania Trump in calling out the late-night talk show host for a monologue he delivered prior to a shooting near a gathering of journalists and politicians over the weekend.
Kimmel said last Thursday, in a parody segment on the upcoming White House correspondents’ dinner, that Melania Trump “had a glow like an expectant widow.”
Trump and the first lady were rushed out of the dinner on Saturday after a shooting in the lobby of the Washington Hilton. A suspect identified as Cole Allen charged through a checkpoint and fired at Secret Service agents, wounding one, before he was subdued and arrested.
Trump has repeatedly urged broadcasters to remove comedy or news programs he dislikes or that have been critical of him and pressed regulators to take action to revoke licenses of broadcasters he says are unfair to him. Broadcasters have broad First Amendment rights to make jokes – even ones that are distasteful, experts note.
Earlier on Monday, Melania Trump called Kimmel’s remarks “corrosive” and a symptom of what she described as a political sickness in the United States.
Neither ABC nor Disney immediately responded to requests for comment.
The issue poses an early test for Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, who took the reins last month.
“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,” Melania Trump said in a post on X. “People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.”
She added: “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 (sic) the political sickness within America.”
Donald Trump, who previously called for Kimmel to be removed from the air, said the comedian’s joke was “something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”
Reaction elsewhere to the remarks was mixed.
“Disney and ABC are extremely lucky that Trump wasn’t assassinated on Saturday two days after Jimmy Kimmel made the joke about an ‘expectant widow,'” said Todd Doten, 57, a street vendor working on Hollywood Boulevard. “If that had happened, there would be a backlash against them the likes (of which) they’ve never seen before.”
Dee Thompson, a 64-year-old from North Carolina, worried about the potential chilling effect on free speech should Kimmel lose his job over the joke.
“They’re going to take away freedom of speech for a lot of comedians, you know,” said Thompson. “You’re going to be walking on eggshells.”
FCC PRESSURE ON BROADCASTERS
In September of last year, the head of the Federal Communications Commission pressured broadcasters to take Kimmel off the air. ABC briefly suspended Kimmel’s show that month over comments he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Hours before the suspension, FCC head Brendan Carr warned that local broadcasters who aired Kimmel could face fines or loss of licenses and said “it’s time for them to step up.”
His comments garnered pushback from the entertainment industry and politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who likened Carr’s threats to those of an organized-crime boss.
In September, Sinclair and Nexstar Media Group briefly took Kimmel’s show off the air on their 70 ABC-affiliated stations covering nearly a quarter of U.S. households.
Carr approved Nexstar’s $3.5 billion tie-up with Tegna, but a U.S. judge has put the merger on hold.
Carr has said he wants to make it easier for local broadcasters to preempt national programming. He did not immediately respond on Monday to a request for comment on the first lady’s remarks.
Sinclair and Nexstar did not immediately comment on Monday.
Trump, who was the subject of two prior assassination attempts, has repeatedly attacked the media and threatened broadcast licenses. Trump had praised Kimmel’s suspension in September.
In November, Trump criticized an ABC News correspondent for asking Saudi Arabia’s crown prince about the 2018 killing of a Washington Post columnist and suggested the FCC should move to revoke the broadcast licenses of Disney-owned ABC stations.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, Daphne Psaledakis and Katharine Jackson in Washington; with additional reporting by Dawn Chmielewski and Rollo Ross in Los Angeles; Editing by Michelle Nichols, David Gaffen, Matthew Lewis and Lincoln Feast.)
Comments