US President Donald Trump called for comedian Jimmy Kimmel to be fired for likening First Lady Melania Trump to an \u201cexpectant widow\u201d in a joke made days before a third alleged attempt to assassinate Trump.<\/p>\n
Melania Trump herself had earlier lashed out at Kimmel in a rare statement, calling on US broadcaster ABC to \u201ctake a stand\u201d against the late-night host over his comments.<\/p>\n
Kimmel made the remarks last Thursday, before the shooting incident at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington on Saturday, which Trump attended.<\/p>\n
In a monologue, Kimmel portrayed himself as the MC of that upcoming banquet. It included a segment in which he addressed the first lady in the audience and said, \u201cMrs Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump turns 80 in June and is the oldest president ever to take office in the United States. His wife, a former model who was born in Slovenia, is 56.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel\u2019s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but this is something far beyond the pale,\u201d Trump said on his Truth Social platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cJimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,\u201d he said, referring to ABC\u2019s parent company Disney.<\/p>\n
Hitting out at Kimmel on X, the first lady said Kimmel\u2019s \u201cmonologue about my family isn\u2019t comedy, his words are corrosive and deepen the political sickness within America.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Cult of hatred\u2019<\/p>\n
As a prominent late-night comedy host, Kimmel has been at the heart of the debate over constitutionally protected speech.<\/p>\n
Kimmel was briefly suspended from his show on the ABC network last September following government pressure after he said Trump\u2019s hard-right MAGA movement was trying to make political capital from the assassination of influencer Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n
\u201cA coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him,\u201d the first lady added.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC\u2019s leadership enable Kimmel\u2019s atrocious behaviour at the expense of our community?\u201d<\/p>\n
While Trump took a rare conciliatory tone towards the media in a press conference after the gala shooting, the White House has since hardened its stance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe left-wing cult of hatred against the president and all of those who support him and work for him has gotten multiple people hurt and killed, and it almost did so again this weekend,\u201d Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told a briefing.<\/p>\n
Trump himself has pushed the barriers of presidential precedent in terms of using language towards political opponents that critics say is polarising and sometimes violent.<\/p>\n
But Leavitt, who was on stage with Trump at the dinner when the incident happened, said there had been \u201csystemic demonisation\u201d of the 79-year-old president.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody in recent years has faced more bullets and more violence than President Trump,\u201d said Leavitt, who returned from maternity leave to host the briefing at the White House.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who constantly, falsely label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy, and compare him to Hitler to score political points, are fueling this kind of violence,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The post Trump, Melania slam Kimmel for \u2018widow\u2019 joke<\/a> appeared first on KBC Digital<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US President Donald Trump called for comedian Jimmy Kimmel to be fired for likening First Lady Melania Trump to an \u201cexpectant widow\u201d in a joke made days before a third alleged attempt to assassinate Trump. Melania Trump herself had earlier lashed out at Kimmel in a rare statement, calling on US broadcaster ABC to \u201ctake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}