US first lady Melania Trump has lashed out at Jimmy Kimmel and told American broadcaster ABC to “take a stand” after the late-night talk show host remarked she had the glow of an “expectant widow” in a monologue delivered before a shooting incident in Washington.
“Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behaviour at the expense of our community,” the first lady said in a post on X on Monday US time (Tuesday AEST).
“His monologue about my family isn’t comedy,” she added, describing it as “hateful and violent rhetoric”.
US President Donald Trump and the first lady were rushed out of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night (US time) after a shooting in the lobby of the Washington Hilton.
Kimmel, in a parody of the dinner that aired last week before the actual event, said: “Mrs Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”
Kimmel also implied that convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein had introduced Trump and his wife, a claim the first lady denied in a rare address earlier this month.
The jokes were seen to be in poor taste in light of the attempted assassination at the dinner two nights later. Disney and the ABC did not immediately comment.
In a press briefing on Monday US time (Tuesday AEST), White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Kimmel had “disgustingly” called the first lady an “expectant widow”.
“Who in their right mind says a wife would be glowing over the potential murder of her beloved husband? And having experienced what I did with the first lady on Saturday night, I can tell you that she was anything but that,” she said.
Leavitt was seated at a long table at the dinner alongside the Trumps when the chaos erupted. She described the incident as the third assassination attempt against the president.
A suspect identified as Cole Allen charged through a checkpoint and fired at Secret Service agents, wounding one, before he was subdued and arrested.
The first lady later appeared alongside her husband as he briefed reporters at the White House on Saturday night (US time). He described the incident as “a rather traumatic experience” for her.
Asked during an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes on Sunday whether his wife had been scared, the president said: “I don’t want to say, and people don’t like having it said that they were scared, but certainly, I mean, who wouldn’t be when you have a situation like that?”
In September, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 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 his threats to that of an organised 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 US households. Carr wants to make it easier for local broadcasters to preempt national programming.
In November, Trump criticised an ABC News correspondent for asking Saudi Arabia’s crown prince about the 2018 killing of a Washington Post columnist and suggested the commission should move to revoke the broadcast licenses of Disney-owned ABC stations.
with Reuters, Bloomberg
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Sarah McPhee is the Overnight Homepage Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
