On the September 15, 2025 episode of ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!Kimmel made the following quip: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to paint this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of their own, and doing everything they can to score political points out of him.”
The “joke” was Kimmel’s remark to far-right Republicans seeking to distance themselves from the ideologies of Kirk’s killer. After initial (correct) assumptions that accused killer Tyler Robinson disagreed with his target’s conservative politics, (incorrect) reports spread that the shooter believed Kirk was not right-wing. enough. It has been a strange and confusing whirlwind of misinformation, or “fake news,” as the aforementioned “MAGA gang” likely prefers. At the time of the monologue, both sides of the aisle were still pushing Robinson’s agenda away.
Kimmel’s punishment for jumping to the wrong conclusion was a few nights off the airwaves, the emergence of a new opponent in FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, and a lot of vile tweets directed at the “mean tweet” guy. calls for Jimmy Kimmel Live! The cancellation came and went, so Kimmel walked away and returned shortly afterward. Things were generally cool over the next seven months — or at least the status quo, meaning Kimmel was regularly attacking the president and Republicans were regularly attacking Kimmel.
On Thursday, April 23, 2026, Kimmel, wearing a fake White House correspondents’ dinner suit, told his (yes, fake) guest of honor the following: “I’m glad you decided to stay, Mr. President. And don’t worry, if we hurt your ego, it will only make your hands look less disgusting.” (Trump’s documented hand bruises are said to be a reaction to taking too much aspirin.)
It was Trump’s thin skin that nullified WHCD’s true tradition of roasting POTUS. Instead, the featured performer for the 2026 event was mentalist Oz Perlman. Perlman’s work had just begun when gunfire rang out and the concert was cancelled.
Forty-eight hours before Perelman guessed the name of White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt’s unborn daughter on Hollywood Boulevard, Kimmel switched from Donald to Melania.
“Look at Melania, she’s so beautiful,” Kimmel said, still pretending to address a crowd of D.C. dignitaries. “Mrs. Trump, you have the glow of a pregnant widow.”
It was a joke about her husband’s declining health and the perception that Melania Trump doesn’t like Donald Trump. Unless it was a call for violence or a prediction of the president’s assassination, just as Kirk’s killer joke wasn’t a joke about Kirk’s assassination. Kimmel is a comedian, and comedians tell jokes on comedy shows. You don’t have to like them, but you should actually try to understand them. What makes a cold woman after her childbearing years glow like a pregnancy? The old donkey that she wasn’t supposed to marry and couldn’t divorce after she died.
On Saturday night, outside the actual White House Correspondents’ Association gala, Cole Allen breached a security checkpoint and engaged in a brief gun battle with Secret Service agents. He was subdued, detained, and charged with attempted assassination of the president. An exchange of gunfire could be heard inside the dinner hall, and the President, Vice President, and other members of the Cabinet were taken to safety. There’s nothing funny about any of it.
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is designed to divide our country,” Melania Trump wrote on Channel How many times will ABC leadership enable Kimmel’s outrageous behavior at the expense of our community.
There are some things wrong with the First Lady’s complaint. First, ABC certainly didn’t “protect” Kimmel from affiliate and advertiser complaints last time around — he was sidelined and almost fired. But basically (and of course), Kimmel didn’t know that an assassination attempt on Donald Trump would take place two days after he called Melania a “pregnant widow.” Yes, there have been two attempts on Trump’s life in 2024, but none occurred in the nearly 600 days (not a feat, but something) between the September 15, 2024 attempt at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course and last weekend’s attempt. The alarmist argument is dumber than asking where Perlman’s psychic abilities were located on Saturday around 8:30 PM ET.
Donald Trump shared his own thoughts about Kimmel just hours after the first lady.
“Wow, Jimmy Kimmel, who is by no means funny as his terrible TV ratings attest, made a statement on his show that was truly shocking,” he posted on his Truth Social platform. “He showed a fake video of the First Lady, Melania, and our son, Barron, as if they were actually sitting in his studio, listening to him speak, which they were not, and never will be. Then he said, ‘Our First Lady, Melania, is here.’ Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have the glow of a pregnant widow.”
The post continued: “One day later, a lunatic tried to enter the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, carrying a rifle, a handgun, and several knives. He was there for a very clear and sinister reason.” “I appreciate that a lot of people are outraged by Kimmel’s vile call for violence, and normally they wouldn’t respond to anything he said, but this is something that goes way too far. Jimmy Kimmel should be fired immediately by Disney and ABC.”
It would be incorrect to claim, as some “angry” Trump supporters did online, that the shots Kimmel fired at the fake White House correspondents’ dinner on Thursday could have incited Allen to fire actual shots at the real one on Saturday. Allen lives in Torrance, California, about 2,700 miles from Washington, D.C., and law enforcement authorities believe Allen traveled by train (via Chicago) to the Washington Hilton, where he had pre-booked a room. Investigators also say Allen wrote a statement explaining his intent to target members of the Trump administration, and intimidated his family enough to report him to authorities. None of this happens in two days.
But do you know what happened on the same day as Kimmel’s group vitriol? Trump fell asleep again during a televised announcement, this announcement was with pharmaceutical company executives. It was just the latest bad look at men’s health in general.
Trump will be 80 years old in a month and a half. He is already the oldest president to be sworn in (ironically breaking the record set by “Sleepy” Joe Biden), and if he lives to the end of his current term, he will become the oldest president ever to take office. Trump isn’t the guy who does push-ups in jeans (and only jeans) with Kid Rock — his main form of exercise is golf, and he certainly doesn’t walk the course (let alone carry his bag).
Earlier this month, Dr. Vin Gupta, chief medical examiner at MS NOW, said: “The president is showing all the signs of dementia.” In January, Professor Bruce Davidson of Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine said he believed Trump would have a stroke in 2025.
Kimmel’s “pregnant widow” joke wasn’t a nice joke — most aren’t — but show me the lie.
Leavitt supported the Trump family on Monday when she also blamed Kimmel, in part, for repeated anti-Trump rhetoric. (We still don’t know if Perlman guessed her baby’s name correctly, which is another tragedy from the weekend.)
“The entire Democratic Party has made it clear to voters across the country that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, that he is a fascist. They are comparing him to Hitler,” Leavitt said at a news conference. “These are despicable statements that the American people have been internalizing for years, and many mentally disturbed individuals have been led to believe that these Words are the truth, and they are then inspired to act on them.”
Levitt’s (and others’) argument makes the most sense in my argument: repeated hate speech by powerful people can lead to real-world consequences. It might also be fair if it came from anywhere other than the Trump White House.
