Jimmy Kimmel Live White House Correspondents Dinner Skit Disney/Randy Holmes On the September 15, 2025 episode of ABC‘s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Kimmel made the following quip: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
The “joke” was an observation of far-right Republicans scrambling to distance themselves from the ideologies of Kirk’s assassin. After initial (correct) assumptions that accused killer Tyler Robinson must have disagreed with his target’s conservative politics, (incorrect) reports that the shooter thought Kirk was not rightwing enough circulated. It was a weird and confusing whirlwind of misinformation, or “fake news,” as the aforementioned “MAGA gang” would probably prefer. 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 newfound adversary in FCC chair Brendan Carr, and a lot of mean tweets directed at the “Mean Tweets” guy. Calls for Jimmy Kimmel Live! to be canceled came and went, so Kimmel went away and came back shortly thereafter. Things were generally chill for the next seven months — or at least status quo, meaning Kimmel would regularly bash the President and Republicans would regularly bash Kimmel.
On Thursday, April 23, 2026, putting on a faux White House Correspondents Dinner roast in a faux tux, Kimmel said the following: “I’m happy you decided to stay, Mr. President. And don’t worry, if we bruise your ego, it’ll only make your hands look less disgusting.” (Trump‘s documented hand bruising is said to be a reaction to taking too much aspirin.)
It was Trump’s thin skin that canceled the real WHCD tradition of roasting the POTUS. Instead, the 2026 event’s featured performer was mentalist Oz Pearlman. Pearlman’s act had just started before gunshots rang out, canceling the party.
Forty-eight hours before Pearlman was guessing the name of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s unborn daughter, back on Hollywood Boulevard, Kimmel downshifted from Donald to Melania.
“Look at Melania, so beautiful,” Kimmel said, pretending to address a crowd of DC dignitaries. “Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”
It was a joke about her husband’s declining health and the perception that Melania Trump does not like Donald Trump. What it was not was a call for violence or a forecast that the President would be assassinated, just like the Kirk-assassin joke was not a joke about Kirk’s assassination. Kimmel is a comedian and comedians make jokes on comedy shows. You don’t have to like them, but you should actually try to understand them. What would make a cold woman beyond her child-bearing years glow like a pregnancy? The old jackass she shouldn’t have married and can’t divorce kicking the bucket.
On Saturday night, just outside the actual White House Correspondent Association’s gala, Cole Allen, breached a security checkpoint and had a brief firefight with secret service agents. He was subdued, taken into custody and is charged with the attempted assassination of the President. The gunfire could be heard within the dinner’s ballroom, and the President, vice president and other members of the cabinet were hurried away to safety. There is nothing funny about any of that.
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country,” Melania Trump wrote on X. “His monologue about my family isn’t comedy—his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate. A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. 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.”
There are a couple of things wrong with the first lady’s complaint. First, ABC certainly did not “protect” Kimmel from affiliate and advertiser complaints the last time — he was sidelined and nearly fired. But mainly (and obviously), Kimmel could not have known an attempt on Donald Trump’s life would be made two days after dubbing Melania an “expectant widow.” Yes, there were two attempts on Trump’s life in 2024, but none in the almost 600 days (not an accomplishment, but something) separating the September 15, 2024 assassination attempt at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course and this past weekend. A foreshadowing argument is dumber than wondering where the hell Pearlman’s psychic abilities were on Saturday at around 8:30 p.m. ET.
Melania Trump Heather Diehl/Getty Images Donald Trump shared his own thoughts on Kimmel a few hours after the first lady.
“Wow, Jimmy Kimmel, who is in no way funny as attested to by his terrible Television Ratings, made a statement on his Show that is really shocking,” he post on his Truth Social platform. “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.’”
“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,” the post continued. “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. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”
It would be incorrect to claim, as some of Trump’s “incensed” online supporters have, that the shots Kimmel fired at his fake White House Correspondents Dinner on Thursday could have incited Allen to fire shots at the real one on Saturday. Allen lives in Torrance, California, nearly 2,700 miles from Washington, D.C. Law enforcement believes Allen traveled by train (through Chicago) to the Washington Hilton hotel, where he had booked a room in advance. Investigators also say Allen wrote a manifesto stating an intention to target members of the Trump administration, and spooked his own family enough for them to report him to authorities. None of this happens in two days.
But you know what happened the same day as Kimmel’s scathing set? Trump fell asleep, again, during a televised announcement, this one with pharmaceutical executives. It was just the latest bad look for the man’s overall health.
Trump will be 80 years old in a month and a half. He is already the oldest president to take the oath of office (ironically breaking “Sleepy” Joe Biden’s record), and should he live through the end of his current term, he will be the oldest president ever in office. Trump is not the guy doing push-ups in jeans (and only jeans) with Kid Rock — his main form of exercise is golf, and he’s definitely not walking the course (let alone carrying his bag).
Earlier this month, Dr. Vin Gupta, the senior medical examiner for MS NOW, said, “The President is exhibiting all the signs of dementia.” In January, professor Bruce Davidson of Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine said he believes Trump had a stroke in 2025.
Kimmel’s “expectant widow” joke was not a nice joke — and most aren’t — but show me the lie.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images The Trumps were backed up by Leavitt on Monday when she also blamed Kimmel, in part, for repeated anti-Trump rhetoric. (We still don’t know if Pearlman correctly guessed her baby’s name, another tragedy from the weekend.)
“The entire Democrat party has made their pitch to voters across the country that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy, that he is a fascist. They compare him to Hitler,” Leavitt said at a press conference. “These are despicable statements that the American people have been consuming for years, and so many mentally perturbed individuals are led to believe these words are truth, and then are inspired to act on it.”
Leavitt’s (and others’) is the most logical argument to my argument: repeated hateful speech by powerful people can lead to real-world consequences. And it might be a fair one if it came from anywhere but the Trump White House.
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