April 27, 2026
Melania Trump Demands ABC Fire Jimmy Kimmel, They Might Have To This Time
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RSS Feed The First Lady called Jimmy Kimmel a “coward” on X after what she calls his hateful and violent rhetoric. Kimmel made a joke before the White House Correspondents’ dinner where he said Melania was beautiful, like “an expectant widow.” The first lady called on ABC to take a stand and to stop protecting the late night comedian. As of this recording, there is no official response from the Disney owned network, as calls to boycott ABC grow louder on social media.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, It's Monday, April twenty seventh, and the First Lady of the United States is now calling for ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel. And quite frankly, we understand. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Roads. We're used to President Trump calling for all kinds of late night hosts getting fired. It's her this time in rogues. This is a tough joke. Why witty tell it? And the timing is just terrible.
00:00:34
Speaker 2: For yes, timing is everything, but also I can't think of a time where this joke would have been appropriate. Look, I think I get it. Free speech, everyone can laugh. Presidents and people who are in positions of power or high profile positions are subject to being made fun of, to having jokes cracked about them.
00:00:56
Speaker 3: All of that, we get it.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: Jimmy Kimmel obviously underderstands what it's like, perhaps to take a joke too far, what bad timing could lead to in terms of suspensions, potential firing. So it's shocking to me, given what happened to him this fall after making a few jokes after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, why he.
00:01:18
Speaker 3: Would even make an assassination joke.
00:01:22
Speaker 2: He happened to make this joke on Friday, and it just so happens that there was what you could call it, an assassination attempt, a third attempt on his life on Sunday.
00:01:34
Speaker 1: Yes, sorry, just Gau getting attention. And we're going to let you hear the clip of what he said. We're going to read the joke before we let you hear it. Then we're also going to let you know about this statement that Milania Trump has just put out. We have it here in front of us. She put it out via Twitter VI a X excuse me, still is making that mistake? Via X this like about an hour, about an hour within this recording of us hopping on here she put this out. But here was the first lady just a short time ago.
00:02:05
Speaker 3: She wrote on X.
00:02:06
Speaker 2: 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 the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn't have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.
00:02:26
Speaker 3: A coward.
00:02:27
Speaker 2: Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him.
00:02:34
Speaker 3: Enough is enough.
00:02:35
Speaker 2: 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?
00:02:47
Speaker 1: Okay, so ABC take a stand. Yes, you can jump to the conclusion roads about what she's saying here flat out. You all need to get this guy off the air. He shouldn't have the right to do this. We should say with at least as of this recording ropes, there is no re sponds from ABC. You were saying to me, we should hold off or we should going to have to update this because they're going to have to say something before he tapes tonight, which is five o'clock LA time.
00:03:12
Speaker 4: Will they now, look?
00:03:14
Speaker 2: I mean, when you hear if you haven't already the joke that Jimmy Kimmel made on Friday, I hadn't heard it.
00:03:22
Speaker 3: I hadn't heard about it until just a short time ago.
00:03:25
Speaker 4: Did you see Do you have it in front of you?
00:03:26
Speaker 2: I do?
00:03:26
Speaker 3: Okay, I do have an.
00:03:28
Speaker 1: You're looking there, yes, folks. So to set this up, Jimmy Kimmel did in his Thursday episode, they only take Monday through Thursday out there, so they did this on Thursday, ropes. He has a studio audience, a show like always, but he decides to do like Kid Rock did your alternative halftime show kind of a thing. Yes, so he's going to do an alternate alternate White House Corresponds Dinner. So he does a whole bit where he stands up there like he's the host of the evening, and so he's telling jokes about everybody in the audience quote unquote the audience, and they keep showing old clips of the President, like sitting in a crowd, first Lady sitting in a crownd.
00:04:08
Speaker 4: So there you go. That sets it up.
00:04:10
Speaker 1: And he gets to the part about who's in the room and he says again fake White House Correspondents Dinner, and says, ah, there's Milania Trump and he so he acknowledges her, and this is the joke he decided to tell.
00:04:21
Speaker 4: Yeh.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: So he says, our first Lady Mulania is here. Look at Milania, so beautiful, missus Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow. Okay, I mean when I've heard that, when I just read it, I my jaw drop because I don't know how that joke is ever appropriate to joke or tease about a potential assassination, especially when you have somebody who has already, at that point when he made the joke, had already had two assassination attempts on his life. He's also the very comedian who almost lost his job over making jokes at the expense of a man who had just been assassinated. So why in God's name would he think this was a funny thing to say or do.
00:05:10
Speaker 1: It wasn't that just as a standalone take all the other stuff out, It wasn't so funny of a joke that you would fight to keep it in the show, Like it wasn't necessary to dip back into this. Well was that really not? And again, they're doing their thing. They have a right to say what they want to say. Well, it's given the times. Why would you creep anywhere close to a suggestion that her husband would be dead soon?
00:05:37
Speaker 2: Look, I just don't think it's ever appropriate have fun, enjoy be the brilliant comedian that you are.
00:05:44
Speaker 3: But why especially.
00:05:45
Speaker 2: If you're going to be the person who's holding the president and this administration to task for using certain types of rhetoric and making fun of them, or at least pointing out perhaps just how low they can go. Why go to the low place possible, and that is as low as a guest.
00:06:03
Speaker 1: I don't know if we can wait to hear an explanation. It's almost like a When I first read it and I said it to you, your jaw dropped. Initially, I wanted to go back and go, Okay, wait a minute, Maybe there's some context missing outside of that one line. And I even thought maybe he made some jokes about the way the president eats and he's in bad health and he's he's eighty years old. Maybe that's the joke he was trying to tell, And it's just none of it. No, No, Robes, I don't know. I I don't know if we have I don't know what you could explain to make us all feel better about that joke.
00:06:34
Speaker 2: No, I don't think there is anything you can And look, I've you and I we're recording this just shortly after the first lady put her request of ABC News out to the world on X and it remains to be seen. As you pointed out, ABC Disney, they're going to have to do or say something I would imagine before five pm Eastern time, which is when Kimmel is oh sorry, eight pm Eastern time, which is when Kimmel records his show, and to not say anything doesn't seem possible or plausible, especially given the history with Jimmy Kimmel. You're gonna let him go back on the air tonight and respond to Milania's no tweet.
00:07:16
Speaker 3: I cannot imagine so that it would get to that point.
00:07:19
Speaker 1: Now you're making me think about it differently because I wasn't sure. Okay, well may I don't know if ABC sees this the way everybody else does, but Kimmel's name is the number one trending topic on X right now on a Monday morning.
00:07:27
Speaker 4: You do not want that after what we just saw.
00:07:30
Speaker 1: Over the weekend, where everybody's mind is still on the assassination potential assassination attempt of the president. This is on the brain that he was making this joke days ago. It didn't get this kind of attention.
00:07:41
Speaker 2: I hadn't even heard about it until Mulania put it out on X.
00:07:45
Speaker 4: Okay, so we read it.
00:07:46
Speaker 1: I don't know if it'll make any difference to any of you when you actually hear it.
00:07:50
Speaker 4: So Here is the joke Jimmy Kimmel told.
00:07:51
Speaker 1: It's just about eight seconds long, but this is him setting up a six ly as the host of the fake White House Correspondence dinner, acknowledging Milan Trump being a guest at that fake dinner.
00:08:02
Speaker 4: Take a listen, our first Lady, Milania is here.
00:08:05
Speaker 1: Look at more so beautiful missus Trump.
00:08:07
Speaker 3: You have a glow like an expectant widow.
00:08:11
Speaker 4: And that's it.
00:08:12
Speaker 3: It's just unnecessary.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: It's beneath him, it's beneath anyone. It's not appropriate ever to joke about anyone being killed or dying. I just don't believe that ever is a joke that should be told.
00:08:28
Speaker 3: And I just didn't even find an urge to laugh.
00:08:32
Speaker 2: It's not funny, no matter what you think of him and what you may feel about him personally, I don't know.
00:08:39
Speaker 3: Can anyone defend that joke.
00:08:42
Speaker 1: Maybe they can, and maybe they will. And I don't know what context rose, But in the times we're living in, even before what happened on Saturday, you're telling the first Lady as a joke that you have a glow like a woman who is expecting her husband to die.
00:08:59
Speaker 4: That's the joke.
00:09:01
Speaker 1: I don't know, babe, because we've been around Lord have mercy. Of course, we have been spent significant time around Jimmy Kimmel. Always found a compliment him finding to be a decent dude, a decent human being. This back and forth with him and Trump is out of control. It's out of hand.
00:09:19
Speaker 2: I said to you, I was disappointed, honestly, because yes, we have both sat down with Jimmy Kimmel, we have spent time with Jimmy Kimmel.
00:09:25
Speaker 3: I've always thought that, yes, he.
00:09:28
Speaker 2: Can be a cerbic and he but he's pointed, and he's intelligent, and he's a brilliant comedian, and I like the guy. But I just I was thinking, this is a man who has dealt with lost recently of his best friend, He's struggled with the health of his own son, and received a lot of public support in dealing with some real crises in his family.
00:09:49
Speaker 3: Someone who's been through some stuff.
00:09:51
Speaker 2: So I just was surprised that he would joke about that, given all he's lived through in his life.
00:09:57
Speaker 3: It actually surprised me.
00:09:59
Speaker 2: Maybe we don't really know him, and I don't know what was going through his head and what was in his heart when he decided this was a good joke to tell.
00:10:07
Speaker 1: Again, I don't think he wishes it and wishes ill on anybody, but it just seemed like a bad choice choice. Brilliant comedion and greatest guy in the world can still make a bad decision.
00:10:18
Speaker 3: And should he be fired for that?
00:10:20
Speaker 1: Robes I'd given as a collection of things. Now, and you're gonna keep him on the air for another year, would you say his contract.
00:10:29
Speaker 2: His contract is up May of twenty twenty seven, because if you don't. In fact, I had to refresh my memory after all of this back and forth in September where he was taken off the air after the joke he made after Charlie Kirk's assassination, when he was reinstated pretty shortly thereafter, they offered to extend his contract. It had been up in May of twenty twenty six, so that would have been literally in a matter of weeks. Back in December, they officially re upped him for another year, So he is his contract expires in May of twenty five, twenty seven, so a year from now.
00:11:03
Speaker 1: We said, robes we couldn't come up with and didn't really care to hear their logic their reasoning or their excuse they might have for making that joke. But stay here, folks, there is a line of defense that some are using to defend Jimmy Kimmel and that joke.
00:11:24
Speaker 4: Stay here.
00:11:34
Speaker 1: We continue here on Amy and TJ, computers in front of us, constantly hitting refresh, waiting to see if ABC puts out a statement of some kind and response to what the first lady has now said and that she wants them to take a stand. Is how she put it against the quote coward Kimmel who was hiding behind the network after he made a joke and robe. Some people always, I mean the White House says it often, don't they folks can't take a joke. They say it about other when the President insults. Somebody says, hey, how many times we heard that people need lighten up? Can't take a joke?
00:12:09
Speaker 2: Yes, And there is a lot of back and forth now, whether you are a Trump supporter or not, a lot of folks weighing in now because this joke. I had not been aware of it. I don't know when we woke up this morning. Kimmel was not trending on X. This was Malania Trump. She took a stand she put it out on X and she is demanding that ABC actually deal now or acknowledge or have some sort of repercussions for Jimmy Kimmel and the joke he made on Friday. And now it is everything. Everyone is talking about it.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: And again, yes, she absolutely elevated. Again, as we are recording this, she only put the statement out about an hour on X and it's already been viewed some million and a half times. So this is and it will continue to bubble and boil. And now I think to your point, Robes, they have to even if they don't do something, they got to say something about this because the only option is what to go on tonight and not even mention this. Of course not He's going to go on tonight and do what he always does if they let him, which is criticize this president pretty harshly. Can he do that tonight without addressing this?
00:13:10
Speaker 2: Oh, he absolutely has to address them, Okay, if they let him get to the stage. And I think that is still a big if because look at this point we were discussing Disney has had one problem after another. When you think about the Kimmel issue in the fall was huge. This was very difficult for them to navigate through and around in between and all of that. Then you had the Frankie Taylor Paul saga with The Bachelorette, where they literally had to pull their biggest franchise that they were trying to reboot and reinvigorate and spend all this money in time on just pull it off the air because of decisions made on allowing her to be the Bachelorette given what they already knew about her reputation and her criminal history.
00:13:52
Speaker 1: Well, these are the biggest your late night show. He is the biggest star at ABC. Yes, let's be clear there. I know, oh you got your morning people, your news people, and your entertainment people, but he is the guy that can bounce around on all of them and serve as the celebrity face of your network. Correct, Jimmy Kimble.
00:14:10
Speaker 2: Now they've already you know, gotten through that re upped him for a year, and now they have to decide they can't suspend him again. This is either going to be they are going to fire him or they are going to stand by him.
00:14:23
Speaker 1: That is the statement. Shit, Sabine, I mean, Sabina Ropes roades. I don't think there is another scenario. You cannot suspend him again. Been there, done that, and what happened.
00:14:35
Speaker 3: You cannot.
00:14:35
Speaker 2: Either they are going to choose to fire him, or they are going to stand by him and say this is freedom of speech. He has every right to criticize the sitting president. That is part of what he does each and every night. And we allow him to make his calls what is right or wrong and you can decide, and you can you can weigh in on how you feel by choosing to watch or not.
00:14:55
Speaker 1: You can go after his policies robes. That's not a problem. But we have been talking about rhetoric in this country for a while now. I don't know how that joke got cleared by s and frickin p This is a not just a Kimmel, this is a is this not a network an entertainment unit problem?
00:15:15
Speaker 4: Roopes.
00:15:16
Speaker 1: They go over those jokes and they flag them standards.
00:15:21
Speaker 3: And practices, flag that they know he was going to say this.
00:15:25
Speaker 4: They did. That's I would put money on.
00:15:28
Speaker 2: And would this have gone unnoticed or unchallenged had what happened at the White House correspondence.
00:15:35
Speaker 3: In or not happened.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering, I'm actually thinking about this as Jimmy Kimmel saw the events unfold. The events unfold on Saturday night Sunday morning, was he thinking, oh shit, I'm in trouble.
00:15:47
Speaker 1: I don't know okay, but yet that scenario just laid out. It has to happen. They are going to come out and fully defend and explain something and why it's okay, or they are going to have to pull him off for good. What an enormous other headache now for them rogues. And on this one, I didn't think he should be fired last time. If they told me they were pulling him in, definitely I would. I don't want, I don't root for anybody to be fired, but damn if they did on this one, I would id. It's hard to not understand why it's.
00:16:20
Speaker 2: Worth remembering why he got suspended for what he said. I the over Charlie Kirk because to me, and I hate to even compare, but to me, what he said surrounding the Charlie Kirk assassination wasn't that bad. I was kind of surprised it got as much attention as it did versus what he said about Melania Trump. To me, that's horrific, so to me, these two jokes are actually this one is, in my humble opinion, significantly more offensive and concerning than the first one about Charlie Kirk.
00:16:55
Speaker 3: What he said initially that got him suspended was he.
00:16:58
Speaker 2: Said, and this was in the day after Charlie Kirk's assassination. We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
00:17:14
Speaker 3: In between the finger pointing, the White.
00:17:15
Speaker 2: House flew the flag at half staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the President was taking this. They then showed the President being questioned about how he was doing in the wake of Kirk's assassination, and the President said, I think very good, and then changed the subject to renovations about the ballroom. And that's when Jimmy Kimmel said, he's at the fourth stage of grief construction. Okay, so he joked about the President's grief, and he joked about the fact that MAGA was mostly concerned about making sure they got political points.
00:17:50
Speaker 3: From the assassination.
00:17:52
Speaker 2: Okay, that to me, pales in comparison to the joke he made on Friday.
00:17:57
Speaker 1: I get it, and I understand why he got in trouble. That should have been the scrutiny. Fine, fine and dandy. But roads the defense that some are bringing for Kimmel now is don't y'all remember what President Trump said about Robert Muller and saying, aha, well that was worse, So big deal.
00:18:19
Speaker 4: I don't buy that.
00:18:20
Speaker 1: But if folks will remember, Robert Muller was within the past month, was it not, former FBI director passed away the President's comments about it. I'm glad he's dead. Okay, So that's that's that's the comparison that's people are now doing that We don't take on and examine what one person said. We're now measuring it against something else, Well, that was worse, therefore this is okay.
00:18:43
Speaker 3: Well that's I'm that's deeply concerning.
00:18:45
Speaker 2: If basically we can justify really horrible comments by saying it wasn't as bad as yours. Yep, that doesn't to me feel like a defense. That sounds like a deflection.
00:18:58
Speaker 1: Well, folks, we wanted to hop get on the record on this one because this is going to be a story for certainly the day, and who knows how many days ahead, and Robes you just said, and I think it's the best way for the scenario to be explained. They're going to have to stand by him or they're going to have to fire him, and that's going to have to happen today.
00:19:18
Speaker 4: And if we.
00:19:19
Speaker 1: Were wondering at all how this was going to go, Robes, what's bubbling up the trending charts right now hashtag boycott ABC.
00:19:29
Speaker 2: And we know where that usually leads. We will stay on top of this story. As always. We appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Roboch alongside TJ.
00:19:37
Speaker 3: Holmes. We will talk to you soon
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, It's Monday, April twenty seventh, and the First Lady of the United States is now calling for ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel. And quite frankly, we understand. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Roads. We're used to President Trump calling for all kinds of late night hosts getting fired. It's her this time in rogues. This is a tough joke. Why witty tell it? And the timing is just terrible.
00:00:34
Speaker 2: For yes, timing is everything, but also I can't think of a time where this joke would have been appropriate. Look, I think I get it. Free speech, everyone can laugh. Presidents and people who are in positions of power or high profile positions are subject to being made fun of, to having jokes cracked about them.
00:00:56
Speaker 3: All of that, we get it.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: Jimmy Kimmel obviously underderstands what it's like, perhaps to take a joke too far, what bad timing could lead to in terms of suspensions, potential firing. So it's shocking to me, given what happened to him this fall after making a few jokes after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, why he.
00:01:18
Speaker 3: Would even make an assassination joke.
00:01:22
Speaker 2: He happened to make this joke on Friday, and it just so happens that there was what you could call it, an assassination attempt, a third attempt on his life on Sunday.
00:01:34
Speaker 1: Yes, sorry, just Gau getting attention. And we're going to let you hear the clip of what he said. We're going to read the joke before we let you hear it. Then we're also going to let you know about this statement that Milania Trump has just put out. We have it here in front of us. She put it out via Twitter VI a X excuse me, still is making that mistake? Via X this like about an hour, about an hour within this recording of us hopping on here she put this out. But here was the first lady just a short time ago.
00:02:05
Speaker 3: She wrote on X.
00:02:06
Speaker 2: 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 the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn't have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.
00:02:26
Speaker 3: A coward.
00:02:27
Speaker 2: Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him.
00:02:34
Speaker 3: Enough is enough.
00:02:35
Speaker 2: 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?
00:02:47
Speaker 1: Okay, so ABC take a stand. Yes, you can jump to the conclusion roads about what she's saying here flat out. You all need to get this guy off the air. He shouldn't have the right to do this. We should say with at least as of this recording ropes, there is no re sponds from ABC. You were saying to me, we should hold off or we should going to have to update this because they're going to have to say something before he tapes tonight, which is five o'clock LA time.
00:03:12
Speaker 4: Will they now, look?
00:03:14
Speaker 2: I mean, when you hear if you haven't already the joke that Jimmy Kimmel made on Friday, I hadn't heard it.
00:03:22
Speaker 3: I hadn't heard about it until just a short time ago.
00:03:25
Speaker 4: Did you see Do you have it in front of you?
00:03:26
Speaker 2: I do?
00:03:26
Speaker 3: Okay, I do have an.
00:03:28
Speaker 1: You're looking there, yes, folks. So to set this up, Jimmy Kimmel did in his Thursday episode, they only take Monday through Thursday out there, so they did this on Thursday, ropes. He has a studio audience, a show like always, but he decides to do like Kid Rock did your alternative halftime show kind of a thing. Yes, so he's going to do an alternate alternate White House Corresponds Dinner. So he does a whole bit where he stands up there like he's the host of the evening, and so he's telling jokes about everybody in the audience quote unquote the audience, and they keep showing old clips of the President, like sitting in a crowd, first Lady sitting in a crownd.
00:04:08
Speaker 4: So there you go. That sets it up.
00:04:10
Speaker 1: And he gets to the part about who's in the room and he says again fake White House Correspondents Dinner, and says, ah, there's Milania Trump and he so he acknowledges her, and this is the joke he decided to tell.
00:04:21
Speaker 4: Yeh.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: So he says, our first Lady Mulania is here. Look at Milania, so beautiful, missus Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow. Okay, I mean when I've heard that, when I just read it, I my jaw drop because I don't know how that joke is ever appropriate to joke or tease about a potential assassination, especially when you have somebody who has already, at that point when he made the joke, had already had two assassination attempts on his life. He's also the very comedian who almost lost his job over making jokes at the expense of a man who had just been assassinated. So why in God's name would he think this was a funny thing to say or do.
00:05:10
Speaker 1: It wasn't that just as a standalone take all the other stuff out, It wasn't so funny of a joke that you would fight to keep it in the show, Like it wasn't necessary to dip back into this. Well was that really not? And again, they're doing their thing. They have a right to say what they want to say. Well, it's given the times. Why would you creep anywhere close to a suggestion that her husband would be dead soon?
00:05:37
Speaker 2: Look, I just don't think it's ever appropriate have fun, enjoy be the brilliant comedian that you are.
00:05:44
Speaker 3: But why especially.
00:05:45
Speaker 2: If you're going to be the person who's holding the president and this administration to task for using certain types of rhetoric and making fun of them, or at least pointing out perhaps just how low they can go. Why go to the low place possible, and that is as low as a guest.
00:06:03
Speaker 1: I don't know if we can wait to hear an explanation. It's almost like a When I first read it and I said it to you, your jaw dropped. Initially, I wanted to go back and go, Okay, wait a minute, Maybe there's some context missing outside of that one line. And I even thought maybe he made some jokes about the way the president eats and he's in bad health and he's he's eighty years old. Maybe that's the joke he was trying to tell, And it's just none of it. No, No, Robes, I don't know. I I don't know if we have I don't know what you could explain to make us all feel better about that joke.
00:06:34
Speaker 2: No, I don't think there is anything you can And look, I've you and I we're recording this just shortly after the first lady put her request of ABC News out to the world on X and it remains to be seen. As you pointed out, ABC Disney, they're going to have to do or say something I would imagine before five pm Eastern time, which is when Kimmel is oh sorry, eight pm Eastern time, which is when Kimmel records his show, and to not say anything doesn't seem possible or plausible, especially given the history with Jimmy Kimmel. You're gonna let him go back on the air tonight and respond to Milania's no tweet.
00:07:16
Speaker 3: I cannot imagine so that it would get to that point.
00:07:19
Speaker 1: Now you're making me think about it differently because I wasn't sure. Okay, well may I don't know if ABC sees this the way everybody else does, but Kimmel's name is the number one trending topic on X right now on a Monday morning.
00:07:27
Speaker 4: You do not want that after what we just saw.
00:07:30
Speaker 1: Over the weekend, where everybody's mind is still on the assassination potential assassination attempt of the president. This is on the brain that he was making this joke days ago. It didn't get this kind of attention.
00:07:41
Speaker 2: I hadn't even heard about it until Mulania put it out on X.
00:07:45
Speaker 4: Okay, so we read it.
00:07:46
Speaker 1: I don't know if it'll make any difference to any of you when you actually hear it.
00:07:50
Speaker 4: So Here is the joke Jimmy Kimmel told.
00:07:51
Speaker 1: It's just about eight seconds long, but this is him setting up a six ly as the host of the fake White House Correspondence dinner, acknowledging Milan Trump being a guest at that fake dinner.
00:08:02
Speaker 4: Take a listen, our first Lady, Milania is here.
00:08:05
Speaker 1: Look at more so beautiful missus Trump.
00:08:07
Speaker 3: You have a glow like an expectant widow.
00:08:11
Speaker 4: And that's it.
00:08:12
Speaker 3: It's just unnecessary.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: It's beneath him, it's beneath anyone. It's not appropriate ever to joke about anyone being killed or dying. I just don't believe that ever is a joke that should be told.
00:08:28
Speaker 3: And I just didn't even find an urge to laugh.
00:08:32
Speaker 2: It's not funny, no matter what you think of him and what you may feel about him personally, I don't know.
00:08:39
Speaker 3: Can anyone defend that joke.
00:08:42
Speaker 1: Maybe they can, and maybe they will. And I don't know what context rose, But in the times we're living in, even before what happened on Saturday, you're telling the first Lady as a joke that you have a glow like a woman who is expecting her husband to die.
00:08:59
Speaker 4: That's the joke.
00:09:01
Speaker 1: I don't know, babe, because we've been around Lord have mercy. Of course, we have been spent significant time around Jimmy Kimmel. Always found a compliment him finding to be a decent dude, a decent human being. This back and forth with him and Trump is out of control. It's out of hand.
00:09:19
Speaker 2: I said to you, I was disappointed, honestly, because yes, we have both sat down with Jimmy Kimmel, we have spent time with Jimmy Kimmel.
00:09:25
Speaker 3: I've always thought that, yes, he.
00:09:28
Speaker 2: Can be a cerbic and he but he's pointed, and he's intelligent, and he's a brilliant comedian, and I like the guy. But I just I was thinking, this is a man who has dealt with lost recently of his best friend, He's struggled with the health of his own son, and received a lot of public support in dealing with some real crises in his family.
00:09:49
Speaker 3: Someone who's been through some stuff.
00:09:51
Speaker 2: So I just was surprised that he would joke about that, given all he's lived through in his life.
00:09:57
Speaker 3: It actually surprised me.
00:09:59
Speaker 2: Maybe we don't really know him, and I don't know what was going through his head and what was in his heart when he decided this was a good joke to tell.
00:10:07
Speaker 1: Again, I don't think he wishes it and wishes ill on anybody, but it just seemed like a bad choice choice. Brilliant comedion and greatest guy in the world can still make a bad decision.
00:10:18
Speaker 3: And should he be fired for that?
00:10:20
Speaker 1: Robes I'd given as a collection of things. Now, and you're gonna keep him on the air for another year, would you say his contract.
00:10:29
Speaker 2: His contract is up May of twenty twenty seven, because if you don't. In fact, I had to refresh my memory after all of this back and forth in September where he was taken off the air after the joke he made after Charlie Kirk's assassination, when he was reinstated pretty shortly thereafter, they offered to extend his contract. It had been up in May of twenty twenty six, so that would have been literally in a matter of weeks. Back in December, they officially re upped him for another year, So he is his contract expires in May of twenty five, twenty seven, so a year from now.
00:11:03
Speaker 1: We said, robes we couldn't come up with and didn't really care to hear their logic their reasoning or their excuse they might have for making that joke. But stay here, folks, there is a line of defense that some are using to defend Jimmy Kimmel and that joke.
00:11:24
Speaker 4: Stay here.
00:11:34
Speaker 1: We continue here on Amy and TJ, computers in front of us, constantly hitting refresh, waiting to see if ABC puts out a statement of some kind and response to what the first lady has now said and that she wants them to take a stand. Is how she put it against the quote coward Kimmel who was hiding behind the network after he made a joke and robe. Some people always, I mean the White House says it often, don't they folks can't take a joke. They say it about other when the President insults. Somebody says, hey, how many times we heard that people need lighten up? Can't take a joke?
00:12:09
Speaker 2: Yes, And there is a lot of back and forth now, whether you are a Trump supporter or not, a lot of folks weighing in now because this joke. I had not been aware of it. I don't know when we woke up this morning. Kimmel was not trending on X. This was Malania Trump. She took a stand she put it out on X and she is demanding that ABC actually deal now or acknowledge or have some sort of repercussions for Jimmy Kimmel and the joke he made on Friday. And now it is everything. Everyone is talking about it.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: And again, yes, she absolutely elevated. Again, as we are recording this, she only put the statement out about an hour on X and it's already been viewed some million and a half times. So this is and it will continue to bubble and boil. And now I think to your point, Robes, they have to even if they don't do something, they got to say something about this because the only option is what to go on tonight and not even mention this. Of course not He's going to go on tonight and do what he always does if they let him, which is criticize this president pretty harshly. Can he do that tonight without addressing this?
00:13:10
Speaker 2: Oh, he absolutely has to address them, Okay, if they let him get to the stage. And I think that is still a big if because look at this point we were discussing Disney has had one problem after another. When you think about the Kimmel issue in the fall was huge. This was very difficult for them to navigate through and around in between and all of that. Then you had the Frankie Taylor Paul saga with The Bachelorette, where they literally had to pull their biggest franchise that they were trying to reboot and reinvigorate and spend all this money in time on just pull it off the air because of decisions made on allowing her to be the Bachelorette given what they already knew about her reputation and her criminal history.
00:13:52
Speaker 1: Well, these are the biggest your late night show. He is the biggest star at ABC. Yes, let's be clear there. I know, oh you got your morning people, your news people, and your entertainment people, but he is the guy that can bounce around on all of them and serve as the celebrity face of your network. Correct, Jimmy Kimble.
00:14:10
Speaker 2: Now they've already you know, gotten through that re upped him for a year, and now they have to decide they can't suspend him again. This is either going to be they are going to fire him or they are going to stand by him.
00:14:23
Speaker 1: That is the statement. Shit, Sabine, I mean, Sabina Ropes roades. I don't think there is another scenario. You cannot suspend him again. Been there, done that, and what happened.
00:14:35
Speaker 3: You cannot.
00:14:35
Speaker 2: Either they are going to choose to fire him, or they are going to stand by him and say this is freedom of speech. He has every right to criticize the sitting president. That is part of what he does each and every night. And we allow him to make his calls what is right or wrong and you can decide, and you can you can weigh in on how you feel by choosing to watch or not.
00:14:55
Speaker 1: You can go after his policies robes. That's not a problem. But we have been talking about rhetoric in this country for a while now. I don't know how that joke got cleared by s and frickin p This is a not just a Kimmel, this is a is this not a network an entertainment unit problem?
00:15:15
Speaker 4: Roopes.
00:15:16
Speaker 1: They go over those jokes and they flag them standards.
00:15:21
Speaker 3: And practices, flag that they know he was going to say this.
00:15:25
Speaker 4: They did. That's I would put money on.
00:15:28
Speaker 2: And would this have gone unnoticed or unchallenged had what happened at the White House correspondence.
00:15:35
Speaker 3: In or not happened.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering, I'm actually thinking about this as Jimmy Kimmel saw the events unfold. The events unfold on Saturday night Sunday morning, was he thinking, oh shit, I'm in trouble.
00:15:47
Speaker 1: I don't know okay, but yet that scenario just laid out. It has to happen. They are going to come out and fully defend and explain something and why it's okay, or they are going to have to pull him off for good. What an enormous other headache now for them rogues. And on this one, I didn't think he should be fired last time. If they told me they were pulling him in, definitely I would. I don't want, I don't root for anybody to be fired, but damn if they did on this one, I would id. It's hard to not understand why it's.
00:16:20
Speaker 2: Worth remembering why he got suspended for what he said. I the over Charlie Kirk because to me, and I hate to even compare, but to me, what he said surrounding the Charlie Kirk assassination wasn't that bad. I was kind of surprised it got as much attention as it did versus what he said about Melania Trump. To me, that's horrific, so to me, these two jokes are actually this one is, in my humble opinion, significantly more offensive and concerning than the first one about Charlie Kirk.
00:16:55
Speaker 3: What he said initially that got him suspended was he.
00:16:58
Speaker 2: Said, and this was in the day after Charlie Kirk's assassination. We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
00:17:14
Speaker 3: In between the finger pointing, the White.
00:17:15
Speaker 2: House flew the flag at half staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the President was taking this. They then showed the President being questioned about how he was doing in the wake of Kirk's assassination, and the President said, I think very good, and then changed the subject to renovations about the ballroom. And that's when Jimmy Kimmel said, he's at the fourth stage of grief construction. Okay, so he joked about the President's grief, and he joked about the fact that MAGA was mostly concerned about making sure they got political points.
00:17:50
Speaker 3: From the assassination.
00:17:52
Speaker 2: Okay, that to me, pales in comparison to the joke he made on Friday.
00:17:57
Speaker 1: I get it, and I understand why he got in trouble. That should have been the scrutiny. Fine, fine and dandy. But roads the defense that some are bringing for Kimmel now is don't y'all remember what President Trump said about Robert Muller and saying, aha, well that was worse, So big deal.
00:18:19
Speaker 4: I don't buy that.
00:18:20
Speaker 1: But if folks will remember, Robert Muller was within the past month, was it not, former FBI director passed away the President's comments about it. I'm glad he's dead. Okay, So that's that's that's the comparison that's people are now doing that We don't take on and examine what one person said. We're now measuring it against something else, Well, that was worse, therefore this is okay.
00:18:43
Speaker 3: Well that's I'm that's deeply concerning.
00:18:45
Speaker 2: If basically we can justify really horrible comments by saying it wasn't as bad as yours. Yep, that doesn't to me feel like a defense. That sounds like a deflection.
00:18:58
Speaker 1: Well, folks, we wanted to hop get on the record on this one because this is going to be a story for certainly the day, and who knows how many days ahead, and Robes you just said, and I think it's the best way for the scenario to be explained. They're going to have to stand by him or they're going to have to fire him, and that's going to have to happen today.
00:19:18
Speaker 4: And if we.
00:19:19
Speaker 1: Were wondering at all how this was going to go, Robes, what's bubbling up the trending charts right now hashtag boycott ABC.
00:19:29
Speaker 2: And we know where that usually leads. We will stay on top of this story. As always. We appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Roboch alongside TJ.
00:19:37
Speaker 3: Holmes. We will talk to you soon