President Trump and first lady Melania Trump demanded in separate social media posts on Monday that ABC pull comedian Jimmy Kimmel from its airwaves over a bit involving the White House correspondents\u2019 dinner, delivered two days before it occurred.<\/p>\n
Mr. Kimmel, who has a long history of sparring with the president, had imagined himself as the M.C. at the dinner. \u201cOf course, our first lady, Melania, is here,\u201d he said on Thursday night. Then, pretending to address her, he called her \u201cso beautiful\u201d and added: \u201cMrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.\u201d He made cracks about Mr. Trump\u2019s age and health.<\/p>\n
This was before a gunman broke past a security perimeter in the Washington Hilton while the president and first lady were inside on Saturday.<\/p>\n
In his social media post Monday afternoon, Mr. Trump described the comedian\u2019s joke as \u201creally shocking\u201d and \u201csomething far beyond the pale.\u201d He ended his post: \u201cJimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first lady had posted about Mr. Kimmel a few hours earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis monologue about my family isn\u2019t comedy,\u201d she wrote. \u201cHis words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.\u201d She called Mr. Kimmel \u201ca coward\u201d who \u201cshouldn\u2019t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.\u201d She said he \u201chides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEnough is enough,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIt is time for ABC to take a stand.\u201d<\/p>\n
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, cited Mr. Kimmel\u2019s bit at her briefing Monday afternoon, too. \u201cThis kind of rhetoric about the president, the first lady, and his supporters is completely deranged,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable that the American people are consuming it night after night after night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Representatives for Mr. Kimmel and for ABC did not return requests for comment.<\/p>\n
The outcry from the White House on Monday was the latest instance of a president who has himself made inflammatory remarks about matters of life and death defining what sort of speech he deems acceptable in America. He recently gloated over the death of Robert S. Mueller III \u2014 \u201cGood, I\u2019m glad he\u2019s dead!\u201d \u2014 and seized on the murder of Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife, at the hands of their own son, to suggest that \u201cTrump derangement syndrome\u201d may have been responsible.<\/p>\n
The controversy over a joke told about a dinner meant to honor the first amendment is sure to revive a fight over censorship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kimmel that erupted last fall. In September, ABC pulled Mr. Kimmel\u2019s late night show from the air temporarily after a conservative uproar over the way he described the politics of the man accused of shooting the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n
The network did not initially explain its decision, but it came after political pressure by the Trump administration. At the time, Mr. Trump called the decision \u201cGreat News for America\u201d and later said networks whose hosts are critical of him should lose their right to broadcast.<\/p>\n
Mr. Kimmel was back on the air before long, and has since taken up his role as Trump family b\u00eate noire with gusto.<\/p>\n
In his appearance on Thursday, Mr. Kimmel also did an impression that imagined Jeffrey Epstein introducing Melania Trump to her future husband. That line in particular was likely to incense the first lady; earlier this month, she shocked the White House by calling a surprise press appearance to hit back at rumors that Epstein, the dead financier, had been the one to introduce her to Mr. Trump. The president later said his wife found it \u201cvery insulting\u201d that such a story was being spread.<\/p>\n
But it was Mr. Kimmel\u2019s \u201cwidow\u201d reference that the president and his press secretary cited on Monday.<\/p>\n
In the wake of Saturday\u2019s shooting, Mr. Trump said the whole ordeal at the Washington Hilton had been \u201ca rather traumatic experience\u201d for his wife. She dove under a table, and looked stricken as she stood in the White House press briefing room alongside top members of the government during the president\u2019s late-night press conference.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the president appeared on 60 Minutes and talked about what it was like when he and his wife \u201cdropped to the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, my thought was, \u2018You know, I\u2019ve been through this before a couple of times,\u2019 and she has not, to this extent,\u201d he said. \u201cShe got it. She knew what was happening. She listened.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump and first lady Melania Trump demanded in separate social media posts on Monday that ABC pull…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13041,13039,6238,13040,8,13043,13045,13042,13044,9,1529,7,1071,11259],"class_list":{"0":"post-21469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-abc-inc","9":"tag-comedy-and-humor","10":"tag-donald-j","11":"tag-first-ladies-us","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-jimmy","14":"tag-jimmy-kimmel-live-tv-program","15":"tag-kimmel","16":"tag-melania","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-television","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-trump","21":"tag-united-states-politics-and-government"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116478636332818753","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}