President Trump Demands ABC Fire Jimmy Kimmel. No, This Is Not From Last September.
It's a whole new thing.
Having survived an apparent assassination attempt on Saturday at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Donald and Melania Trump snapped into action to calm a rattled America: They decided now would be a perfect time to revive their feud with Jimmy Kimmel for some reason.
Some traumatic experiences leave people more sensitive, more attuned to the preciousness of life, the speed with which it can be extinguished, and the need to live every day fully and with love. The Trumps reacted by going after a late-night comedian for a couple of anodyne jokes, despite their belief that he has “Terrible Ratings.” By that logic, no one was even watching when Kimmel made those jokes.
Melania kicked things off on Monday by releasing a statement condemning a recent Kimmel monologue for not being funny, adding that Kimmel’s words “are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.”
A Trump complaining about speech corrosive to civic discourse is a bit like Vladimir Putin complaining that Ukrainians are too mean to him and should be taken about as seriously.
The first lady was referring to this bit from Thursday’s edition of Kimmel’s show. In his opening monologue, Kimmel noted that normally the WHCD hires a comedian to roast political figures, including the president. But since Trump is, in Kimmel’s words, “a delicate snowflake with the thinnest fat skin of any human being ever,” this year the dinner had hired a mentalist to do cool stuff like guessing the name of Karoline Leavitt’s unborn child. (Karey? Kaden? Kasanova? Who cares.)
So Kimmel decided he would do the roast instead. He then spent a solid 10 minutes skewering the assembled luminaries, intercut with video of them from other events, to give the illusion that they were reacting. At one point, he showed a shot of Melania and said,
“Look at that. So beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have the glow of an expectant widow [...] Melania’s birthday is on Sunday. She’s planning to celebrate at home the way she always does: looking out a window and whispering, ‘What have I done.’”
It is the greatest offense since a WHCD “comedian” remarked on Sarah Huckabee’s eye liner. You see, because her husband is old and getting frailer before our eyes, and also how can she stand to be married to him, this is a question that haunts America. Frankly, Melania got off easy. We just assume she’s as much of a bastard as he is, but here’s Kimmel saying she’s a naif who chose a husband poorly like many other women have done. He’s giving her the benefit of the doubt that she has in no way earned!
Not to be outdone, the president jumped in a little later with his own statement:
Clearly Kimmel was not joking about the assassination attempt, as it hadn’t happened yet. But Trump still tried to imply that Kimmel’s jokes had inspired the would-be assassin.
From there, it was a whole-of-government approach to yelling at Jimmy Kimmel. Karoline Leavitt slammed him as “deranged” in her Monday press briefing. Lara Trump went on Laura Ingraham’s show to complain that comedy is no longer funny and she finds nothing entertaining. Which sounds to us like a Lara problem, not a culture problem. Leave Jimmy Kimmel out of your midlife doldrums, Lara!
Why would the Trumps bother with this? Let us journey back a long, long eight months ago, and the last time the Trump administration and the feral weasels of MAGA went after Kimmel. In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder last fall, Kimmel made some remarks tangentially related to the tragedy to which the wingnuts took offense. This is not so unusual, as they take offense to everything anyone to the left of Glenn Beck says about any subject, at any time, ever.
Sir, do you want salt on your popcorn?
I SUPPOSE YOU WOKE HOLLYWOOD COMMUNISTS AT THIS AMC-16 WOULD LOVE TO KILL ALL US CONSERVATIVES WITH HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE.
Anyway, there was a big stink. Kimmel was roundly condemned everywhere across right-wing media. Brendan Carr, chairman of the FCC, threatened to pull ABC’s broadcast license. The fact that ABC doesn’t have a single broadcast license that Carr could yank — those belong to its hundreds of individual affiliates — wasn’t going to slow him down.
So ABC and parent company Disney, which had a pending merger it was worried the federal government might tank, pulled Kimmel off the air.
We all remember what happened next. Americans were infuriated at this obvious government censorship and rallied around Kimmel. Disney’s streaming services saw over a million cancellations. Big-name Hollywood stars announced they would not work with the studio again. The studio had to completely retreat and put Kimmel back on the air before Mickey Mouse was spotted wandering up and down Burbank Boulevard begging motorists at red lights for spare change.
In other words, the whole contretemps was a gigantic defeat for the Trump administration and its usual tactic of trying to bully other people. They got punched in the mouth and backed down, as bullies often do.
But for some reason, the Trumps think … what? That ABC will be so sympathetic to their alleged trauma that they will yank Kimmel off the air again, for good this time? What about the president’s 30 percent approval rating makes them think the public will sit quietly by this time? Let’s ask Jimmy Kimmel to respond to the response.
CNN’s giant forehead Brian Stelter thinks the situation is “a big challenge” for Disney’s new CEO. We can promise Stelter, it very much is not.
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I really do miss Biden and the lack of drama and chaos his administration had. Quiet competency is so nice.
It’s touching to see Melenia take up such a passionate defense of her husband. She must really love him a lot.