Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel dared to repeat the “hateful” ill-timed joke he made about first lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow” in a bombed roast he delivered days before the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Kimmel, who narrowly dodged outright cancellation for making similarly distasteful jokes about Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September, took to the air with a vengeance in his Monday night show.
“This was like déjà vu for me today,” he said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Kimmel explained that his mock roast featured in last Thursday’s show was intended to mirror those comedians usually impart at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was nixed for this year’s celebration.
One joke during his bit took aim at the first lady.
“Our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,” Kimmel said.
He repeated the tasteless joke verbatim in his Monday night monologue following a failed assassination attempt on President Trump’s life — and after Melania called him out for “hateful and violent rhetoric.”
At the dinner Saturday, accused gunman Cole Allen stormed into the Washington Hilton with the alleged intent to kill as many members of the Trump administration as possible.
But Kimmel on Monday swore that his performance was “a pretend roast” far removed from the purported assassination attempt.
“There was no big reaction to it until this morning, when I faced yet another Twitter vomit storm and calls to fire me from our first lady,” Kimmel said.
He insisted that the joke was “about [Melania’s] age difference and the look of joy we see on her face” whenever she and Trump are together.
In a social media statement Monday morning, Melania fumed that “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,” she wrote on X.
Trump also demanded that ABC, which airs Kimmel’s show, immediately can the comedian.
“Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social, echoing a call made by the first lady.
Still, Kimmel made a half-hearted attempt to empathize with Melania for what he called one of her many “stressful weekends” and relented that he may now be “pro-ballroom,” referring to Trump’s ambitious White House renovation, going forward.
The president’s and first lady’s damning criticism wasn’t the only fallout Kimmel caught.
One of his scheduled guests, mentalist Oz Pearlman, canceled his appearance on Monday’s show following the shooting and the Trumps’ outrage.
Pearlman, who was set to perform magic tricks at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, had been standing between Trump and Melania at the event when gunfire erupted in the hallway.
Podcaster Jon Lovett took Pearlman’s slot on “Kimmel” and made repeated jabs at the absent mentalist.
“I’m sending a message to the mentalist right now … you cancelled you —” Lovett said. The last two words of his sentence were bleeped entirely.
Lovett, who hosts the lefty podcast “Pod Save America,” recognized the unique timing of his surprise appearance and had a pointed message for Trump.
“We already went through another episode of Donald Trump trying to cancel Jimmy Kimmel. Gas is up to $6 a gallon. Open the f–king Strait of Hormuz,” he said.
He also teasingly praised Kimmel for finding a way to help the Trumps “reconnect” during “a divided time.”
