{"id":209135,"date":"2026-04-29T00:22:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T00:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/white-house-ramps-up-pressure-on-abc-to-fire-jimmy-kimmel-over-first-lady-remark-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T00:22:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T00:22:42","slug":"white-house-ramps-up-pressure-on-abc-to-fire-jimmy-kimmel-over-first-lady-remark-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/white-house-ramps-up-pressure-on-abc-to-fire-jimmy-kimmel-over-first-lady-remark-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"White House ramps up pressure on ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel over first lady remark – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The White House on Tuesday intensified pressure on ABC to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a comment he made about first lady Melania Trump last week, with a top aide saying the comedian “should be shunned for the rest of his life.”
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In a post on X<\/a>, White House communications director Steven Cheung used an expletive to describe Kimmel and blasted him for making a “disgusting joke” and “doubling down on that joke instead of doing the decent thing by apologizing.”
“ABC needs to fire him immediately,” Cheung said in part, echoing a demand made by President Donald Trump.
The president and the first lady have sharply criticized <\/a>Kimmel for referring to her as an “expectant widow” on last Thursday’s episode. Two days later, a gunman opened fire<\/a> outside the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington.
The Trumps and top administration officials were rushed out of the Washington Hilton ballroom. The suspect faces three charges<\/a>, including attempting to assassinate the president of the United States.
Kimmel addressed the backlash<\/a> at the top of his show Monday, framing his “widow” comment as a joke about the 23-year age difference between the Trumps.
“It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he\u2019s almost 80 and she\u2019s younger than I am. It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination,” Kimmel said, adding that he believes the country should reject “hateful and violent rhetoric.”
Kimmel’s latest monologue had topped more than 2.2 million views<\/a> on the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” YouTube channel as of Tuesday morning.
ABC and its corporate parent, The Walt Disney Co., have remained publicly silent on the war of words between the White House and Kimmel. The broadcast network and media giant did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The criticism <\/strong>of Kimmel comes seven months after ABC briefly suspended<\/a> his talk show amid a firestorm over his comments about the political motivations of the man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah.
In the midst of that controversy, Nexstar and Sinclair \u2014 two leading owners of local broadcast stations \u2014 took Kimmel’s show off the air. The boycott lasted nine days<\/a>. (Together, Nexstar and Sinclair own 70 ABC affiliates across the U.S.)
Nexstar and Sinclair did not immediately respond to NBC News’ questions about whether they planned to again pre-empt Kimmel’s show.
Kimmel’s comments about the suspect in Kirk’s killing also drew scrutiny from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, the broadcast industry’s top federal regulator. Carr accused Kimmel of “the sickest conduct imaginable.”
The FCC is expected to issue an order Tuesday directing Disney\u2019s eight owned-and-operated television stations to file their broadcast license renewals ahead of schedule, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
The source described the move as \u201cunprecedented\u201d and said it was tied to a year-long investigation into Disney\u2019s DEI practices, although the uproar over Kimmel\u2019s comments accelerated the process.
Daniel Arkin is a senior reporter at NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeThe White House on Tuesday intensified pressure on ABC to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a comment he made about first lady Melania Trump last week, with a top aide saying the comedian “should be shunned for the rest of his life.”Subscribe to read this story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":209136,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-209135","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}