Melania Trump is escalating pressure on late-night television after Jimmy Kimmel’s joke about the first lady landed just hours before a gunman opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
The timing couldn’t have been worse for the comedian, who’s already facing heat from the Trump administration over his comedy.
On Thursday, Kimmel performed a mock WHCD monologue on his late-night show, cracking jokes he said he would’ve told if asked to host the actual event.
One bit called Melania “an expectant widow,” a reference that hit different after Sunday’s assassination attempt on the president at the hotel hosting the dinner.
Cole Tomas Allen, 31, was arrested for opening fire, and investigators believe he was targeting members of Trump’s administration.
Melania didn’t hold back in her response. She posted on X Monday morning, demanding ABC cancel the show entirely.
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.
— First Lady Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) April 27, 2026
People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to…
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country,” she wrote. “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. A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand.”
This isn’t Kimmel’s first run-in with the Trump family’s legal threats.
ABC already suspended his show last September after FCC chairman Brendan Carr pressured the network over a joke Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk’s assassination attempt.
When he returned to the air, Kimmel admitted the joke had been “ill-timed or unclear or maybe both” and said he understood why people were upset.
But apparently, that wasn’t enough to keep him out of the crosshairs.
The security breach at the WHCD marked the third time Trump’s perimeter has been breached by someone with a gun during his second term.
Thomas Matthew Crooks fired on Trump at a Pennsylvania rally in July 2024, grazing his ear. Ryan Wesley Routh was caught with a rifle at a golf course in September 2024.
There have also been two foiled assassination plots allegedly connected to Iran, according to reporting on the incident.