Topline
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel on Monday night pushed back against criticism of a joke he made last week, where he said First Lady Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow,” saying it was a reference to her age difference with President Donald Trump and not a call for his assassination.
Key Facts
Kimmel began his monologue joking about waking up to the first lady issuing a statement “demanding you be fired from your job,” and described her reaction as a “Twitter vomit storm.”
The late-night host addressed the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, saying, “no one was hurt, thank goodness,” and a lot of people were “shaken up.”
Addressing the criticism, Kimmel said the “expectant widow” joke was “obviously…about their age difference” and “not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination.”
Kimmel said he agrees with the first lady’s comments about rejecting “hateful and violent rhetoric” and added that he thinks a great place to start dialing that back “would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.”
This is a developing story.
