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Top Trump aide on Kimmel joke defense: ‘S— human being’

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by Dominick Mastrangelo - 04/28/26 10:57 AM ET

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by Dominick Mastrangelo - 04/28/26 10:57 AM ET

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A top White House aide is blasting late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel for a joke he made last week about first lady Melania Trump, comments that have sparked both she and President Trump to call for his firing.

“Jimmy Kimmel is a s— human being for: Making a disgusting joke about assassinating the President … Doubling down on that joke instead of doing the decent thing by apologizing,” White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote in a post on the social platform X. “ABC needs to fire him immediately and he should be shunned for the rest of his life.”

Cheung was responding to a clip in which Kimmel defended his joke about Melania Trump, who he said during a skit that aired last week had the “glow” of an “expectant widow.”

The comments were widely panned after an assassination attempt against President Trump at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner two nights later.

In a scathing social media post of her own, Melania Trump called for Kimmel to be fired, writing his monologue about her 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,” she added.

The president hours later called on Disney, ABC’s parent company, to fire Kimmel, writing in a Truth Social post that the late night host’s joke was “something far beyond the pale.”

Kimmel on Monday night addressed the criticism and defended himself, saying “it was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am.”

“It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination, and they know that,” the late night comedian said. “I’ve been very vocal for many years, speaking out against gun violence in particular.”

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