Ben Shapiro said he would shed “zero tears” if Jimmy Kimmel gets fired for his “widow” joke about Melania Trump, which sparked another round of feuding between the ABC late-night host and President Donald Trump.

But Shapiro also said on his Tuesday podcast that canning Kimmel for the joke would be “like getting Al Capone for tax evasion.”

“You’re hitting him with the wrong charge,” Shapiro said.

He then did a quick recap of the joke that reignited the feud, from a skit Kimmel did last week where he parodied the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. While acting like the host of the event, Kimmel cracked: “Our First Lady Melania is here. Look at her, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

Two days later, the Trumps and several members of the president’s administration were rushed off the stage at the annual event when a shooter fired multiple shots in the venue’s lobby. It was the third known assassination attempt against President Trump since 2024.

Shapiro said Kimmel’s joke was “incredibly stupid.” At the same time, he said being “tasteless” was “not the reason he should’ve been fired long ago.”

“If you want to talk about the kinds of rhetoric that lead people to try to kill the president, the answer is not his joke about Melania, or making light of the idea of the president passing away, or something. That is not the thing that leads to violence,” Shapiro said.

He then shared why he believes Kimmel should’ve been axed by ABC way before his “widow” joke. Kimmel defended the joke on Monday night, saying it was clearly about the age difference between Melania and Donald Trump.

“The thing that leads to violence is pretty obvious — the actual conspiracism. The actual conspiracism. Jimmy Kimmel has spent years at this point calling the president a pedophile; he has imputed Epstein involvement to him,” argued Shapiro.

Shapiro said the latest assassination attempt made his point clear.

Cole Tomas Allen — the 31-year-old suspected shooter — appeared to be motivated by conspiracy theories about Trump and Jeffrey Epstein; he wrote in his manifesto that Trump was a “pedophile” and “rapist” who needed to be killed.

“It’s actually in the manifesto — I don’t have to speculate,” Shapiro said.

He then played several clips of Kimmel harping on Trump and Epstein. Those clips included Kimmel saying Trump was “protecting pedophiles,” that his “best friend was a pedophile,” and that he had not released the “unreleased Trump-Epstein files.” Kimmel also said that “if Trump wants to send a rapist somewhere, he can just jump on a bus himself.”

Shapiro said remarks like those created the “permission structure” for people to try to murder Trump.

Watch above.

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