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Jimmy Kimmel pushed back on the backlash against his “expectant widow” joke, declining to apologize for the joke itself and instead mocking the Trumps’ calls to cancel his show.

During his Monday night monologue, the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host took the stage in a pitch-black suit and told ABC viewers, “You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and the first lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job? We’ve all been there, right?”

Kimmel briefly explained the history of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and how there used to be a comedian hosting the annual event, but Trump has halted that tradition to avoid being mocked. Kimmel explained that on Thursday’s show, he told jokes as if he were hosting the event, and re-told his joke: “Of course, our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at her, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

“There was no big reaction to it until this morning, when I greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm and a call to fire me from our first lady,” Kimmel said. “Obviously, it was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together. 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. I’ve been very vocal for many years, speaking out against gun violence, in particular.”

“But I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house,” he continued. “And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do, and I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it. Donald Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants to say, as are you and as am I. Because under the First Amendment, we have, as Americans, a right to free speech.”

That said, Kimmel expressed regret for the traumatic experience that everybody in the WHCD ballroom went through. “I am sorry that [Melania] and the president and everyone in that room on Saturday went through that — that I really am,” he said. “Just because no one got killed doesn’t mean it wasn’t traumatic and scary, and we should come together. We really should. But if you want us to believe that a joke I made three days before this dinner had any effect on anything that happened, well then, maybe someone should look into this psychic lady too.”

Then Kimmel played a clip of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying before the event that “there will be some shots fired tonight.”

The comments follow both Melania Trump and Donald Trump calling on ABC to cancel his show in the wake of a shooting outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner ballroom.

In a twist of fate, the person performing on stage during the WHCD when the shooting broke out, mentalist Oz Pearlman, was scheduled to be a guest on Monday’s show. He was replaced by Pod Save America host Jon Lovett.

Earlier Monday, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Wow, Jimmy Kimmel, who is in no way funny as attested to by his terrible Television Ratings, made a statement on his Show that is really shocking,” wrote Trump. “I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but, this is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”

While Melania Trump, in a rare dip into the political discourse fray, wrote, “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. 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. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community.”

The move marks the second time in seven months that Kimmel has had to explain and apologize for a joke that became connected to a political assassination headline. The first was after Charlie Kirk’s murder in September, where a Kimmel joke led to ABC briefly suspending his show.

ABC made no comment on the matter.

Trump has feuded with Kimmel since 2016 and has called for the talk show’s cancellation several times. While Kimmel has long made mocking Trump a focal point of his monologues. Trump previously was credited — correctly or not — with pushing CBS to cancel another late-night critic of his administration, Stephen Colbert, whose The Late Show ends next month. After the Colbert decision, Trump posted on social media, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!”

The WHCD shooting marked the third time Trump’s security perimeter has been breached by a man with a gun who intended to cause the president harm during his second term. The first was in July 2024, during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on Trump with a rifle, grazing the president’s ear. The second was in September 2024, when Ryan Wesley Routh was spotted with a rifle at a golf tournament while Trump was playing.