"It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination, and they know that," the host said of saying Melania Trump had the glow of an "expectant widow"

Jimmy Kimmel responded to Donald and Melania Trump‘s demands to have him fired on the most recent episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live.

“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?” Kimmel quipped as he kicked off his monologue on Monday night. “We’ve all been there, right?”

Kimmel recounted how the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was cancelled on Saturday “after a man with multiple guns and knives crashed the party.” “No was hurt, thank goodness,” Kimmel noted. “A lot of people were shaken up on a night that is supposed to be light-hearted.”

Last week, Kimmel staged an “alternative” White House Correspondents’ Dinner on his show. He Kimmel performed a mock roast using “reactions” pulled from stock footage of the Trumps, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Vanilla Ice, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and more. In the clip, Kimmel joked that Melania had a glow like an “expectant widow.”

“This was Thursday,” Kimmel recounted. “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, Melania Trump, saying I should be fired because of a joke I made again five nights ago.”

In her post, Melania spoke out against Kimmel’s joke and demanded that ABC “take a stand.” “His words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America,” she wrote. “People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.”

“It was a pretend roast,” Kimmel responded. “Which obviously 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 added, “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. … I am sorry that you and the president and everyone in that room on Saturday went through that. I really am. Just because no one get got killed doesn’t mean it wasn’t traumatic and scary. We should come together and be best. We really should.”

Trump echoed Melania’s call for Kimmel to be held to account. “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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”

Last September, Kimmel’s show was taken off air by ABC and Nexstar after a threat from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, related to the comedian’s remarks about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Jimmy Kimmel Live returned a week later and the host addressed the president during his first monologue back. Last night he noted, “This is like déjà vu for me today.”