Jimmy Kimmel Fires Back After Trump Demands His Termination, Calls the 'Expectant Widow' Joke 'Very Light'

Jimmy Kimmel responded Monday night after President Donald Trump and Melania Trump publicly demanded ABC fire him “immediately,” over his Jimmy Kimmel Live! monologue to defend last week’s satirical roast at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He also dismissed any suggestion that his jokes incited Saturday’s violence at the actual dinner.

"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?" said Jimmy as he started his monologue.

The calls for his firing followed Kimmel's mock version of the White House Correspondents' Dinner the previous week, where he humorously criticized Trump and his administration. The actual Correspondents' Dinner was cut short Saturday when a gunman opened fire near a security checkpoint outside the ballroom.

According to The Daily Beast, the late-night host called Melania Trump an "expectant widow" in a segment recorded before the White House Correspondents' Dinner

Reacting to the uproar his comment caused, the host said, as per Geo TV, "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. It was a pretend roast, I said, 'Our First Lady Melania's here, look at her, so beautiful, Mrs Trump you have a glow like an expectant widow'."

He added, "As you know, they had to cancel the [dinner] after a man with multiple guns and knives crashed the party and may have shot a Secret Service officer. No one was hurt, thank goodness. A lot of people were shaken up on a night that is supposed to be light-hearted.”

He stressed that his joke was light-hearted, saying, "It was a very light roast joke about the fact he's nearly 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."

Kimmel said he has been “very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence”, adding, "The first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend and concurred that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject.”

He suggested the first lady consider "a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it."

After the Trumps called for his termination, Kimmel addressed the matter during his Monday night monologue. He quipped, "Donald Trump is allowed to say what he wants to say, as am I, as are all of us, because under the First Amendment we have a right as Americans to free speech. But if you want us to believe that a joke I made … days before this dinner had any effect on anything that happened, well, maybe someone should look into this psychic lady, too."

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had earlier called Kimmel's remarks "deranged" and "unbelievable" during a Monday press briefing.