Jimmy Kimmel revisited the uproar over his “expectant widow” joke about Melania Trump Tuesday night, contrasting the outrage it generated on the right with the response from conservatives to Donald Trump Donald Trump suggesting Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego.
Trump made the remark Monday at a rally in Nebraska, while arguing that higher prices stemming from the war with Iran were a “small price to pay” to keep the country safe.
“They can take out a city,” Trump told the crowd. “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”
On Jimmy Kimmel Live! Tuesday, Kimmel called the comment “one of the craziest, most reckless and indefensible statements I have ever heard anyone make.”
“The president, openly musing about Iran, a country we are currently at war with, ‘taking out’ two American cities while his adoring fans cheer him on,” Kimmel said.
But it was the reaction from Trump’s defenders that had Kimmel reaching back to a controversy of his own.
“Do you remember how upset the red hat club was when I did a joke about Trump and Melania’s May-to-December romance?” he asked.
Kimmel was referring to his April 23 faux White House Correspondents’ Dinner roast in which he joked of the first lady, “Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”
The line became considerably more contentious days later, after an armed man breached security at the actual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, forcing Trump, members of his administration, and others to evacuate. Both the president and first lady criticized Kimmel in the aftermath, with Trump calling for ABC to fire him.
Kimmel subsequently defended the joke as an obvious reference to the couple’s age difference, forcefully rejecting claims that it had encouraged violence.
Tuesday night, he replayed some of the criticism he faced at the time, including commentators describing his rhetoric as “dark,” “deranged,” and potentially conducive to violence.
“If that joke, that rhetoric was deranged and dangerous and violent and dark,” Kimmel said Tuesday night, “surely you must be mortified by the president of the United States casually ruminating [on] the deaths of 13 million people.”
Cue another montage—this time of conservative commentators defending Trump’s remarks.
“The press have been clutching their pearls extra hard over a joke President Trump made,” one said. Another asked, “Why can’t the left take a joke?”
Kimmel had an answer.
“You know what? I’m going to report him to the FCC,” he said, drawing cheers and applause.
“The hypocrisy is so glaring, you can’t even turn your head towards it,” he added. “You’ll get blind.”
Kimmel’s FCC joke happened to land on the same day ABC and its parent company Disney were in federal court seeking to block the Federal Communications Commission’s unusual early review of licenses for eight ABC-owned stations. ABC on Tuesday argued that the Trump administration and FCC Chair Brendan Carr are using the agency’s regulatory authority to punish the network for editorial decisions the administration dislikes.
The accelerated license reviews were ordered in April, one day after Trump publicly demanded that ABC fire Kimmel over the “expectant widow” joke.
Watch Kimmel’s full Tuesday night monologue at the top of this post.
