00:00Late night host Jimmy Kimmel facing backlash along these lines following some insensitive comments he made about the first lady.
00:08Our first lady Melania is here. Look at Melania. So beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant
00:14widow.
00:16The first lady responding to this joke writing on X quote Kimmel's hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide
00:22our country.
00:23His monologue about my family isn't comedy. His words are corrosive and deepen the political sickness within America.
00:30It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC's leadership enable Kimmel's atrocious behavior at
00:37the expense of our community?
00:39Well, last night, Jimmy Kimmel acknowledged the criticism and responded like this.
00:45It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am.
00:49It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination. And they know that.
00:56I've been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular.
01:00I am sorry that you and the president and everyone in that room on Saturday went through that.
01:05I really am. Just because no one got killed doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic and scary.
01:09And we should come together and be best. We really should.
01:13Joining us now to react, senior writer for The Washington Examiner and Fox News contributor Joe Concha.
01:17Joe, good morning to you. Man, a lot of reaction to this expectant widow comment from Jimmy Kimmel, including David
01:24Axelrod, former senior advisor to President Obama, of course, who posted on X.
01:29I like Jimmy Kimmel. He's funny and courageous at a time when there has been too much cowardice.
01:34That said, this was a tasteless joke.
01:37The White House will use any issue to demand he'd be fired because his satire touches a nerve and ABC
01:43is right to resist.
01:44But he'd be right to apologize. We heard from him last night.
01:48He did not do that. Instead, said that it was a joke about their age difference.
01:53So what do you make of this latest controversy involving Jimmy Kimmel?
01:58Well, of course, Jimmy Kimmel doubled down, Carly.
02:01I mean, he is incapable of apologizing for his open wish that Donald Trump be assassinated.
02:07I mean, let's think about what he said again, which was probably courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel's wife, by the way,
02:12who serves as the lead writer of this distant third place late night comedy program.
02:17Quote, look at Melania. So beautiful, Mrs. Trump. You have the glow like an expectant widow.
02:24What else could any reasonable, sane and sober person possibly conclude except that being a call for Trump,
02:31who works as hard as anybody on the planet, appears to be in excellent health, to be suddenly dead?
02:36Jimmy Kimmel is not a comedian. You know what he is? He's Hassan Piker with an ABC logo.
02:42And ABC, which might as well be called MS ABC at this point, just gave him a contract extension
02:48because that is what management wants this network to be, the tip of the spear in the radical Trump resistance.
02:55Congrats, guys. You just earned that distinction.
02:57And by the way, this is the former home of great journalists like David Brinkley and Ted Koppel.
03:02This is now the home, let's make that very clear, of Jimmy Kimmel.
03:06He's the face of that network, the guy who cried on the air the night after Trump won back the
03:11White House.
03:11This is not a comedian. This is a radical activist.
03:14And the fact that he openly wished for the president to be dead and then tried to explain it away
03:19as,
03:19oh, no, actually, it's just about the age difference.
03:21I mean, come on. Give me a break. What a joke.
03:24Except this guy rarely tells jokes on his show at this point.
03:28It's all about taking down Trump in one way or the other, Todd.
03:31But, Joe, it's not just Kimmel.
03:32You had the second highest ranking Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, just yesterday saying,
03:38I don't give a damn when asked about how inflammatory rhetoric and his own inflammatory rhetoric impacts Republicans and violence
03:48against Republicans.
03:49So I just can't get past this.
03:51Why the left cannot figure out this cause and effect relationship between their words and the normalization of violence.
03:59And we have this discussion after every one of these incidents and nothing changes.
04:03And it doesn't look like anything's changing this time, Joe.
04:07Yeah, I think what you're referencing, Todd, is that the political leader of the Democratic Party, Hakeem Jeffries,
04:13said when asked about, hey, you keep saying we need to use maximum warfare.
04:18That's the quote against Donald Trump.
04:21Shouldn't you dial that back?
04:22And Hakeem Jeffries, just like Jimmy Kimmel, dialed down and said, no, we should use maximum warfare against Trump.
04:28When you have a Dan Goldman of New York say that Donald Trump needs to be eliminated.
04:32When you had Joe Biden, five days before Donald Trump was first almost assassinated in Butler, Pennsylvania,
04:38said it's time to put Donald Trump in a bullseye.
04:41Or when Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project once said that we need to put a bullet in Donald Trump.
04:46I could go on and on with all of the calls for violence against Trump,
04:50but it has real consequences because not once, not twice, but now three times Donald Trump was nearly assassinated.
04:58And tell me which other world leader, any world leader, has had that many assassinations attempt against them.
05:05Not one.
05:06In this country, a superpower which should have the greatest security in the world.
05:10And when you talk like this, there's enough maniacs out there that will see it as a call to violence
05:15to take this man out.
05:17And it's going to keep happening, Todd.
05:18I hate to say, like, this was the last time.
05:20It probably isn't because they're not going to stop talking like this, guys.
05:24No, it's so true.
05:26And this round of controversy comes seven months after ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel for the joke that he made about
05:33the man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk.
05:35Then he came back and made this emotional apology.
05:38So rinse and repeat, unfortunately.
05:40And it's happening on both sides.
05:42Both sides say, you know, we should make these calls to come together and slow down the rhetoric, but it's
05:49not happening.
05:50Joe, thank you so much for joining us.
05:52Be sure to like and subscribe for all the Fox News latest on YouTube and catch full shows streaming now
05:58on Fox One.
Comments