Washington, April 29.- The late-night host Jimmy Kimmel defended the right of Americans to freedom of expression amid a heated controversy here about the First Amendment commandments.
"You know, sometimes you wake up in the morning and the First Lady publishes a statement demanding that you be fired from your job? This has happened to all of us, right?" he asked at the beginning of his monologue this Monday on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", an ABC space that has been on air for more than 20 years.
Two days before the White House Correspondents Association dinner, the popular host made a joke that sat poorly with President Donald Trump and his wife Melania, who publicly demanded Kimmel's firing.
He said the First Lady looked like an "expectant widow" and, coincidentally, on Saturday an armed man opened fire outside the ballroom of the Washington Hilton hotel, where the correspondents dinner was being held, which was attended by Trump, Melania and several members of his cabinet.
This Monday afternoon, the charges against Cole Allen, 31, a California resident, the author of the shooting, were made official: possession of weapons; attacking a law enforcement officer and attempting to assassinate the president.
The president and his allies recontextualized the joke as a call to violence by Kimmel, but "it was in no way a call for murder," he declared in yesterday's monologue.
"And they know that. I have been speaking out against gun violence in particular for many years," he insisted: "I agree that we must reject rhetoric of hate and violence."
"I must also point out that Donald Trump has the right to say whatever he wants, just like you, just like me, and just like all of us, because, according to the First Amendment, Americans have the right to freedom of expression," Kimmel added.
The Committee for the First Amendment, led by actress and activist Jane Fonda, came to his defense, stating in a press release that the demands coming from the White House to remove Kimmel from the ABC network "follow the same old, trampled and authoritarian manual as always."
The text emphasized that they always use "the weight of the government to pressure the media to silence the speech they dislike and undermine First Amendment protections."
In September 2025, in the context of a strong pressure campaign by the Trump administration against Kimmel, ABC, in an unprecedented decision, suspended his program "indefinitely" after the controversy over on-air comments about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
However, the television space resumed less than a week later.
In his monologue last night and about this new controversy, Kimmel stated that his "was a very light joke" about the fact that Trump "is almost 80 years old and she (Melania) is younger than me (she is 56)."
