Jimmy Kimmel’s Offensive Joke About Melania Trump Was ‘Viewed Internally as Reckless’ by ABC

ABC is getting ready to pull the plug on late-night lightning rod Jimmy Kimmel, sources say.

The Jimmy Kimmel Live! host’s callous joke about first lady Melania Trump having the glow of “an expectant widow,” per Daily Mail, fell with a thud just two days before the assassination attempt by an armed gunman on President Donald Trump, 79, at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, according to sources who say the crack left execs fuming at the network’s corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company.

Later on X, Melania, 56, called the 58-year-old comedian a “coward,” saying that “people like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.”

And now, sources say the fallout has only increased.

In an attempt to defend himself from the backlash, Jimmy repeated the joke on his show, per The New York Post, and said critics overreacted and it was simply a dig about the couple’s nearly 24-year age gap.

“The original joke was already viewed internally as reckless,” says one network insider. “Doubling down turned it into something potentially costly to the network.”

Both the president and the first lady have urged ABC to drop Jimmy, and insiders say execs are not necessarily turning a deaf ear to their demands.

Jimmy’s latest PR fiasco comes less than a year after his widely bashed remarks about the fatal September 2025 shooting of activist Charlie Kirk. Though Kimmel condemned Kirk’s murder, critics accused him of politicizing the tragedy.

Afterward, the network suspended Jimmy’s show for nearly a week, and an avalanche of affiliate TV stations refused to carry it after his return to the airwaves. And though the stations eventually relented, the blackout cost the network viewers, revenue and relationships — and higher-ups are not relishing similar backlash moving forward, sources say.

Jimmy is protected by the contract he signed last year, which runs through May 2027, Reuters reported, and is widely reported to be around $15 million, but sources say all bets are off after that.

“That was not a vote of long-term confidence,” says one source with knowledge of the negotiations. “If ABC believed Jimmy was still essential, they would have locked him up for years. Instead, they bought themselves time.”

A TV insider says, “The ratings are soft, the ad market is weak, affiliates were furious last year, and Jimmy keeps handing the network fresh ammunition.”

Another longtime insider shares, “He used to be a smart risk. Now he just feels like an expensive problem.”