The Media Research Center continued to take Jimmy Kimmel’s joke about Melania Trump out of context, and that lack of context surfaced again in an April 28 post by Mark Finkelstein:
On Tuesday’s Morning Joe , the panel rode to the defense of Jimmy Kimmel, embracing his claim that his “expectant widow” line about Melania Trump was merely an age-gap “joke”— then turning on Donald Trump and the First Lady for objecting.
[…]Kimmel insisted the remark was harmless:
“It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am… It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination.”
Morning Joe bought that framing wholesale. Co-host Willie Geist dismissed the backlash as “so much bad faith,” suggesting critics were simply trying to get Kimmel fired.
Host Joe Scarborough sneered at the reaction as “such crocodile tears.” He said “crocodile tears” three times.
Finkelstein refused to admit that Kimmel told his joke before the White House Correspondents Dinner tookplace, so it could not possibly have been about what happened there. Instead, he ranted:
Mika Brzezinski tried to normalize Kimmel’s crack by noting there have been jokes over the years about Joe Biden’s age. That comparison doesn’t hold. Age jokes are one thing; calling Melania an “expectant widow” is another category entirely.
Back in 2017, did anyone tell Mika to stop the “crocodile tears” and just accept Trump talking about her “bleeding facelift” as a moment for freedom of speech?
The double standard is glaring. If a conservative comedian had called Dr. Jill an “expectant widow,” Morning Joe and the liberal media at large would have been up in arms.
Curtis Houck did much the same a couple hours later:
Monday’s Inside Politics featured CNN host and congressional Republican stalker Manu Raju offering a despicable minimization of political violence on the left with a horrendously misleading graphic painting both sides as equally victimized and a guest accusing anyone who says the left has a problem of “cherry pick[ing]” while Trump has encouraged and “glorified violence.” And, when it came to ABC host Jimmy Kimmel’s vile smear last week wishing death on President Trump, another panelist defended Kimmel by arguing the First Lady and President didn’t immediately speak out.
[…]They went to break by defending Kimmel with Raju dubbing the former’s “expectant widow” remark toward the First Lady as simply a “crack….when he was speaking, pretending like he was giving a speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner.”
Houck offered no evidence that Kimmel was “wishing death on President Trump” given, again, that the remark was made before the WHCD.
Houck continued to fail to understand the context of Kimmel’s remark in another post later that day:
On Tuesday, ABC’s Good Morning America ignored its own network’s controversy with far-left late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s boast last Thursday that President Trump would die while CBS Mornings not only defended Kimmel as “not some crazy person who would wish” death on someone, but lied about why Kimmel was suspended in September after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. As for NBC’s Today , they were more muted while still carrying Kimmel’s water.
Sure, ABC is now facing some FCC license renewal scrutiny at its owned and operated affiliates, but if they truly believe Kimmel saying the First Lady looks like “an expectant widow” isn’t that big of a deal, why hide?
Over on CBS, co-host Gayle King lamented “the President and the First Lady are now demanding that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel be fired over remarks he made before the White House Correspondents Dinner.”
King also stood up for her fellow elite liberal at the end of chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes’s spin-filled report: “Jimmy Kimmel is not some crazy person that would wish the President to be killed. That’s — he just would not do that.”
The great Bonchie of RedState pointed out that, back on December 1, 2014, King sang a very different tune when the Elizabeth Lauten odyssey took place, telling viewers that Lauten’s comments about the Obama daughters drew a “backlash and an apology that some people say is too little, too late[.]”
We suspect that “the great Bonchie” didn’t point out that the Obama daughters were teenagers at the time, while Melania Trump is a grown woman — nor did he bring up the full context of Kimmel’s remark. Meanwhile, Houck continued to deny that context, even as he got mad that others noted it:
Senior White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez relayed Kimmel was “standing by” his “expectant widow” insult, “calling it nothing more than a days-old light roast about the President’s age while also pushing the White House to tone down its own rhetoric.”
Interspersed between clips of Kimmel from both Thursday and then Monday (when he said it was just “a very light joke” and not “by an stretch of the definition” a “call to assassination”), Gutierrez said the late-night host was “facing a new backlash after a controversial joke last week.”
“Kimmel now saying it was nothing more than a joke about the Trump’s age difference,” he added.
Houck didn’t dispute the accuracy of Kimmel’s response. Christy returned to comedy-cop mode in an April 29 post:
On Tuesday, President Trump joked about his old age during an event with King Charles, which greatly upset ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel because, according to him, that is the same he did on Thursday that led the Trumps to call for his firing on Monday. Of course, they were not the same because Trump didn’t suggest Melania is looking forward to his death.
Kimmel began by introducing a clip of Trump, “Trump was very excited about hosting the king, and a lot of it is because Trump’s mom was a great fan of the royal family.”
In the video, Trump was shown declaring, “My wonderful mother, Mary MacLeod… She came to America at 19, met my incredible father. We loved him so much. We all loved him. We loved her. We loved him. Fred and—they were married for 63 years, and excuse me, if you don’t mind. That’s a record we won’t be able to match, darling. I’m sorry. Just not going to work out that way.”
Afterwards, Kimmel reacted, “Wait a minute. Did he just make a joke about his death? My god. He should be fired for that.”
Raising his voice quite a bit, Kimmel continued, “Only Donald Trump would demand I be fired for making a joke about his old age, and then a day later, go out and make a joke about his own old age.”
The two jokes were not the same. Trump’s joke could be summarized as “I’m old.” For Donald and Melania to reach 63 years of marriage, he would have to get to his 121st birthday in 2068. By contrast, Kimmel’s “expectant widow” remark could be summarized as “Melania hates her husband and is looking forward to his death.”
Christy did not disprove that sentiment — but at least he appeared to agree that it was not the death threat his co-workers falsely insist it was.