Comedian Jimmy Kimmel is under fire after an assassination attempt against President Donald Trump ignited debate over one of Kimmel’s recent jokes.
The drama ignited after Cole Tomas Allen was arrested for reportedly trying to charge through a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday. He has since been charged with the attempted assassination of the president, among other charges.
Frustration immediately began brewing around Kimmel, who had delivered a mock roast last Thursday night during “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in anticipation of Saturday’s dinner.
During it, the comedian said First Lady Melania Trump had a “glow like an expectant widow.”
While some interpreted the monologue as an inappropriate statement that could inspire political violence, Kimmel has since said the quip was about the Trumps’ “age difference.” Both the first lady and the president have since called for the comedian to be fired.
“It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination,” Kimmel responded on Monday. “And they know that. I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular.”
Not everyone is buying these claims, though. In fact, National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), a nonpartisan association of Christian communicators, filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting an investigation into ABC Television over Kimmel’s remarks.
Troy Miller, CEO and president of NRB, told CBN News why he and NRB found the comments to be, at the very least, beyond the pale.
“[Kimmel] makes this comment about [Melania Trump] being an expected widow … this to a woman whose husband, the president of the United States, has had two assassination attempts on his life,” he said. “And, so, at the minimum, you could say this joke was … disrespectful to the first lady and to the office, but I think we all know, at the worst of it … these kinds of jokes really do incite violence out there in our culture today.”
Miller said NRB is known for defending freedom of speech and religion, but he said there are “boundaries” to which people must adhere.
“You can’t walk into a movie theater and yell, ‘Fire,’” he said. “You can’t incite violence, and that’s clearly written into the Federal Communications Code and into the law.”
Miller continued, “So, I consulted with our general counsel, Mike Farris. … We looked at the footage over and over again, and we decided that really Jimmy Kimmel crossed that line, and so we put a complaint into the FCC asking them to investigate this under those guidelines.”
With assassination attempts — and the murder of conservative and Christian activist Charlie Kirk — Miller said the FCC must take such language seriously.
“We’re hoping that, first of all, that they’ll do the investigation, they’ll look into this,” he said. “And, then, if it meets the criteria of speech that was inciting violence, ABC and Jimmy Kimmel should pay a price for this.”
As for Kimmel’s response that he was telling an age-gap joke and nothing more, Miller isn’t convinced. He called the response “spin.”
“This is a spin,” he said. “I’ve watched that clip over, and over, and over again, and there was nowhere in there that you would have gotten any indication that what he was referring to was the age gap between Donald Trump and his wife, Melania.”
Miller continued, “He can spin it any way he wants, but I think we all know what he was talking about was the elimination of the president.”