Jimmy Kimmel on Melania & Donald Trump Demanding His Firing & The White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Thank you for watching. Thank you for joining us. Very nice. You know, you know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and the First Lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job? We've all been there, right? You've been there, right, Guillermo? Yeah, sure. What a day. As you know, they had to cancel the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington on Saturday night after a man with multiple guns and knives crashed the party and may have shot a Secret Service officer. Fortunately, the guy was wearing a bulletproof vest and is OK. They're not sure exactly what happened. But they got the guy. He was charged today. No one was hurt, thank goodness. A lot of people were shaken up on a night that is supposed to be lighthearted. The White House Correspondents' Dinner, if you don't know, it used to be an annual event before Trump showed up. But every year, they'd have a comedian roast the room. The president, the vice president, members of the press, everybody got roast. I did it once. I hosted it. It was a lot of fun. But this year, they said, no comedian. We're bringing in a mentalist instead. So on Thursday, three days before the event, in order to keep that cherished tradition alive, I did my own version of the Correspondents' Dinner on my show. I put on a tuxedo. We pretended we had an audience of luminaries. We used old footage of the Trumps, of Pete Hegseth, J.D. Vance, Kid Rock, Vanilla Ice, all the members of his cabinet. And we made it seem like they were all together in a room. We had a little roast. Again, this was Thursday, and there was no big reaction to it until this morning when I greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm and a call to fire me from our first lady, Melania Trump, saying I should be fired because of a joke I made. Again, five nights ago, it was a pretend roast. I said, our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at her, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow, which obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they're together. 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. And they know that. I've been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular. But I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house. And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do, and I think a great place to start, to dial that back, would be to have a conversation with your husband about it. Because I also should point out, Donald Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants to say, as are you, and as am I, as are all of us. Because under the First Amendment, we have, as Americans, a right to free speech. But with that said, I am sorry that you and the president and everyone in that room on Saturday went through that. I really am. Just because no one got killed doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic and scary. And we should come together and be best. We really should. But if you want us to believe that a joke I made three days before this dinner had any effect on anything that happened, well, then maybe someone should look into this psychic lady, too. This speech tonight will be classic Donald J. Trump. It'll be funny. It'll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room. You know who's going to be furious when she hears that? White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levin will be furious. This is like deja vu for me today, with all the news channels talking about this. Brian Stelter of CNN noted, incorrectly, I think, that no one from the White House was specifically calling for my head. This is this morning. I guess the first lady doesn't count. But whatever the case, the president cleared that up pretty quickly. The administration's calling out Kim while trying to pressure ABC. But they're being careful, I think, not to explicitly demand that ABC punish him. Despite their rhetoric that sometimes becomes very incendiary from the White House, and yes, is also incendiary from the left, these stress tests have been passed, and we have not seen demands for silencing be followed through by government censorship. Well, Brian, just as we were speaking, the president actually put out a note demanding that Jimmy Kimmel be fired by ABC. Well, in that case, forget everything I just said. You know, this really is a shame, because there was a time not so long ago, back in 2010, when, believe it or not, we sent our man Yaya to a Samsung promotional event in New York, where we learned that Donald Trump was a very big fan of mine. Hi, Mr. Trump. How are you, sir? What are you doing here? Well, I'm here to support Samsung and their 3D plasma television. Do you want to? But I'm also here to support Jimmy. I love Jimmy. Okay, you want to come here? Hi, how are you? Nice to meet you, Yaya. Nice to meet you. You want to be in my show? Well, you know what? I happen to love Jimmy. Let's do it. Come on. Well, sadly, his love for me went the way of the Samsung 3D plasma television. Anyway, what happened on Saturday at an event supporting the First Amendment, by the way, was so crazy to watch. After the gunman was captured, there were so many well-known people in a room together, and there were cameras on everyone at all times. All the journalists, everybody grabbed their phones, immediately went into reporter mode. It was like a reverse Clark Kent. But the dinner was filmed by more different iPhones from more different angles than the Torah portion of a bar mitzvah. This is video of the Secret Service moving Stephen Miller and his wife out of the room, followed by RFK Jr. getting whisked away while his wife, Sheryl Hines, is in the proverbial dust. That's right. He cut out of there like he saw a raccoon penis on the side of the road. But not everyone was in panic mode. While most of the attendees were taking cover, one guy, who turns out to be Wolf Blitzer's agent, watch him in the bottom left corner of your screen. And the journalists all in the house seated very quietly watching this. And remember who is in the room. Secretary Pete Hegseth is in that room. You've got Scott Besant in that room. You have Tulsi Gabbard in that room. You, of course, have J.D. Vance in that room, naturally the President of the United States. And as John mentioned, the White House correspondent's dinner, as we'll be presently broadcasting from. Going to have a little bit of salad. That, by the way, that would be a great commercial for Hidden Valley Ranch. Get that agent an agent. And while salad was being scarfed, this woman was, I don't know, stocking up for the hotel room. I don't know what's happening there. I think Kash Patel just found a new assistant. Speaking of Kash Patel, you know, Kash Patel's the head of the FBI. But somehow he wound up outside afterwards, I don't know, calling his Uber driver, trying to get his mom to come pick him up. He seemed kind of lost. A lot of people were just lost. They didn't know what to do for a while there. It was unclear as to whether the dinner would be canceled or not. People were just waiting around. Then finally, the President of the White House Correspondents Association took the stage to say, yes, the dinner is canceled and get to work. The president will be having a press briefing at the White House in 30 minutes. That is not a joke. The only thing that aren't jokes anymore are jokes, okay? It was very strange seeing all the news people who were at the event then reporting on the story in their tuxedos and ball gowns. It's like if a basketball player wore his jersey and shorts to dinner after the game. The president, one thing about Donald Trump, there's nothing he can't turn into a real estate opportunity. He immediately turned this into an argument in favor of his ballroom. He wrote, this event would never have happened with the militarily top-secret ballroom currently under construction at the White House. I hate to be the bearer of bad news. I'm afraid that top-secret ballroom is no longer top-secret, Mr. President. If it was, he'd be storing it in a shower at Mar-a-Lago. I have to admit something. I don't believe for one second that the reason he decided to build this ballroom is for security, but this was a pretty good argument for building. I might be pro-ballroom now, weirdly, after this. That way, if anything terrible ever happens, at least they can dance. Less than 24 hours after calling on Americans to resolve our differences and praising the warmth he shared with the press on Saturday night, Trump sat for an interview slash future $80 billion lawsuit with Norah O'Donnell of 60 Minutes where he was asked about this manifesto his would-be attacker wrote. He also wrote this. I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. What's your reaction to that? Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you're horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody. I'm not a pedophile. Do you think he was referring to you? Excuse me, excuse me. General rule of thumb, you know an interview isn't going great when you have to say I'm not a rapist and I'm not a pedophile. You should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I'm not any of those things. Mr. President, these are the gunman's words. Excuse me, excuse me. You shouldn't be reading that on 60 Minutes. You're a disgrace, but go ahead. Let's finish the interview. The other thing that he wrote in the interview. You're disgraceful. I guess the honeymoon with the press didn't last. It was fun for 11 hours, but today the president and first lady welcomed King Charles and Queen Camilla who arrived at the White House for what is scheduled to be a four-day visit to the United States. Despite the obvious security concerns, the King decided to go ahead with the trip. He said he'd be damned if he lets anything stand in the way of him finally getting his hands on one of those Doritos Locos Tacos from Taco Bell. And we were very hospitable. We wanted to make sure the King's visit was fun. So we went out onto Hollywood Boulevard to get opinions from folks on the street about some things Charles did while he was here, even though he hadn't arrived yet, and we made all the things up for a special King Charles edition of Lie Witness News. I'm sure you've seen the clips. King Charles is in America right now. Yeah, yeah, I've seen some stuff. Oh yeah, that he's here on, there's something about like on Instagram that his like wife is, what's it called? She's like some celebrity or something and he's coming over here to Hollywood. She's a Kardashian. What did you think of the viral clip of King Charles cutting the line at Disneyland over the weekend? I think he needs to get to the back of the line. Everyone needs to wait in line at Disneyland. It doesn't matter who you are. It is not your right to cut the line at Disneyland, King Charles. There's only one King at Disneyland and that is Mickey Mouse. Well, what did you think when King Charles gave Donald Trump the first ever Buckingham Peace Prize? Well, that was bullshit. And when you saw the clip, was there something you said to the TV? Yeah, like what the ****? I mean, how the **** is this possible? This corrupt ass ----, he's just an orange ******* clown. I have the right to say it no matter who is offended. I'm not trying to offend you, I'm giving you my opinion. What did you think of the pictures of King Charles on Venice Beach shirtless? Did you think the King would have so many back tattoos? When I think of King Charles with the tattoos, I never thought he would even have a tattoo. I don't even have a tattoo myself. Here's one with meaning. Is that cool for a King to have? No, that definitely is not cool to have that tattoo on especially a King of England. Yeah. It's, you know, it's very immature. The King of England is a a**hole. He's just like a pimple waiting to be popped. Your opinions are so strong. I want to crown you the King of Hollywood Boulevard. My Lord, well, hold on, man. You want to do the King, make sure the King wins that one. What would you, as King of Hollywood, like to say to the King of England? Get the f**k out this country. Go home. Learn you some motherf**king manners. When you come into my house, you take your ******* shoes off at my shoes. I'm not these monkeys that you ******* around with. I'm the gorilla that will snatch the light and put common sense in your a**. I'm the gorilla that will snatch the light