President Donald Trump was reportedly so upset with Jimmy Kimmel’s TV jokes that he ordered White House officials to fire the late-night host.
Rolling Stone reported Sunday that there have been at least two calls to a top Disney executive seeking action against Kimmel in 2018. Disney is the parent company of ABC, which airs “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
An unnamed former senior Trump administration official told the magazine that Trump believed Kimmel was “very dishonest and did things like [Trump] would have sued once.”
Another unnamed former official told Rolling Stone: “Nobody thought it was going to change anything, but DJT was focused on it, so we had to do something… We had to do something, especially tell him. [Trump]”Hey, I did that.”
Kimmel said last year that ABC officials at one point asked him to cut Trump some slack, but he refused.
“I just said, ‘Look, if that’s what you want to do, I understand and I don’t blame you for it, but I’m not going to do it,'” she told the “Naked Lunch” podcast.
It’s unclear whether that conversation was the result of the White House lobbying Disney. ABC left Kimmel alone and continues to make fun of the former president to this day.
Trump, for his part, has long taken offense when comics make jokes about him, attacking Kimmel, “Saturday Night Live,” Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and others.
The Daily Beast reported in 2021 that Trump, during his presidency, asked the Justice Department to investigate late-night comics that mocked him and asked advisers whether the Federal Communications Commission or the courts could stop the jokes.
