The National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) on Monday filed a complaint with the FCC over late night television host Jimmy Kimmel’s remark that First Lady Melania Trump would be an “expectant widow.”
The National Religious Broadcasters told the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that Kimmel’s remarks that the first lady would be an “expectant widow” came two days before an attempted assassin tried to fire his weapon right outside the ballroom during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“Our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,” he said.
The religious group said that Kimmel’s remarks “raise serious concerns about the normalization and potential incitement of political violence.”
The group argued that such rhetoric appears to “trivialize or foreshadow harm against political leaders.”
NRB President Troy Miller said, “We should be relieved that lives were spared Saturday evening; but relief can’t become complacency. We’re seeing a pattern of violence in this country that didn’t appear overnight.”
“When influential voices joke about death or treat political opponents as disposable, it contributes to a culture where violence feels thinkable to the already unstable. National platforms carry real weight, and with that comes responsibility. That’s why this warranted action,” he added.
President Donald Trump and Melania Trump have called for ABC to fire Kimmel.
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy — his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America,” Melania Trump wrote on X.
President Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but, this is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”