“No one made a thing about it before the shooting,” the comedian said.

Adam Carolla defends Jimmy Kimmel amid Trump calling for his firing: ‘Pretty typical roast joke’

"No one made a thing about it before the shooting," the comedian said.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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April 29, 2026 3:52 p.m. ET

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Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel. Credit:

Randy Holmes/Walt Disney Television via Getty

- Adam Carolla said that he does not find Jimmy Kimmel's joke about Melania Trump looking like "an expectant widow" to be "egregious."

- Carolla, who worked with Kimmel for years, emphasized that the late-night host's joke came before the attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

- "That's a pretty typical roast joke," Carolla said.

Adam Carolla doesn't agree with the latest criticism of Jimmy Kimmel.

The libertarian comedian, who collaborated extensively with the late-night host on projects like *The Man Show* and *Jimmy Kimmel Live*, weighed in on the backlash that Kimmel has received after joking that Melania Trump had "a glow like an expectant widow" in a segment last week that preceded the attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Though President Trump and the first lady have called for ABC and parent company Disney to fire Kimmel over the joke, Carolla explained why he has a "different take" on the situation during Tuesday's episode of *The Adam Carolla Show*.

"I'll approach this from a comedic standpoint," he said. "No one made a thing about it before the shooting."

He added, "The joke happened *before*. It's unrelated."

Indeed, the "widow" joke was delivered on Thursday, two days before an alleged gunman opened fire in the Washington Hilton on Saturday. The Trumps did not voice their fury toward Kimmel until after the incident at the Correspondents' Dinner.

Jimmy Kimmel on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live'.

Randy Holmes/ABC via Getty

Carolla went on to consider another defense of Kimmel. "People do this one too. They go, 'It's not like he wrote that joke. But he said that joke. But he didn't write that joke. Somebody wrote that joke and he said it, 'cause he thought it was funny,'" Carolla said. "But that's a pretty typical roast joke."

The comedian also explained how commonplace it is to joke about an older man dying and making his younger wife a widow. "It is also a trope," he said. "Any younger beautiful woman who's married to an older guy — especially if the guy is rumored to be sort of a douchey [person] — you would make that joke at any roast."

Carolla later opined that Kimmel is facing scrutiny because of his past spats with the Trump administration. "Here's the problem: Once there's a lot of sewage under the bridge, then the pump is already primed," he said. "Although people think it's egregious, for the reasons I just explained, I don't."

Jimmy Kimmel calls out Donald Trump for similarly joking about his death: 'You should be fired for that!'

Donald Trump pauses TV speech, tells Melania marriage won't last as long as his parents' union

Melania Trump issued her statement about Kimmel on Monday morning. "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," she wrote. "People like Kimmel shouldn't have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate."

She continued, "Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand.  How many times will ABC's leadership enable Kimmel's atrocious behavior at the expense of our community."

The president later issued a similar statement on social media on Monday. "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," Trump said. "Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC."

Donald Trump and Melania Trump in Washington, D.C., on March 12, 2026.

Heather Diehl/Getty

Kimmel responded to the Trumps' comments in his monologue on Monday night. "Obviously [it] was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they're together," the comedian said. "It was a very light roast joke about the fact that [Trump] is 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."

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On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission ordered the Walt Disney Company to submit early renewals for licenses for its eight owned and operated TV stations, which were originally scheduled to be renewed between 2028 and 2031.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr previously pressured ABC affiliate stations to preempt Kimmel's show in September after objecting to the host's remarks about Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin. Disney then temporarily pulled Kimmel's show from air, but returned it to the airwaves the following week.

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