ABC already suspended Jimmy Kimmel once for joking that Melania Trump had the glow of an expectant widow.
That was four months ago – days before a gunman rushed a Secret Service checkpoint at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
But ABC just put something on the air that makes the Melania Trump widow joke look mild.
The Operation ABC Turned Into a Punchline
The Secret Service operation was extraordinary by any measure.
Iran had issued a credible assassination threat against President Trump at the NATO summit in Ankara – just 1,000 miles from Tehran.
While cameras showed Trump boarding Air Force One in Ankara, Secret Service had already moved him – through an airport catering truck – onto a smaller military aircraft headed for the United Kingdom, with the White House saying nothing about the switch.
Trump was characteristically calm when reporters caught up with him on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews Tuesday night.
"I go by Secret Service and the military," he said. "They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane – equal safety – but they wanted me to do it, so I do it. I get a lot of threats."
https://twitter.com/alexchristy17/status/2087526419291128132?s=20
A foreign regime actively tried to kill the sitting American president.
That same night, ABC handed the microphone to Black-ish actor Anthony Anderson – filling in for Kimmel – and Anderson used it to wish Trump to hell.
"Well, all I have to say is wait till he gets to hell," Anderson told the cheering studio audience.
Then he called the whole thing "dumb" – the operation, the president, all of it.
Hollywood Has Been Doing This for Years
This isn't Anderson having a bad night.
Fox News catalogued ten separate celebrities who have joked about Trump's death or assassination.
Johnny Depp asked a crowd in 2017: "When was the last time an actor assassinated a president? Maybe it is time."
SNL's Michael Che cracked a Lincoln assassination joke after Trump attended a show at the Kennedy Center.
Kathy Griffin posed with a severed Trump head.
And Kimmel himself – whose show Anderson was guest-hosting – called Melania an "expectant widow" just days before an armed man opened fire at the Correspondents' Dinner.
ABC suspended Kimmel's show for six days, then quietly brought it back.
https://twitter.com/Alexxandermedei/status/2086345561087660436?s=20
Four months later: same network, same show, a confirmed Iranian assassination threat on the front page – and a man on ABC's platform is joking about the President burning in hell to a cheering audience.
Disney made a deliberate choice to put that on the air.
This Is What They Actually Think of You
Anderson didn't call the Secret Service operation brave.
He called it dumb.
Think about what that means.
These people don't see a foreign regime trying to murder Trump as something to worry about.
They see it as a setup.
The same crowd that spent four years screaming about threats to democracy is now on national television laughing about Iran trying to kill the democratically elected President of the United States – and the studio audience cheers.
Kimmel came back after six days.
Ratings didn't move.
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Disney stock didn't move.
Nobody lost a job.
That's the actual story – not the joke.
The fact that not one executive, not one producer, not one person at ABC looked at that monologue with a real assassination threat confirmed in the news that same day and said no.
They ran it anyway.
Because they knew nothing would happen.
And they were right.
Sources:
- Jerome Hudson, "Video: 'Kimmel Live' Host Anthony Anderson Jokes About Trump Dying and Burning in Hell," Breitbart News, August 12, 2026.
- Staff, "Iran Threat Prompted Trump to Take Military Plane From NATO Summit," WAFF/Gray DC, August 12, 2026.
- Staff, "10 Celebrities Who Have Joked About Trump's Death, From Kathy Griffin to Jimmy Kimmel," Fox News, April 29, 2026.
- Alex Christy, "Anderson Looks Forward to Trump Being in Hell, Calls Escape From Turkey 'Dumb'," NewsBusters, August 12, 2026.
