Melania Trump says ABC should “take a stand” over Jimmy Kimmel, as a result of she does not like a joke the discuss present host made final week.
First issues first: The primary girl calling on a media firm to do one thing about its worker as a result of she does not like what that worker mentioned is a nasty factor. It is an try to make use of the ability of the White Home to silence speech that the White Home does not like.
And it is simply as worrisome because it was final September, when Brendan Carr, Trump’s decide to move the Federal Communications Fee, informed ABC proprietor Disney to “take action, frankly, on Kimmel” as a result of Kimmel had made a joke about Trump supporters and Charlie Kirk. Disney suspended Kimmel for a number of days after which reinstated him after public outcry.
There’s a distinction between Carr’s demand and Melania Trump’s demand on Monday, since Carr is a regulator with direct oversight over components of Disney’s enterprise, and Melania Trump does not have any formal energy over … something. However she’s nonetheless utilizing the ability of the White Home to attempt to management speech, and that ought to alarm anybody with any widespread sense. (I’ve requested her workplace for remark.)
Let’s examine how new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro responds to this one.
A lot much less essential, however nonetheless fascinating to me: The primary girl’s selection of platform to make her demand/risk. Melania Trump used Elon Musk’s X, the location formally often called Twitter, to put up her ideas on Monday, utilizing each her official First Lady of the United States account and her personal personal account.
Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is meant to divide our nation. His monologue about my household isn’t comedy- his phrases are corrosive and deepens the political illness inside America.
Folks like Kimmel shouldn’t have the chance to enter our properties every night to…
— First Woman Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) April 27, 2026
Trump additionally posted the identical assertion on Truth Social, the social media website owned by her husband. However that one appeared compulsory. Not in the way in which it’s literally obligatory for Donald Trump to post at least some of his thoughts on his own social platform earlier than he places them anyplace else. However in the way in which you are supposed to inform your important different you suppose they make the very best pasta, when what you actually crave is Olive Backyard.
The numbers make it clear why Melania Trump selected to make use of X to make a splash: Her put up on that platform has 230,000 likes, and that quantity is skyrocketing. Her Fact Social put up has 6,500 likes and is touring at a way more leisurely tempo.
All of which is a reminder that whereas Fact Social is the Trump-owned Twitter different Donald Trump makes use of, it stays a minor-at-best platform. One that won’t tell you how many users it has, and one which managed to lose more than $700 million on revenue of $3.7 million in 2025.
None of that’s information, nor does it appear to matter to Trump, who nonetheless owns an organization price almost $3 billion, even after a stock plunge and the departure of its CEO — maybe as a result of the company’s current plan is to merge with a nuclear fusion company.
It additionally does not matter the place Donald Trump truths or posts or spouts off — he is the president of the US, so absolutely anything he says that is noteworthy will get immediately transmitted via the worldwide media ecosystem. Like what occurred on Monday afternoon, the place he piggybacked on his spouse’s put up and explicitly called on Disney and ABC to fire Kimmel.
However for the remainder of us — together with the primary girl of the US — the place you put up a message issues. Which is why she’s utilizing the one which helped her husband get into the White Home within the first place.