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Former ESPN host Sage Steele cast doubt on whether Disney will discipline Jimmy Kimmel over his “expectant widow” jab against first lady Melania Trump, saying she would be shocked if the company takes action despite growing backlash.
“I would say it would shock me if they did based on history…” Steele said Monday on “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
“Will they? Who knows? Should they? Absolutely.“
Steele, who worked for The Walt Disney Company for nearly two decades at ESPN, pointed to her own experience as evidence of what she described as a double standard in how the company handles controversial speech.
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TV personality Sage Steele, left, during a panel discussion at SXSW on March 9, 2018, in Austin, Texas; Jimmy Kimmel, right, attends the 2026 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Mark Guiducci at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on March 15 in Los Angeles, California. (Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Cisco Systems, Inc.; Cindy Ord/VF26/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)
She argued that Kimmel’s remarks crossed a line, adding that Disney’s new leadership has an opportunity to take a different approach.
“[CEO Josh D’Amaro] has an opportunity now to reset, to say, ‘You know what? Enough is enough. We as a network are not going to contribute to this hateful rhetoric,’ and he can drop the hammer now…” she added.
“This is your chance, not just to send a message to Jimmy Kimmel, but to all the other talent, to the executives, and most importantly to [the] American people, to say we are better than this. That was not a joke. It was much worse than that. Everybody knows it, it is time, and I hope the new CEO does it the right way.”
Steele’s remarks came after Kimmel quipped that the first lady had a “glow” like an “expectant widow” during a Thursday night sketch.
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Jimmy Kimmel appears on stage at the 31st Annual Critics Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif., on Jan. 4. (JC Olivera/Variety)
The joke went viral on social media in the wake of Saturday’s attack at the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) Dinner, which federal authorities say involved an armed man trying to storm the event while targeting President Donald Trump and top Cabinet officials.
Kimmel rejected the criticism and attempted to clear the air during Monday’s monologue:
“This was Thursday, and there was no big reaction to it until this morning when I greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm…,” the ABC late-night host said.
“[This] obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they were together.”
He continued, “It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s 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.”
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“I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular, but I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house.”
Neither ABC nor its parent company, Disney, responded to Digital‘s prior requests for comment regarding the matter.
‘ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
