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Former ESPN host Sage Steele questioned whether Disney would punish Jimmy Kimmel for his “widow-in-waiting” assault on first lady Melania Trump, saying he would be shocked if the company took action despite the growing outrage.
“I would say it would shock me if they did historically…” Steele said Monday on “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
“They will know? Who knows? Should? Of course.“
Steele, who worked for The Walt Disney Company for nearly two decades at ESPN, cited his experience as evidence of what he described as a double standard in the company’s handling of controversial speech.
MAHER CALLS OUT KIMMEL FOR NOT THANKING HIM FOR SUPPORT AMID NOMINATION, ACCUSES KIMMEL OF PARTICIPATING LIBERALS
TV host 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)
He pointed out that Kimmel’s comments crossed the line, adding that Disney’s new leadership has the opportunity to take a different approach.
“[CEO Josh D’Amaro] you have an opportunity now to reframe, to say, ‘You know what? Enough is enough. We as a network will not be involved in this hate speech,’ and you can drop the hammer now…” he added.
“This is your chance, not just to send a message to Jimmy Kimmel, but to all the other talent, to management, and most importantly [the] Americans, to say we are better than this. That was no joke. It was worse than that. Everyone knows, it’s about time, and I hope the new CEO does it right. “
He said this after Kimmel joked that the first lady was “light” like a “pregnant widow” during Thursday night’s sketch.
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Jimmy Kimmel appears on stage at the 31st Annual Critics Choice Awards at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif., on Jan. 4. (JC Olivera/Variety)
The joke went viral on social media after Saturday’s attack at the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) Dinner, which authorities say involved an armed man trying to storm the event while targeting President Donald Trump and senior Cabinet officials.
Kimmel dismissed the criticism and tried to clear the air during a speech on Monday:
“This was on Thursday, and there was no big reaction to it until this morning when I greeted the day with another storm of Twitter purges…,” the ABC host said late last night.
“[This] it was obviously a joke about their age difference and the look of happiness we see on his face every time they are together.”
He continued, “It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80, and younger than me. It wasn’t, by any definition, a call to murder – and they know that.”
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“I’ve been very vocal for years against gun violence in particular, but I understand that the first lady had a very stressful experience over the weekend, and almost every weekend is very stressful in that house.”
Neither ABC nor its parent company, Disney, responded Fox News Digitalprevious requests for comment on this matter.
Joseph A. Wulfsohn of Fox News contributed to this report.
