Donald Trump was so furious at Jimmy Kimmel’s mockery of him, he wanted to censor the late night show host after just one year into his presidency, according to a report.
The former president directed his White House staff to call one of Disney’s top executives to pressure Kimmel to dial back on anti-Tump humour in 2018, two former Trump administration officials told the Rolling Stones.
The “severity of Mr Trump’s fury” was conveyed in at least two separate phone calls to executives of Disney, owner of ABC which airs Jimmy Kimmel Live!, it said.
A former Trump official said Mr Trump felt the talk show host had been “very dishonest and doing things that [Trump] would have once sued over” in his jokes about him.
“I do not know to who[m], but it happened. Nobody thought it was going to change anything but DJT was focused on it so we had to do something…It was doing something, mostly, to say to [Trump], ‘Hey, we did this,’” another official said.
The Trump White House staff reached out to former Disney top lobbyist Richard Bates, who passed away in December 2020.
Mr Trump who was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress has announced his campaign for a second presidential term in 2024. Despite his impeachment, a string of lawsuits and investigations, Mr Trump has said “he is entitled to a revenge tour” if he wins but he would not do that.
It was not the first time it has emerged that Mr Trump ordered a crackdown on those criticising him. In 2018, Ajit Pai, former chair of the Federal Communications Commission, said the agency was investigating a joke made about Mr Trump and Vladimir Putin’s relations by Late Show host Stephen Colbert. The FCC eventually declined to move forward with the case.
