An unapologetic Jimmy Kimmel has fired back after Melania Trump called for him to be sacked over a joke he made describing her as an “expectant widow”, three days before an assassination attempt on her husband Donald Trump.

The shooting took place just outside a Washington ballroom hosting the annual White House Correspondents dinner, with the alleged gunman identified as Cole Tomas Allen charging through a checkpoint and firing at Secret Service agents, wounding one, before he was subdued and arrested.

To a rapturous reception during his monologue on Monday night local time, Kimmel said the outcry over his earlier comments was like “deja vu”, referencing the enormous backlash he received over comments he made after Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September which saw his late night show Jimmy Kimmel Live! pulled from the air.

“Sometimes you wake up in the morning and the First Lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job. We’ve all been there, right?, he joked.

Before the Trump presidency it was tradition for a comedian to take to the podium at the White House Correspondents dinners and “lightly roast” the sitting president and others.

But that had been ruled out when Mr Trump attended on Saturday night so Kimmel aired his own parody version of the dinner, days before the event, during which he joked “Mrs Trump you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

“Every year they have a comedian roast the room,” Kimmel explained in his latest TV appearance.

“The president, the vice president, members of the press, everybody got roasted. I did it once. I hosted it. It was a lot of fun.

“But this year, they said, ‘No comedian, we’re bringing in a mentalist instead’. So, on Thursday, three days before the event, in order to keep that cherished tradition alive, I did my own version of the Correspondents Dinner on my show.

“I put on a tuxedo. We pretended we had an audience of luminaries. We used old footage of of the Trumps of Pete Hegseth, J.D. Vance, Kid Rock, Vanilla Ice all the members of his cabinet.

“We made it seem like they were all together in a room. We had a little roast. Again, this was Thursday and there was no big reaction to it until this morning when I I greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm. And a call to fire me from our First Lady, Melania Trump.”

Kimmel explained the joke about Melania referred to the age gap between her and the President.

“It obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together. 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.”

Kimmel said he had been vocal for years about gun violence and agreed hateful and violent rhetoric should be rejected. He then pointed the finger back at the Trumps.

“I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it because Donald Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants to say, as are you and as as I am, as are all of us because under the First Amendment we have as Americans a right to free speech.

“But with that said I am sorry that you and the President and everyone in that room on Saturday went through that. I really am. Just because no one got killed doesn’t mean it wasn’t traumatic and scary and we should come together and be best. We really should.”