SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images; Alberto E Rodriguez/Getty Images
In early 2018, the US national security apparatus was fixated on reports that North Korea was building nuclear weapons that could reach the US, or that Russia was planning chemical weapons attacks in Europe. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has been busy targeting his idea of an enemy of the state: late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
According to two former Trump administration officials, the then-president was so upset by Kimmel’s comedic jabs that he instructed his White House staff to call one of Disney’s top executives in Washington, DC, to complain and demand action . (ABC, which has long aired Jimmy Kimmel Live!, is owned by Disney.)
In at least two separate phone calls, which took place around the time Trump completed his first year in office, the White House conveyed to Disney the severity of his anger at Kimmel, the ex-officials told Rolling Stone. Trump’s associates mentioned that the leader of the free world wanted the billion-dollar corporation to rein in the Trump-destroying ABC host, and that Trump felt Kimmel was “very dishonest and energetic” in characterizing a former senior administration official. been things that [Trump] would have complained once.”
The incident was so bizarre that word of it spread through the corridors of power in Washington, DC. Other government officials unrelated to the pressure campaign began hearing from their contacts at Disney how confused they were that the White House kept telling them Trump wanted Kimmel to tone down his anti-Trump humor.
“At least one call was made to Disney [that I know of]recalls a third former official who worked in the Trump White House. Sources spoke to Rolling Stone on condition of anonymity to speak freely and maintain ongoing ties in Trumpworld and conservative circles. “I don’t know to whom[m], but it happened. Nobody thought it would change anything, but DJT was focused on that, so we had to do something… It was mostly doing something to say it [Trump]’Hey, we did that.’”
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Rolling Stone was able to identify one target of the clumsy, doomed White House pressure campaign: former top Disney lobbyist Richard Bates. The sources say Trump’s associates have reached out to Bates to express the president’s anger at Kimmel’s monologues and jabs. Bates, who served as a prominent Disney executive and was a Washington fixture for over 30 years, died in December 2020.
The pressure campaign ultimately failed, but the previously unreported effort marked another moment in which Trump showed alacrity to use the immense powers of his office for personal gain and for the most petty reasons. (In fact, one in two impeachments against Trump was caused by this very impulse.)
And now that Trump is once again campaigning for the White House, there is no sign that his desire to use federal power in this way has abated an inch. In a recent radio interview, the former president said he was entitled to a “vendetta” if he won the presidency in 2024 and claimed he would not take the opportunity if re-elected.
But throughout his presidency, Trump spent an inordinate amount of time threatening late-night TV shows and celebrities over their jokes about the famously thin-skinned former game show host.
In 2018, Trump’s FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced the agency would investigate a blatant joke by Late Show host Stephen Colbert about Trump’s cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin. Trump fumed at Colbert in an interview, calling him a “non-talent” who uses “dirty” language. But despite the president’s irritation and complaints from viewers, the FCC eventually declined to take action against the late-night host. When the matter was investigated, the then-president became so interested that he repeatedly asked staffers for updates on whether the FCC had already made a decision, says a source with direct knowledge of the inquiries.
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The following year, after being outraged by jokes about him on an SNL rerun, Trump directed his staff and attorneys to investigate whether the FCC and the Justice Department could retaliate against him for late-night shows critical of him. Trump, sources familiar with the matter said, proposed lieutenants he believed (wrongly) that shows like Kimmel’s and SNL violated an obscure federal rule that requires stations to give equal time to news from candidates.
Attempts by the Trump White House to censor critics also extended to social media. In 2019, Trump’s White House took to Twitter, demanding that the social media company remove a tweet by Chrissy Teigen that called Trump a “pussy ass bitch,” according to a recent testimony from a former trust and security official from Twitter.