George Clooney Defends Jimmy Kimmel After Trump’s Call to Fire Comedian

George Clooney condemned political violence while also defending comedian Jimmy Kimmel after Donald Trump renewed his call for Disney and ABC to fire him over a White House Correspondents’ Dinner parody.

Last week, Kimmel hosted his own “alternate” gala on Jimmy Kimmel Live in which he delivered a “monologue” for a fake audience that included President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. At one point, the late-night host joked about the 79-year-old president’s advance age, with the comedian quipping to Melania, “You have a glow like an expectant widow.” The parody was aired two days before the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 25, which was evacuated after a gunman opened fire outside the event. The shooting suspect was charged on Monday with the attempted assassination of the president. Trump seemed to suggest Kimmel’s joke foreshadowed the security incident that led to the evacuation.

According to Variety, Clooney, an outspoken critic of Trump, addressed the incident at the 51st Chaplin Award Gala, where the actor was being honored on Monday evening. Clooney compared the backlash directed toward Kimmel to another remark by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that was taken out of context. Before heading into the White House Correspondents Dinner, Leavitt told Fox News on the red carpet, “there will be some shots fired tonight in the room,” which appeared to refer to the jokes written for the event.

“Jimmy’s a comedian, and I would argue that Karoline Leavitt didn’t mean shots should be fired,” Clooney said. “She was making a joke. Fair enough. You look at that side and go, ’Well, jokes are jokes.’ But the rhetoric is a little dangerous. And we’ve seen it a lot lately.” The actor said that hyperbolic rhetoric “can be toned down” and that “when one side is calling anyone they disagree with traitors to the country, which is a charge that’s punishable by death, just because they don’t agree with someone, I think the rhetoric is a little too heated.”

Clooney also decried political violence of any kind. “I disagree with everything that this administration stands for, but there’s no place for the kind of violence we saw two nights ago in Washington, D.C. Nor is there a room for this kind of violence in Minnesota with Alex Pretti or Renée Good,” he said. “It seems to me there’s a struggle that has to be won against hatred and corruption and cruelty and violence,” he said.