Did Jimmy Kimmel offer a "sincere apology to everyone regarding that widow joke" on Monday's episode of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"? No, that's not true: Kimmel did not make the apology featured in a reel posted on Facebook. The Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector determined the audio track of the reel is an AI-generated voice clone. Melania and Donald Trump demanded ABC fire Kimmel over the joke he made calling Melania an "expectant widow." Kimmel did respond on air, saying, "Obviously it was a joke about their age difference," but he did not apologize.
The fake audio track was used in a reel (archived here) published on April 27, 2026, by a Facebook page called World News. The caption with the reel says:
Jimmy Kimmel apologized for his inappropriate remarks.#foryoupage #fyp #tiktok #usa #jimmykimmel
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: World News reel on Facebook.)
The transcript of the reel spoken by the AI-generated cloned voice follows:
I will offer a sincere apology to everyone regarding that widow joke. I said it before the dinner. I used that line to mock the relationship between the Trumps, and yes, it crossed the line. But at the time, I had absolutely no idea there would be an attacker in Washington. My words had no direct connection to that incident. However, when bullets actually start flying, I can't pretend it has nothing to do with me. Comedians are used to aiming at those in power, calling a president out for bluffing, laughing at his fear of being mocked. That's part of...
Lead Stories used the Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector tool to analyze the 31-second audio track from the reel (archived here). The last portion of the audio scored at 100% likelihood of being AI-generated, and two small segments scored at and below 40%, with the overall voice cloning reading coming out at 93% confidence (pictured below).
(Image source: Hiya via InVID.)
What did Kimmel say?
Kimmel did speak about the Trumps' demand that ABC fire him, and the incident with the gunman at the Correspondents' Dinner, but he did not issue an apology. Beginning at the 1:38 mark into the April 27, 2026, edition of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" (embedded below), he said:
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 greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm and a call to fire me from our first lady, Melania Trump, saying I should be fired because of a joke I made again five nights ago. It was a pretend roast. I said, "Our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at her. So beautiful. Mrs.Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow." Which 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 I've been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular.
