Washington DC - The agency that regulates the US airwaves on Tuesday ordered an early review of the license of broadcaster ABC after President Donald Trump and his wife demanded it fire comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

The order from the Federal Communications Commission affects Disney, which owns ABC, and its television subsidiaries.

It comes after both Donald and Melania Trump demanded the network cancel Kimmel's late-night comedy show over a joke they described as a call to violence, days before an alleged attempt to assassinate the president.

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Trump said Kimmel should be fired for likening the first lady to an "expectant widow."

In a show last week, Kimmel had portrayed himself as the emcee of the upcoming White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington on Saturday, addressing the first lady and saying, "Mrs Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow."

Trump turns 80 in June and is the oldest president to take office in the US. His wife, a former model who was born in Slovenia, is 56.

The first lady also lashed out at Kimmel in a statement, calling on broadcaster ABC to "take a stand" against the late-night host.

Kimmel brushed off the criticism on his show Monday, saying the gag was "obviously... a joke about their age difference."

"It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am," Kimmel said. "It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination, and they know that."

The White House went back on the attack Tuesday, with communications director Steven Cheung on X describing Kimmel as a "s**t human" for "doubling down on that joke instead of doing the decent thing by apologizing.

The suspect accused of attacking Saturday's media gala was charged in court Monday with trying to assassinate the president.

As a prominent late-night comedy host, Kimmel has been at the heart of the debate over constitutionally protected speech.

He was briefly suspended from his show last September following government pressure after he said Trump's hard-right MAGA movement was trying to make political capital from the assassination of influencer Charlie Kirk.