🔥 TRUMP ERUPTS When Jimmy Kimmel & Alec Baldwin EXPOSE the “TRUTH” About His Marriage LIVE on TV — The Moment That Sent Him Into TOTAL MELTDOWN ⚡

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump has escalated his long-running feud with late-night television into a courtroom battle, filing a lawsuit that accuses Jimmy Kimmel and Alec Baldwin of defamation and malicious intent over jokes and impersonations that he says crossed from political satire into an attack on his marriage.

The suit, filed this week, reflects a broader argument Mr. Trump has made for years: that comedy, when repeated often enough and amplified by mass media, can harden into a narrative that damages reputation and personal relationships. This time, however, the focus is not solely on his politics or temperament, but on portrayals of his relationship with his wife, Melania Trump — an area Mr. Trump’s legal team argues should be off-limits.

According to the complaint, Mr. Kimmel’s monologues and Mr. Baldwin’s long-running impersonations presented the Trump marriage as transactional and staged, implying emotional distance and manipulation behind public appearances. The lawsuit contends that these portrayals were not isolated jokes but part of a cumulative campaign that encouraged audiences to see the marriage as a political performance rather than a genuine partnership.

Mr. Trump’s attorneys argue that the comedians’ work went beyond exaggeration and opinion, asserting that repeated references to awkward public moments, Melania Trump’s visible discomfort at official events, and jokes about the former president’s influence over her appearance created a false impression of marital dysfunction. That impression, they say, was damaging both personally and politically.

“Satire does not give license to invent facts about a person’s private life,” one lawyer familiar with the filing said, summarizing the argument. “When commentary presents speculation as reality, it becomes defamatory.”

The defendants strongly disagree. Representatives for Mr. Kimmel said his work is plainly satire, protected by the First Amendment and grounded in publicly available footage, statements and widely discussed events. Mr. Baldwin, whose impersonation of Mr. Trump on “Saturday Night Live” became a cultural fixture during Trump’s presidency, has long argued that parody is by definition exaggerated and that no reasonable viewer would mistake it for a literal account.

Legal experts largely side with that view. Courts have consistently given wide latitude to comedians and satirists, particularly when the subject is a public figure. “The bar for defamation is extraordinarily high,” said Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment scholar. “A public figure must show not only falsity but actual malice — and satire is among the most protected forms of speech we have.”

Still, the case underscores how deeply personal Mr. Trump perceives the conflict to be. For years, he has responded to late-night jokes with public denunciations, social media attacks and, at times, demands that networks take action against hosts he views as hostile. The lawsuit cites instances in which Mr. Kimmel joked that the president repeatedly sought to have him removed from the air, portraying Mr. Trump as thin-skinned and vindictive — a characterization the former president now argues is itself defamatory.

At the heart of the complaint is the contention that comedy can shape reality. Mr. Trump’s lawyers argue that for millions of viewers, sketches and monologues became shorthand for who he was: not just as a leader, but as a husband. By repeating jokes about stiffness, emotional distance or scripted affection, the comedians, the suit claims, reinforced a storyline that audiences came to accept as true.

Media scholars note that political comedy often plays that role, distilling complex figures into memorable caricatures. Tina Fey’s portrayal of Sarah Palin and Will Ferrell’s impersonation of George W. Bush are often cited as examples of satire that influenced public perception without legal consequence. Mr. Trump’s case seeks to test whether there is a line when caricature touches family life.

The suit also highlights a tension in modern media culture, where political commentary, entertainment and personal exposure increasingly overlap. Late-night hosts regularly weave jokes about policy, character and private behavior into a single narrative, arguing that public figures’ personal conduct is relevant to their leadership.

For now, the lawsuit is unlikely to silence the comedians it targets. If anything, it has drawn renewed attention to the very jokes Mr. Trump wants the courts to curb. Whether the case survives early motions remains uncertain, but its symbolic significance is clear.

More than a legal fight, it is a cultural one — a clash over who gets to define truth in an age when humor, repetition and mass audiences can be as powerful as official statements. As the case moves forward, courts may once again be asked to decide how far satire can go when the subject insists the joke has become the story.