Piers Morgan considers American liberals to be overly sensitive to the issues pertaining to President Trump. Taking into account the Kathy Griffin debacle, he slammed the more recent attempt of liberals to wish the POTUS dead by the showing of an American adaptation of the Julius Caesar play at the New York’s non-profit Public Theater.
He writes; “The wild, foot-stomping, shrieking hysteria that greets the President’s every utterance and movement is beyond anything I have ever witnessed in global politics.”
While he claims to be liberal, he acknowledges the characteristic attributes of the US President to be one that can drive any sane person over the edge.
“Don’t get me wrong; much of the adverse reaction to his presidency is perfectly understandable and acceptable.”
“Trump is an inflammatory, deliberately provocative character that likes nothing better than winding up what he calls the sneering elites into a slathering lather of blind rage.”
“I have no issue with people complaining or protesting about him, or in journalists holding his factual feet to the fire.”
“Indeed I often give him a whack myself if I don’t agree with him.”
He, however, points out that while criticism is alright, one should know where and when to draw the line and that call for the assassination of Trump should in no way be the type of talk that should be let out into the open.
“But where I do have an issue is when that criticism crosses the line into open calls for him to be assassinated.
“But ever since Trump won, it has grown a lot uglier and a lot more serious.”
“As his daughter Ivanka said today, the viciousness and ferocity of the hatred directed towards him is unprecedented.”
He then starts by pointing out incidents in which people may have intentionally made reference to killing Trump or destroying the white house.
“Madonna started this disturbing trend by screaming at the Women’s March the day after the Inauguration that she dreams of ‘blowing up the White House.’
“Following this outrageous comment, which attracted global headlines, death threats were aimed at the new president on an unprecedented scale. Dataminr reported that in the next two weeks alone, more than 12,000 posts with the words ‘assassinate Trump’ were made on Twitter.”
“The threats have carried on coming, many of them far more serious than a Twitter post, with Secret Service working 24/7 to stop myriad plots to attack POTUS.”
“Yet this hasn’t stopped people who should know better from fanning the flames.”
“Two weeks ago, comedian Kathy Griffin posted a photograph of herself clutching an image of Trump’s severed, blood-splattered head.”
“It was a just a joke, she wailed, when all hell broke loose.”
“Really, Ms Griffin? You think it’s funny to hold your president’s severed head to a camera at a time when ISIS barbarians have been doing just that to fellow Americans?
‘Like many edgy works of artistic expression,’ explained her attorney Lisa Bloom, ‘this could be interpreted different ways. But Griffin never imagined it could be misinterpreted as a threat of violence against Trump. That was never what she intended.’
Nonsense. That’s exactly what Griffin intended. She wanted everyone to look at that photo and imagine Trump being murdered by decapitation. There is literally no other thought process it could possibly inspire.
And I’m sorry, but it’s just not ‘funny’.
“As outrage grew, and Trump and his family expressed horror over what she’d done, Griffin resorted to the natural modern liberal defence playbook of victimhood; she claimed she was being bullied by old, sexist and misogynist white men. Oh, and irony of ironies, she was now receiving death threats!
Yes, you absurd bleating hypocritical halfwit, that is what happens when you glory in the murder of your president – a lot of your fellow Americans get very angry about it.
And in a country with over 300 million guns and widespread mental illness, that anger can quickly lead to a very nasty conclusion.
No sooner had the Griffin furore calmed down than a similar new one has erupted.
This time, it involves New York’s non-profit Public Theater and its new production of Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ in Central Park.
The play portrays Caesar as a tempestuous, petulant blond-haired businessman in an expensive business suit with an American pin flag and over-long ties who takes baths in a gold bathtub.
His wife Calpurnia has an Eastern European accent and wears designer clothes.
So, it’s Donald Trump.
It ends with Caesar/Trump being brutally murdered by Roman senators who fear he has become too power hungry.
Only in this case, the assassins are all women and minorities, two groups that Trump has been accused of marginalising.
There is zero doubt the play’s producers want us to believe it’s Trump.
The New York Daily News said the production ‘imagines the Roman ruler as a blond, swaggering egotist who’s a dead ringer for the current occupant of the Oval Office. And he gets murdered for his hubris and hunger for power.’
Even the New York Times review last week stated that it ‘takes onstage Trump-trolling to a startling new level.’
But as Trump’s son Donald Jr. asked: ‘I wonder how much of this ‘art’ is funded by the taxpayers? When does ‘art’ become political speech?’
Sponsors, led by Delta Airlines and Bank of America, have answered that question for themselves and pulled their financial support.
‘No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of Julius Caesar does not reflect Delta’s values,’ the airline said in a statement. ‘Their artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste.’
Bank of America said the production ‘was intended to provoke and offend.’
In that regard, it has achieved its goal.
One audience member, Laura Sheaffer, said: ‘It was shocking and distasteful. If this had happened to any other president – even as recently as Barack Obama or George Bush – it would not have flown. People would have been horrified. I mean, it was the on-stage murder of the president of the United States. Blood was spewing everywhere out of his body.’
And that, surely, is the nub of all this.
Liberal Trump-haters seemingly have no limit and no filter when it comes to expressing their loathing of the man, even if it extends to his violent death.
The defense from the director, Oskar Eustis, was straight from Kathy Griffin’s ridiculous excuse manual: ‘Anyone seeing our production will realize it in no way advocates violence towards anyone.’
Er no, Mr Eustis, as you well know, it does the complete opposite.
It depicts the horrific murder of President Trump, stabbed to death by frenzied opponents.
And it is an utter disgrace.
Love or hate Trump, no American should ever be amused by the notion of their president being murdered, or having his severed head paraded in the name of comedy.
‘This is vile and wrong,’ tweeted Chelsea Clinton in a very rare show of solidarity with Trump after Kathy Griffin’s stunt. ‘It is never funny to joke about killing a president.’
There speaks someone who had to live for eight years as a young girl in the White House with the constant terrifying fear that someone might try to murder her father.
Just as they have tried to murder other presidents a total of 20 times, four times successfully.
The way for liberals to beat Donald Trump is not by wishing him dead.
It is by using everything in the American democratic system to defeat him by fair means not foul.
That means at the ballot box, in the 2018 mid-term elections and the 2020 general election.
And it means by putting constant pressure on lawmakers to enforce every check and balance in their power to keep Trump’s more Caesar-esque aspirations at bay.
Just as they have been doing on things like his travel ban.
This week, we will see the full force of US democracy in action when Attorney General Jeff Sessions is grilled at a US Senate hearing about the firing of FBI Director James Comey and alleged Russian collusion in fixing the last election.
It if transpires during any these hearings that there was a collusion between Trump or his campaign associates and Putin’s hackers, then the president will be politically dead. It if doesn’t, then unlike Caesar, he will survive to continue his tenure.
That is how US democracy works, not through a knife or gun.