Trump weighs in on Roseanne: Where's my apology from ABC?
President Trump on Wednesday responded to ABC’s firing of Roseanne Barr over a tweet that made a racist slur against former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. And, true to form, the president made it about him.
“Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ‘ABC does not tolerate comments like those’ made by Roseanne Barr,” Trump tweeted, referring to Disney chief Iger. “Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?”
It’s unclear what statements Trump was referring to. His tweet came less than a day after White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the president was too busy to comment on Barr.
ABC Entertainment canceled “Roseanne” on Tuesday after Barr, in a now-deleted tweet, referred to Jarrett, who is African-American, as the offspring of the “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes.”
In another tweet, Barr called billionaire Democratic donor and a Holocaust survivor George Soros “a Nazi” who “turned in his fellow Jews 2 be murdered in concentration camps & stole their wealth.” Discredited conspiracy theories portraying Soros — who is Jewish and was 9 years old when World War II began — as a Nazi collaborator have become right-wing internet staples.
Barr later apologized for her tweet about Jarrett, suggesting the sleep aid Ambien was to blame.
Ambien manufacturer responds to Roseanne: 'Racism is not a known side effect' https://t.co/EAEDb7o2LN by @stableford pic.twitter.com/3iv14VF5d2
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) May 30, 2018
The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., retweeted two of Barr’s tweets about Soros, including the false “Nazi” claim.
ABC had been praised by critics for bringing back “Roseanne” — a show that featured a Trump supporter as its lead character.
The president, who took credit for the successful reboot and even called Barr to congratulate her, did not mention her firing at his rally in Nashville Tuesday night.
On Air Force One en route to the speech, Sanders told reporters that Trump was too focused on his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to comment on the show’s cancellation.
“That’s not what the president is looking at,” Sanders said. “That’s not what he’s spending his time on. And I think that we have a lot bigger things going on in the country right now, certainly, that the president is spending his time on.”
At a press briefing at the White House Wednesday, Sanders said Trump was “simply calling out the media bias” in his tweet about Iger.
“The president is pointing out the hypocrisy in the media,” she said before reading a lengthy statement citing examples of alleged bias. “Where was Bob Iger’s apology to White House staff for Jemele Hill calling the president and anyone associated with him a white supremacist, to Christians around the world for Joy Behar calling Christianity a mental illness? Where was the apology for Kathy Griffin going on a profane rant on ‘The View’ after a photo showed her holding the president’s decapitated head? And where was the apology from Bob Iger for ESPN hiring Keith Olbermann after his numerous expletive-laced tweets attacking the president as a Nazi and even expanding Olbermann’s role after that attack against the president’s family? This is a double standard.”
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