23 Jun 2017 Jahr - NEW YORK TIMES Johnny Depp, Courting Outrage, Flirts With Idea of Trump Assassination

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Johnny Depp, Courting Outrage, Flirts With Idea of Trump Assassination

LONDON — The actor Johnny Depp has become the latest American entertainment figure to suggest — however jokingly, ironically or obliquely — the killing of President Trump.

Speaking on Thursday at the Glastonbury arts festival in southwest England, Mr. Depp asked the audience, “Can you bring Trump here?”

The remark was met with booing and jeering, and he continued: “You misunderstand completely. When was the last time an actor assassinated a president? I want to clarify: I’m not an actor. I lie for a living. However, it’s been a while and maybe it’s time.”

The words were being interpreted as an allusion to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, in 1865.

Mr. Depp, who was introducing a screening of his 2004 film “The Libertine,” about the womanizing poet John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester, acknowledged that his words would cause a storm.

“By the way, this is going to be in the press and it’ll be horrible,” he said. “It’s just a question, I’m not insinuating anything.”

Mr. Depp’s comments immediately drew rebukes, with his critics describing them as particularly distasteful and dangerous given their timing.

A gunman, believed to be upset about Mr. Trump’s election, opened fire last week at members of the Republican congressional baseball team at a field in a Washington suburb.

“Secret Service, we have video evidence of Johnny Depp threatening to assassinate President Trump. Please do something!” an account linked to Tennessee Republicans wrote on Twitter. Others suggested that Mr. Depp’s films should be boycotted, although supporters countered that the remarks were clearly in jest.

Mr. Depp is the latest celebrity to come under fire for making violent allusions toward Mr. Trump, spurring a debate about where to draw the lines between incitement, political commentary and art over a president who has shown no reluctance to antagonize opponents.

New York’s Public Theater recently lost financial support and drew protests over a production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in which the assassinated Roman ruler had strawberry blond hair and bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Trump.

In May, an image was released of Kathy Griffin, an author and comic, posing with what appeared to be the bloodied and severed head of the president.

Mr. Trump said the image had upset his family and, amid outrage across the political spectrum, CNN fired Ms. Griffin from her job as co-host of its New Year’s Eve program.

“Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself,” the president wrote on Twitter. “My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!”

In January, Madonna, speaking at a women’s march in Washington, said that she’d “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

Mr. Trump himself has come under attack for remarks about physical harm against his political opponents. During the presidential election, he mused aloud about gun rights advocates taking matters into their own hands if Hillary Clinton were to become president and appoint judges who supported tighter gun control regulations.

The suggestion, however oblique, provoked strong objections, including from Bernice A. King, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who called Mr. Trump’s words “distasteful, disturbing, dangerous.”

Mr. Depp, 54, is known for his performances in films like “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Edward Scissorhands” and has been nominated three times for an Academy Award, but he has recently been in the headlines over his divorce from the actress Amber Heard and over financial difficulties.


SOURCE:
US VA Court Documents:
- Amber Heard Exhibit 82

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