If you thought perhaps the spirit of Leviathan—that is, one of chaos and confusion—would tone it down one week after House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., and several other Republicans were nearly assassinated during a baseball practice, you were sadly mistaken.
Earlier manifestations in the form of Kathy Griffin’s depiction of President Donald Trump decapitated as if done by an ISIS terrorist, and the Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar featuring an actor appearing like the president in lieu of the former Roman emperor, had nothing on what Johnny Depp had to say Thursday night at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England. At the grand opening of the Cineramageddon drive-in theater, the A-list actor spoke before a screening of his film The Libertine and began rambling on about his disdain for the president.
“I think he needs help and there are a lot of wonderful dark, dark places he could go,” in response to an audience member’s comment that President Trump “needs rehabilitation,” before continuing. “By the way, this is going to be in the press. It will be horrible. I like that you are all a part of it.”
“When was the last time an actor assassinated the president?” he asked, eliciting cheers from the crowd. “Now, I just want to clarify, I am not an actor. I lie for a living.
“However, it has been a while, and maybe it is time.”
Perhaps knowing what he just said was not only going to appear in the press, but earn him an uncomfortable visit from the Secret Service, Depp said, “It’s just a question. I’m not insinuating anything.” But, in fact, he was—as has the rest of liberal elite in Hollywood and the media who keep pushing their narratives intended to delegitimize the Trump presidency.
Apparently, the Secret Service has received enough calls about Depp’s comments that it felt compelled to release the following statement:
The Secret Service is aware of the comment in question. For security reasons, we cannot discuss specifically nor in general terms the means and methods of how we perform our protective responsibilities.
As tone deaf as the comments were, the entire event was seeping with irony as well. The film that was being screened features Depp playing John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, a 17th-century poet who was notorious for his many moral failings—an issue that has steadily crept into the actor’s personal life, as well. And the drive-in at which the screening took place was constructed with a “post-apocalyptic” end-times theme. {eoa}
