‘Where’s John Wilkes Booth when you need him?’ Broadway star wants Trump assassinated (VIDEO)
Broadway star Carole Cook told a photographer that she’d like to see Donald Trump assassinated after a fan of the president unfurled a ‘Trump 2020’ banner during a performance of ‘Frozen’ the week before.
The 94-year-old actress was leaving a Hollywood restaurant with her husband on Sunday night when the pair were accosted by a TMZ paparazzo. The photographer asked Cook if a theater was an appropriate place to bring a Trump banner to.
“My answer to that is,” Cook replied, “where is John Wilkes Booth when you need him? Right?” referring to the actor and Confederate sympathizer who shot President Abraham Lincoln dead in a theater in 1865.
Cook and her husband, Tom Troupe, laughed, and another person, off-camera, asked “so we need to kill President Trump?”
“Someone should,” replied Troupe. “Why not,” Cook added.
“Will I be on an enemies’ list?” Cook then said. “My God, I hope so.”
Cook’s comments provoked outrage on the right. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee tweeted Monday that Cook’s stunt was “not just sick,” but “a crime.”
"You have the right to remain silent." These are the lines this actress may need to memorize! This is not just sick-it's a crime. https://t.co/ql5nBbqktv
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) September 10, 2018
Cook is not the first celebrity to reference the Lincoln assassination when talking about Trump. Johnny Depp, in a drunken ramble to the audience at Glastonbury Arts Festival last year, wondered “when was the last time an actor assassinated a president?,” adding “maybe it’s time.”
Depp and Cook join a long list of celebrities who have publicly spun violent revenge fantasies against Trump. Actor and activist Peter Fonda has called for the president’s 11-year-old son, Barron, to be “put in a cage with pedophiles,” pop star Madonna has spoken of wanting to “blow up the White House,” and comedienne Kathy Griffin made headlines when she posed for a photoshoot with a mockup of Trump’s bloodied and severed head.
Calls for violence in the name of #resistance have come from the political arena too. California Congresswoman Maxine Waters kicked off a summer of unprecedented Democrat rage when she called on supporters in June to harass Trump administration officials in the street.
Waters’ words drew Trump’s ire, and he hit back by branding her “mad Maxine” and “an extraordinarily low IQ person.”
Waters defended her remarks on Saturday, telling a Democrat crowd in Los Angeles that she threatens Trump’s supporters and constituents “all the time,” but insisted that she does “not advocate violence.”
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