Cue outrage!
VINCE VAUGHN SHAKES HANDS WITH TRUMP AT FOOTBALL GAME
On Monday night, a Louisiana university football team pulled off an incredible win over its competitor to snatch a college championship, but most people — most non-sports people — only care about Vince Vaughn and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Journalist Timothy Burke caught the two chumming it up in a 30-second video that’s been viewed more than 3.7 million times on Twitter.
The Wedding Crashers actor and the president are seen engrossed in conversation, nodding and laughing while first lady Melania Trump sits wedged between them in a skybox. Halfway into the video, Trump reaches out and shakes Vaughn’s hand, the actor gets up and waves goodbye to the couple, and departs.
Burke captioned the video, “I’m very sorry to have to share this video with you. All of it, every part of it.”
Reaction online was swift, with many right-wingers decrying “lefties” for supposedly cancelling Vaughn, a term meaning to boycott a person if they’ve done something outrageously disagreeable. However, it’s been smaller left-wing accounts that seemed to take issue with the handshake, but no prominent Democrat or liberal weighed in.
The interaction between Vaughn and Trump was a prominently discussed topic on Tuesday’s Fox & Friends segment, where hosts Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy went so far as to suggest the Left might incite a civil war because of their purported outrage.
“Unless America talks to the other side and we can just talk to each other, they might as well just split the country right in half — right down the Mississippi (River),” Doocy said.
“We tried that once,” Kilmeade responded. There has been no widespread call to boycott the actor’s movies, with some pointing out that he’s been a known Republican, supporting the conservative candidates in the last three elections, and even calls himself a libertarian.
Some of the disapproval has been more reserved than right-wingers suggest. “I’m not angry about Vince Vaughn, just profoundly disappointed. And I want nothing more to do with him. Once upon a time I found him quite entertaining. Not anymore,” tweeted one user.
“The left doesn’t want to cancel Vince Vaughn because they can’t remember who he is,” tweeted the editor at The Daily Beast.
One of the most outraged tweets came sarcastically from Siraj Hashmi, a Washington Examiner writer who is a staunch right-winger. “Ladies & gentleman, I regret to inform you Vince Vaughn is CANCELED,” he tweeted.
Fox News framed Hashmi’s tweet in their coverage of the incident as leftist outrage, before editing and rewriting the paragraph to say Hashmi was making a prediction that would “trigger ... the left”
A few hours after Fox published the initial report, Hashmi said pro-Trump accounts trolled his Instagram.
This is not the first time a Hollywood celebrity has faced backlash for cosying up with a Republican president. Daytime talk show host Ellen DeGeneres was spotted sitting beside former president George W. Bush at an NFL game in early October last year.
She faced criticism online for seemingly joking and getting along with Bush, who started the Iraq war and endorsed an amendment to the constitution that was against same-sex marriage.
She addressed the issue on her show the following Monday. “Just because I don’t agree with someone on everything doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be friends with them,” she said. “When I say, ‘Be kind to one another,’ I don’t mean only the people that think the same way that you do. I mean be kind to everyone. Doesn’t matter.”
People still criticized her afterward, saying she’s able to benefit from her class and stature.