Trump wades into furor over racist tweet
LOS ANGELES — US President Donald Trump jumped into the uproar over comedian Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet, complaining on Wednesday that the Walt Disney Co executive who apologized for her comments had turned a deaf ear to criticism of him by the Disneyowned ABC network.
Barr sparked widespread anger with a tweet on Tuesday about former Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett. Barr wrote in a now-deleted message: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby = vj.”
The tweet led the Disneyowned ABC network to cancel its hit revival of her Roseanne sitcom. Trump has cited the revival’s popularity as evidence that his supporters, who include Barr, want shows that speak to their concerns.
Jarrett said on Tuesday that Disney CEO Bob Iger called her before ABC announced the show’s cancellation.
“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?” Trump said on Twitter.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a briefing that Trump’s comments were not a defense of Barr’s tweet.
“The president is simply calling out the media bias. No one is defending what she said,” Sanders said.
She brought up several examples of what she called a media slant against Trump and his administration. These included comments made by ABC’s The View host Joy Behar about Vice-President Mike Pence’s Christian faith and comedian Kathy Griffin’s comments on the same television program as well as Disney-owned ESPN’s former host Jemele Hill and ESPN’s recent hiring of television personality Keith Olbermann, both of whom have called Trump a “white supremacist”.
Barr later blamed her earlymorning outburst on a dose of the sleeping pill Ambien, prompting a swift retort from pharma giant Sanofi.
“While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication,” it said on Twitter.
On Tuesday, Barr had apologized “for making a bad joke” about Jarrett, who is black and was born in Iran to US parents.
“Don’t feel sorry for me, guys!!,” Barr said in a tweet late on Tuesday. “I just want to apologize to the hundreds of people, and wonderful writers (all liberal) and talented actors who lost their jobs on my show due to my stupid tweet.”
On Wednesday, she said on Twitter she did not know Jarrett was black.
Barr’s Twitter profile drew supportive comments, with some users saying they believed she had been treated unfairly because of her politics. She responded, saying, “you guys make me feel like fighting back. I will examine all of my options carefully and get back to U.” The current iteration of
Roseanne, which originally ran from 1988 to 1997, was ABC’s biggest hit of the 20172018 season, drawing an average 18.7 million viewers, second only to CBS’s The Big
Bang Theory, according to Nielsen data through May 20.