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Louise Thomas
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Anthony Anderson has appealed for calm following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
The controversial actor and presenter, 53, is the guest host of talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live this week.
“It’s a weird night. Everybody’s still shaken up by the tragic events at the Trump rally this Saturday. All weekend, I kept thinking, ‘I wonder what Jimmy Kimmel’s gonna say about this on Monday,’” Anderson joked in his monologue on Monday. “And then I was like, ‘Oh s***! I am Jimmy Kimmel on Monday.’”
Anderson went on to pay tribute to those who were injured at the rally in Pennsylvania. The shooting left one bystander, Corey Comperatore, dead and two seriously injured.
“In all seriousness, I do wanna say that our thoughts are with the families of the victims,” said Anderson. “And that, hopefully, this will be a moment that we can all take a step back from the hatred and vitriol in our politics and maybe chill the f*** out.”
His comment was met with applause and cheering from the audience.
“By the way, if you want to maintain your sanity during this crazy time, do NOT go on the internet,” Anderson continued. “There are insane conspiracies popping up on both sides. You know how the far right has Q-Anon? Well, conspiracy theories from the far left are now being called Blue-Anon. Blue-Anon? That sounds like a support group for people who give anonymous oral sex.”
Anderson went on to point out that some Americans are already looking to cash in on the assassination attempt, highlighting a number of sellers on Etsy. One was a T-shirt bearing an image of Trump punching the air following the shooting with the slogan: “My pronouns are you/missed.”
Anderson also joked about Trump’s decision to select JD Vance as his running mate, saying: “Vance has everything Trump was looking for in a running mate: He’s white... Well, that’s pretty much it.” He also joked that Vance “looks like Eric and Don Jr had a baby.”
For The Independent, Nick Hilton examined what Vance’s 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy can tell us about the new VP candidate and his right-wing beliefs.
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“Politicians are like superheroes: it’s all about the origin story,” writes Hilton. “For JD Vance, Donald Trump’s newly minted pick for vice president, the interrelation between the man and his story is everything. Not since a young lawyer called Barack Obama – with ambitions for reaching the Illinois state senate – published Dreams from My Father in 1995, has a memoir served to propel a political career quite like Vance’s 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy.”
