Jimmy Kimmel has hit out at Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claim that the DOJ was planning to assassinate Donald Trump – calling it so “stupid and dangerous.”
Ms Greene made the wild accusation that as the Justice Department had authorised the use of “deadly force” during an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resilience, claiming they were “planning to assassinate him.” The FBI said that “standard procedure” was followed – with the use of force only being allowed in the most extreme of circumstances.
“This would actually be funny if it wasn’t so stupid and dangerous,” Kimmel said through nervous laughter on his Wednesday night show.
The Georgia congresswoman made this claim after court files were unsealed on Tuesday in Mr Trump’s classified documents case, which included orders relating to when the FBI searched Mar-A-Lago in 2022 and seized hundreds of documents. Mr Trump is charged with taking classified national defense documents from the White House after he left office and of resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials. He has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.
The operation order in the newly-unsealed filing stated that “Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary.”
“Which is a standard operating procedure whenever the FBI execute a search warrant,” Kimmel explained. “But in the MAGA-verse, it is a plot to kill Donald Trump.”
Ms Greene proceeded to send out a series of social media posts making wild claims such as “The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light.”
“Does everyone get it yet???!!!!” she followed. “What are Republicans going to do about it?”
“What a rich imagination this woman has; you almost think she has the brain of a child,” Kimmel reacted.
The FBI put out a statement over the situation. “The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force,” the statement read.
“No one ordered additional steps to be taken, and there was no departure from the norm in this matter,” it added.
Kimmel then asked whether the audience thought that this statement would “stop the right-wing outrage machine from spinning like mad?”
“Of course, it didn’t,” he said before running various clips from outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax showing questions over if ”Democrats are trying to kill our president.”
Kimmel poked fun at the irony of this, even pointing to the fact that Mr Trump was not at Mar-a-Lago, which was shuttered for the season, at the time of the raid.
“Diabolical mastermind Joe Biden sent an elite team of ultra-liberal FBI agents to assassinate Donald Trump,” Kimmel said sarcastically. “But somehow he slipped out the back door; somehow they missed the fact that the loudest and most famous man in America and all 15 of his secret service agents were in New Jersey at the time that they raided Mar-a-Lago.”
However, the late show host pointed to the fact that despite this, Mr Trump was also “screaming,” as Kimmel put it, on Truth Social about the wording of the operation order.
“WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE,” Mr Trump wrote in a post on Tuesday night. “NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT FOR OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!”
All the while Mr Trump was ranting claims that the DOJ authorised the use of deadly force, he also managed to slip in another complaint about the Manhattan courtroom used for his hush money trial, which he complains is “freezing cold” and an “icebox.”
