Actor Don Cheadle is the most recent celebrity to wish a horrific death upon Donald Trump.
After Nykea Aldridge died in the crossfire of a Chicago gun fight on August 26, Trump tweeted: “Dwayne Wade's cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!”
Many in the Twitterverse viewed this statement as insensitive, taking the focus off of the tragedy and placing it on the Trump campaign. But Cheadle’s response to Trump took a violent turn. After tweeting “You are truly a POS,” the actor tweeted “Sorry. I misspelled ‘die in a grease fire.’”
After receiving flak from followers, Cheadle protested that he was using an exaggerated “diss” from a David “Viffer” Peat quote. And on August 28, he tweeted to a disappointed fan: “Do you know what ‘hyperbole’ is? I don’t wish him actual death! Just want him to shut up and lose!”
USA Today’s Fredreka Schouten called the actor’s violent language “pretty salty.” In his coverage of the exchange, Slate’s Matthew Dessem wrote that “Cheadle’s tweets are an example of the increasingly frank descriptions Donald Trump is inspiring.”
Huffington Post certainly revels in those frank descriptions. At the end of each Trump-related article, an editor's note reads: “Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims … from entering the U.S.”
Of course, the question remains: what would the media say about a conservative celeb telling Hillary to die an awful death? I’m sure they’d have some choice words.
