Actress and activist Bette Midler took to Twitter on June 4 to urge someone close to President Donald Trump to stab him.
Midler shared a post made by radical filmmaker Michael Moore that included a picture of Trump with a new hairstyle at a church in Virginia, where he went after the recent shooting in Virginia Beach.
“He actually looks better here! Maybe someone in his camp can gently give him a shiv. I mean, shove,” Midler wrote.
A shiv is a crude knife that is fashioned out of materials on hand and typically refers to weapons inside of prison.
Midler has in the past encouraged people to commit violence against Republicans, writing in November that Trump and members of his family should be hung.
Midler this week shared a quote attributed to Trump that is fake, earning ire from a number of users before the president himself responded.
“Washed up psycho Bette Midler was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make ‘your great president’ look really bad,” Trump said.
“She got caught, just like the Fake News Media gets caught. A sick scammer!” he added.
Washed up psycho @BetteMidler was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make “your great president” look really bad. She got caught, just like the Fake News Media gets caught. A sick scammer!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2019
Midler shared the quote that claimed Trump criticized Republicans as “the dumbest group of voters in the country” in an alleged People magazine article.
The left-leaning fact-checking website Snopes has said the quote was falsified.
“Despite People’s comprehensive online content archive, we found no interview or profile on Donald Trump in 1998 (or any other time) that quoted his saying anything that even vaguely resembled the words in this meme,” Snopes stated in an October 2015 article.
“Trump appeared somewhat regularly in the magazine’s pages before he came to star on The Apprentice, but the bulk of the magazine’s celebrity-driven coverage of him back then centered on his marriages to, and divorces from, Ivana Trump and Marla Maples,” the site added.
“PEOPLE looked into this matter exhaustively when the quote first surfaced,” a magazine spokesperson said in a statement obtained by Politifact, another left-leaning fact-checking site. “We combed through every Trump story in our archive and did not find anything remotely like this quote–and no Trump interview in 1998.”
Midler also deleted the fake quote.
Midler took to Twitter earlier this year to suggest someone should attack Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
Paul was assaulted by his neighbor in November 2018 and suffered several serious injuries including broken ribs and bruises to his lungs.
The tweet has not been deleted as of June 5.
“Where’s Rand Paul’s neighbor when we need him?” she wrote.
Sergio Gor, one of Paul’s aides, hit back after Midler sent the tweet out.
“This is disgusting @BetteMidler calling for violence. She should be ashamed,” Gor tweeted.
Other people expressed dismay over Midler’s call for violence.
“Usually I don’t care what celebrities say about politics, I’ve loved Bette since I was a little kid—but this statement made me lose all respect for her. Ick,” said one.
She has not apologized for any of the calls for violence.
