Actor Peter Fonda has issued an apology for his “inappropriate and vulgar” tweet about the president’s son, Barron Trump, in which he called for him to be “ripped” from his mother and put in a “cage with pedophiles.”
After some since-deleted tweets the 78-year-old actor made about the Trump Administration’s policy of separating children from their families at the southern border gained negative attention and were flagged by the Secret Service, he’s issued an apology and brief explanation for his rhetoric.
"I tweeted something highly inappropriate and vulgar about the president and his family in response to the devastating images I was seeing on television. Like many Americans, I am very impassioned and distraught over the situation with children separated from their families at the border, but I went way too far," he wrote in a statement provided to Fox News. "It was wrong and I should not have done it. I immediately regretted it and sincerely apologize to the family for what I said and any hurt my words have caused."
As previously reported, the star caught flak online for tweeting that someone should rip the 12-year-old son of Donald Trump “from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.”
Twitter users, including Donald Trump Jr., immediately jumped on Fonda for his comments noting that calling for the rape of a child goes far beyond political debate. Stephanie Grisham, the first lady's spokesperson, called the tweet "sick and irresponsible" in a statement to Fox News and said the United States Secret Service has been notified of Fonda's threats.
The star’s tweets did not stop at the comments about the first lady and her son. In other since-deleted tweets, he used vulgar language to comment on Sarah Sanders, Stephen Miller and Kirstjen Nielsen.
Since then, many fans, led by a charge from Trump Jr. have been calling for a boycott of Fonda's upcoming movie "Boundaries."
Although Fonda has both deleted and apologized for the threatening tweets and vulgar comments made about the Trump family and administration, he’s far from gone back on his crusade to tweet about the Trump administration’s immigration policy. A cursory scroll through his Twitter of late will see a number of passionate responses and retweets to stories and pundits cricial of the border practice.
In the midst of the controversy surrounding Fonda, president Trump signed an executive order that would end the practice of separating children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border.