Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) — Actor Peter Fonda has apologized for a series of what he now calls “vulgar” tweets, one of which said, “…We should rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.” Barron Trump is the 12-year-old son of President Trump and wife Melania.
The tweets were in reference to a years-old immigration policy that has seen children separated from their families in the event they crossed the border illegally.
First lady Melania Trump’s office notified the Secret Service of the threat, calling the comment “sick and irresponsible.”
“I tweeted something highly inappropriate and vulgar about the president and his family in response to the devastating images I was seeing on television,” Fonda said through his representative. “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. 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.”
Fonda also posted another tweet that called Homeland Security secretary Kristjen Nielsen a vulgar slang term for the female anatomy — clarifying that the word he used was deliberately much more offensive than the “c-word” that recently got Samantha Bee in hot water when she aimed it at first daughter Ivanka Trump.
Fonda suggested Nielsen be, “put in a cage…in Lafayette Square naked and whipped…while being filmed for posterity.” He also called Sarah Huckabee Sanders the same vulgar term, and called for her children to be taken from her, as well. Fonda’s tweets were eventually deleted.
Deadline notes that Sony Pictures Classics called Fonda’s tweets “abhorrent,” but noted he only has a “minor” part in their upcoming movie Boundaries, so it won’t pull the film — something Donald Trump Jr. predicted.
Copyright © 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.