The New York Times and CNN’s parent company Time Warner are standing by their sponsorship of a play that depicts the brutal assassination of President Donald Trump, raising the question of whether the news reporting outlets should retain their credentials to cover and have access to President Trump. Delta Airlines and Bank of America have reportedly dropped their support for the play in the wake of public outrage over the play’s depiction of Trump’s assassination.
Screen images via Michael Delauzon/Twitter.
The play, a Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar, is set in the modern era with Trump as Caesar and his wife Melania as Calpurnia. Trump is murdered in a scene that has been describes as unusually graphic for the production of the play. The free play in New York City’s Central Park is paid for by corporate and foundation grants.
You Tube video report by Inside Edition.
The Times issued a statement standing by their sponsorship of the play to Fast Company.
We have sponsored Shakespeare in the Park for 20 years. As an institution that believes in free speech for the arts as well as the media, we support the right of the Public Theater to stage the production as they chose.”
CNS News reported on Time Warner’s sponsorship, via the Time Warner Foundation, of the play:
Time Warner, the parent company of CNN, is one of the companies still sponsoring The Public Theater, a New York Shakespeare group that offers free tickets to anyone who wants to see President Trump assassinated in the group’s rendition of Julius Caesar.
The New York City government’s “Department of Cultural Affairs” also sponsors the theatre group. In this “Shakespeare in the Park” play, a man with unkempt blonde hair, a blue suit and red tie is married to a woman wearing designer outfits and speaking with a Slavic-like accent.
At the end of the play, the Trump/Caesar character is brutally stabbed to death in a lengthy assassination scene.
CNN host Fareed Zakaria, like his employer’s parent company, Time Warner, supports the play. Zakaria even went so far as to declare it a “masterpiece.”
“If you’re in NYC, go see Julius Caesar, free in Central Park, brilliantly interpreted for Trump era. A masterpiece,” he tweeted at the end of May.
The New York Times promoted an image of a beheaded Stephen Miller, a senior Trump aide, in a tweet earlier this year that called Miller “Public Enemy No. 1”.
White House adviser Stephen Miller became Public Enemy No. 1 with a few late-night hosts on Monday https://t.co/cc4nseYxq0 pic.twitter.com/OAFIlKw1j0
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 14, 2017
CNN’s (now fired) New Year’s Eve host Kathy Griffin released a photograph of herself holding a mock severed head of Trump.
With such ISIS-type homicidal urges raging within the ranks of CNN and the New York Times, is President Trump’s safety being compromised by allowing their reporters and crews to be credentialed to cover and have access to President Trump?
(NOTE: Liberals are pointing to a little noticed two-week run of a 2012 production of Julius Caesar that featured then President Barack Obama as Caesar with Republican and “Occupy Rome” opposition. That play did not attract controversy at the time as it apparently did not murder Obama on stage with the gusto that this production does with Trump–nor was it done in the context of fulfilling fevered assassination wishes as now.)
