President Trump on Wednesday accused ABC of a double standard in its decision to cancel the hit sitcom “Roseanne,” whose star, Roseanne Barr, is a vocal Trump supporter who has come under fire for a racist tweet she sent earlier in the week.
“Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ‘ABC does not tolerate comments like those’ made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?” Trump tweeted.
The tweet is Trump’s first response to the show’s cancellation, in which he chose to focus on Iger rather than the substance of Barr’s comments. Barr later retweeted Trump’s post.
{mosads}Barr on Tuesday sent a tweet likening Jarrett, a black former adviser to President Obama, to an ape. Jarrett revealed later in the day that Iger called her before announcing “Roseanne” had been nixed.
In the now-deleted tweet, Barr wrote: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj,” referring to Jarrett by her initials. Barr later apologized, but retweeted messages of support from her fans, including one who said “Roseanne is not racist.”
The comedian’s remark drew nationwide backlash and ABC quickly moved to cancel the show, despite its high ratings.
ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey called the remark “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values” in a statement announcing the cancellation, and Iger added on Twitter that “there was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said later Wednesday that “nobody is defending her comments,” which she called “inappropriate.” But she said Trump is frustrated by a “double standard” in the media.
She rattled off a list of grievances with Disney, which is the parent company of ABC and ESPN, citing anti-Trump comments made by personalities such as Jemele Hill, Keith Olbermann, Joy Behar and Kathy Griffin.
“The president is pointing to the hypocrisy in the media, saying that [sic] the most horrible thing about this president and nobody addresses it,” Sanders said.
Hill was suspended by ESPN in part due to her tweets calling Trump a “white supremacist” and Griffin was fired by CNN, which is not affiliated with Disney, for tweeting a gruesome image of Trump.
The president has previously boasted of the “Roseanne” reboot’s large viewership, which many said represented the daily lives of his supporters. Trump even called Barr last year to congratulate her on the show’s success.
But the White House insisted on Tuesday that Trump was not focused on the show’s cancellation and suggested he would not weigh in on it.
“That’s not what the president is looking at. That’s not what he’s spending his time on. And I think that we have a lot bigger things going on in the country right now, certainly that the president is spending his time when it comes to policy,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.
The president did not weigh in on the controversy during a campaign rally on Tuesday night in Nashville.
–Julia Manchester contributed to this report, which was updated at 3:49 p.m.