President Trump lashed out at singer John Legend and his wife, model Chrissy Teigen, on Twitter Sunday night after Legend appeared on MSNBC as part of a special town hall on criminal justice reform hosted by NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt.
“When all of the people pushing so hard for Criminal Justice Reform were unable to come even close to getting it done, they came to me as a group and asked for my help,” Trump tweeted. “I got it done with a group of Senators & others who would never have gone for it. Obama couldn’t come close… A man named @VanJones68, and many others, were profusely grateful (at that time!). I SIGNED IT INTO LAW, no one else did, & Republicans deserve much credit.”
He apparently did not think the MSNBC special gave him and Republicans their proper due for passing what’s known as the First Step Act.
ADVERTISEMENT
“But now that it is passed, people that had virtually nothing to do with it are taking the praise,” he continued. “Guys like boring… musician @johnlegend, and his filthy mouthed wife, are talking now about how great it is—but I didn’t see them around when we needed help getting it passed.”
Legend later responded to Trump by imploring first lady Melania Trump to help calm her husband down with love.
“Imagine being president of a whole country and spending your Sunday night hate-watching MSNBC hoping somebody—ANYBODY—will praise you,” he wrote. “Melania, please praise this man. He needs you.”
As for Teigen, whom Trump blocked on Twitter more than two years ago, she had a more direct message to the president. She tweeted, “lol what a pussy ass bitch. tagged everyone but me. an honor, mister president.”
Later, she added, “the absolute best part of his tweet is I literally didn’t speak in the special, nor was I mentioned. I’m cackling at the pointless addition of me because he cannot not be a bitch.”
During the #JusticeForAll special, Legend promoted his organization FREEAMERICA, which “aims to amplify the conversation about mass incarceration at the local, state, and national levels.”
The president went on to attack the host of the special in his tweetstorm, complaining that Lester Holt didn’t “even bring up the subject of President Trump or the Republicans when talking about… the importance or passage of Criminal Justice Reform. They only talk about the minor players, or people that had nothing to do with it… And the people that so desperately sought my help when everyone else had failed, all they talk about now is Impeaching President Trump!”
However, during the Dateline episode that preceded the town hall on Sunday night, Holt did explicitly give Trump credit for passing the law, showing footage of him signing the bill in the Oval Office and noting that is “projected to reduce the sentences of thousands of non-violent offenders in federal prisons.” But, the anchor added, “that doesn’t affect more than 90 percent of the U.S. prison population, which is locked up in state and local facilities.”
