A BBC presenter sparked outrage after tweeting that President Joe Biden should have Donald Trump “murdered” following the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling.
“If I was Biden I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security,” Radio 4 host David Aaronovitch, 69, wrote on X.
The tweet was in response to the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling on Monday that stated Trump has immunity for “official acts” he made during his time in office.
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Aaronovitch deleted the tweet amid the outrage and followed it up with another post suggesting it was simply “satire.”
“There’s now a far right pile on suggesting that my tweet about the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity is an incitement to violence when it’s plainly a satire. So I’m deleting it. If nothing else though it’s given me a map of some the daftest people on this site,” he wrote.
GB News contributor Alex Armstrong slammed Aaronovitch after he deleted his post. “Backtracking now. Did your handlers get in touch and tell you to deny it?” he wrote.
“Ooh Alex. Tell me about my ‘handlers,’” Aaronovitch wrote in reply.
Aaronovitch, who won the Orwell Prize for political journalism in 2001, is well-known for his scathing political takes, including suggesting in 2016 that Brexit would eventually be reversed as older voters started to die off.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in the dissent she wrote with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that the ruling would mean a president would receive immunity if they were to assassinate a political rival.
When a president “uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune,” Sotomayor suggested.
