US President appears to respond to heckler by mouthing ‘f*** you’ and raising his middle finger
US President Donald Trump appeared to give the middle finger to a person heard calling him a “paedophile protector” as he toured the Ford’s Michigan plant on Tuesday.
In a 30-second video obtained by entertainment news site TMZ, he appears to point at the heckler and say “f*** you” before walking away as he makes the obscene gesture with his right hand.
The Ford employee, identified by Washington Post as 40-year-old TJ Sabula, has since been suspended by the car manufacturer pending an investigation.
“As far as calling him out, definitely no regrets whatsoever,” Sabula told the Post.
Could this be a sign of Trump cracking?
The heckle appeared to be a reference to Jeffrey Epstein, after the President pushed back on the release of files relating to the late sex offender’s case for months last year, despite having vowed on the campaign trail that he would release them if he were re-elected.
Federal law required the majority of the files to be released by 19 December under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which came into force in November, after 427 members of the House of Representatives voted in favour of its release. However, so far, the Department of Justice has apparently released less than one per cent of the documents.
In the years before the disgraced financier died in 2019, the US President was photographed with the sex offender and his former partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
US attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Paul Engelmayer, the New York judge overseeing the case, earlier this month to detail efforts to protect the identities of victims that had apparently slowed down the process.
Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing or charged with any crimes in connection with Epstein.
Tests at home and abroad
Trump has recently been feeling the heat over other issues both at home and abroad, from public outcry over the shooting of a woman by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, to the US seizure of Venezuela‘s President and protests in Iran.
As he issues threats to other countries, President is also struggling with widespread anger over the cost of living in the US, with high inflation and unemployment presenting a challenge as November’s midterm elections edge closer.
Nevertheless, on Tuesday he declared the “greatest first year in history” in terms of stabilising inflation and economic growth late last year.
But what may be his crudest behaviour yet has raised eyebrows, coming just months after he made headlines by ordering a female reporter from Bloomberg News, “quiet piggy”, when she asked him a question on Epstein.
Around the same time, at a White House press event, ABC reporter Mary Bruce asked Epstein-related questions with Trump responding that her network was “a crappy company”.
During another press conference, he cut off another female reporter “quiet, quiet” before moving onto another reporter.
Confrontational style
“I would put this down mainly to Trump’s confrontational style. The heckler apparently called Trump a ‘paedophile protector’, and Trump returned with his own hostile response,” said Dr Richard Johnson, senior lecturer in US politics and policy and Queen Mary University of London.
“It is not very ‘presidential’ behaviour, but it isn’t unusual for Trump, who has been known to swear and use obscenities,” he continued, describing it as fairly typical behaviour for Trump.
He told The i Paper that other presidents had tended to reserve their coarse language for behind the scenes, noting that it’s only known that former presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon swore in private frequently because they recorded conversations on tapes.
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Following the incident, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said: “A lunatic was wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage, and the President gave an appropriate and unambiguous response.”
