Every now and then, even in the moral void of Tinseltown, a blind squirrel manages to find a nut.
Actress Shailene Woodley, who - how shall I put this? - isn’t exactly known for publicly touting conservative views, blasted industry friends she says celebrated the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump and who lamented that the shooter didn’t manage to kill him.
The “Divergent” star made the comments in response to criticism she says she got after reposting Melania Trump’s statement on social media, in which the former First Lady said she doesn’t believe we’ve gotten the full story behind how a shooter was able to fire several rounds at her husband’s head from an insecure roof a football field away.
"I read it and I was like, 'This is so beautiful,'" Woodley said in an interview with Bustle this week. "I was in circles of people that I deeply respect — friends, colleagues, progressive, very intelligent thinkers, shakers and movers — and many of them were saying, 'He missed! F---ing assassin missed! Maybe it was a setup. Maybe it was a conspiracy.’"
"I was going, 'Have we forgotten that two human lives were taken? Two people died,” Woodley continued, referring to Corey Comperatore, a Trump supporter who was killed during the shooting, and the shooter himself, who was shot to death by law enforcement. "That is sad. That is devastating. I could not understand how people were speaking about something with such passion for death.”
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Woodley said she was moved by Melania’s personal take on the incident, saying it was “very much like, 'Look, underneath the political mask is a man, a grandpa, who comes home to his children, his grandchildren, and plays music. The man underneath that mask is my husband.’"
"I posted that letter because I thought it was a beautiful message of human compassion, and then I forgot about it because I have a life and I don’t live for what social media says," she said. "Then a week later, I got a text from a friend that said, 'Are you OK?' I Googled my name, because I’m like, 'Oh f---, what did I say?' And of course, there were all these news articles about Melania Trump, and I was like, 'Oh my God, that is now this?' Hundreds of articles because I posted about a woman saying she’s grateful her husband is alive? Really?”
Woodley says the whole thing has made her want to get off social media entirely and not contribute to that kind of "noise."
She’s right - but she shouldn’t be surprised. After all, if you’re willing to wish a violent death on someone because you don’t like their politics, it stands to reason that you’d hate someone for daring to see them as a human being.
But good on her for calling it out.