President Donald Trump continues to stoke violent division that apparently manifested in recent days with Oregon comedian Joe Fontenot getting punched in the face — which gave him a black eye and knocked him out — after telling a joke during a stand-up routine mocking Trump’s push for a “Space Force.” It’s not immediately clear if the identity of Fontenot’s alleged assailant is known. Local media outlet KATU reported that surveillance footage of the incident was slated to be released on Monday. In the meantime, imagery of Fontenot’s apparently brutalized face has been circulating on the web, including what’s been preserved below.
#JoeFontenot a known comedian got attacked in #DallesOregon while onstage for making a #spaceforce joke about Trump. Some person attacked him. If you witnessed or know anything about it please speak up 👊🏾(link: https://t.co/ra3XbZ4JLF) pic.twitter.com/DkPP5HPt2k
— Teressa Raiford (@Teressa_Raiford) July 21, 2019
He shared:
‘I don’t understand, like, it’s not even a joke about Trump or anything like that, for people to assault someone else for talking is insane. Did that make America great again?’
He has apparently performed as a comedian for just over two decades at this point, and says the apparent assault won’t stop him from delivering similar satire in the future. According to Fontenot, the attacker shouted “Make America great again!” before walking on to the stage where he was delivering his performance and knocking him out. In the short between the MAGA shout and the punch, Fontenot says he joked that someone should build a wall around the Trump supporter, riffing off the president’s own longstanding plans to build a border wall blocking off the entirety of Mexico to address a nonexistent security threat from undocumented immigration and asylum seeking.
It’s definitely not the only Trump-ian plan that has attracted ridicule. That so-called space force, which has yet to materialize, is meant to be another branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, and it has attracted plenty of mockery outside of this situation. There’s even been a rumor of a “Space Force”-themed comedy coming to Netflix starring Steve Carell of The Office fame. Completely unironically, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said at one point not too long ago in supposed defense of the space force idea that threats will present themselves in space that are similar in form to those posed by pirates down below. In other words — we apparently need a space force to combat space pirates!
To be clear, only one other country on the face of the earth even has a space force of any sort — China. Is putting the United States in a space-centered arms race with a generally hostile foreign power really the best use of U.S. time, Trump? Really?
In the meantime, violence continues to grow on the home front. Just recently, a Trump rally crowd turned to a collective chant of “Send her back!” targeting Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia but has been a U.S. citizen for longer than the president’s own current wife, Melania. Although those chants weren’t coupled with explicit calls for immediate violence — although the force suggested in “sending” her back could constitute that all the same — Omar and others the president has targeted have routinely received death threats from his supporters. One such individual has even been arrested for targeting Omar.
Featured Image via screenshot
