'West Wing' star blasts Trump with profanity after White House co-opts show clip

Bradley Whitford talks about The West Wing and its impact on political discussion at Hall Auditorium at Miami University, Image via Wikimedia Commons.

During the early 2000s, the television series The West Wing won over audiences with its portrayal of the inner workings of the White House and a level-headed, public service-oriented president. Now, after President Donald Trump invoked the beloved show, one of its stars has some choice words for the real-world commander-in-chief.

On Wednesday, after launching a new round of strikes against Iran in retaliation for shooting down an Apache helicopter, Trump shared a clip from the series in which its fictional President Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, rejects the concept of a “proportional response” militarily. This was followed by a response from one of the show’s leading actors.

“Keep my show’s name out of your f—— mouth,” posted Bradley Whitford, who in the series played White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman.

The clip in question is from the Season 1 episode “A Proportional Response.” It portrays President Bartlet grappling with how to respond after the Syrian government shoots down an American military plane, and suggesting that the response should be “disproportional.”

“Let the word ring forth from this time and this place, gentlemen — you kill an American, any American, we don’t come back with a proportional response,” Sheen’s character declares. “We come back with total disaster!”

Trump posted the clip shortly after announcing that the U.S. launched “self-defense strikes” on Iran, asserting that the “mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.” His follow-up with the clip implied that he dislikes the idea of a proportional response. As many have noted, however, he seems to have missed the point the show was trying to make.

“Not to be a pitchman for Aaron Sorkin and media literacy,” posted media writer Evan DeSimone, referencing the show’s creator, “but the whole point of that scene was that President Bartlett was wrong and acting irresponsibly.”

As for Whitford, this isn’t the only time the actor has put Trump on blast, and it’s not even the first time one of his series has become entangled in the politics of MAGA.

Whitford currently stars in The Handmaid’s Tale, which portrays a United States that has collapsed into a theocratic state in which women are strictly controlled. Based on a book of the same name by renowned Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, the show’s themes of illiberalism and misogyny and focus on a far-right society have drawn numerous comparisons to Trump and the wider MAGA movement. Over the course of his two administrations, the red dresses and white hoods worn by the show’s “handmaids” — women whose freedoms are completely erased and who live in reproductive slavery — have become common protest symbols. In interviews, Whitford has noted parallels between the show’s fictional country and the U.S. under Trump.

“It’s like the worst ‘Handmaid’s’ episode ever,” Whitford said last year.

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