Comedian George Lopez is facing backlash after joking on social media about an $80 million bounty for President Donald Trump’s head.
After Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani near a Baghdad airport on Thursday, a eulogist at the late leader’s funeral called for an $80 million bounty on the U.S. president’s head.
“We are 80 million Iranians. If each one of us puts aside one American dollar, we will have 80 million American dollars, and we will reward anyone who brings us [Trump]’s head with that amount,” the unidentified man, whose bounty was not endorsed by the Iranian government, said.
Following the remark at the funeral, which was broadcast live on Iran’s state-owned Channel One television network, Instagram account @chicanoworldstar, which has more than 170,000 followers, asked its audience what it thought about the bounty.
Lopez, who is Mexican American, responded, “We’ll do it for half.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/B69B4XApv6m/?utm_source=ig_embed
The comment, which has more than 2,400 likes and and 750 replies, caught the attention of right-wing media, which immediately lambasted the comedian for allegedly threatening to kill the president.
In a tweet, Ryan Fournier, the founder and co-chairman of Students for Trump, urged the Secret Service to investigate the quip.
“George Lopez just said he’d assassinate President Trump for half of the $80 million dollar bounty. @SecretService should take a look at this. The Left is sick,” Fournier tweeted.
In a statement to Newsweek, Lopez’s spokesperson reassured the public that his comment “was absolutely a joke and that’s it.”
This isn’t the first time Lopez, a fierce Trump critic, has come under fire for his jokes about the president, however. In July 2018, he made a video of himself pretending to urinate on Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. While the Latino jokester only used water, Trump’s supporters still called for the comedian’s arrest.